The 7th episode of Will Trent, titled “Unable to Locate,” consists of three storylines. The main story follows Will and Faith as they work to stop a racially motivated attack, while the subplot follows Angie and Michael solving a murder case. But what really connects these two stories is a flashback to 2001 when Will and Angie were teenagers. The flashback story was broken up throughout the episode, but for the purposes of this recap, I present the flashback first, followed by the typical back-and-forth between the two teams and the assignments they’re on. Enjoy!
In 2001, we see a teenage Will Trent (Andres Velez) and Angie Polaski (Savannah Hutson) sneak out of the orphanage and steal the owner’s car. Angie recently returned from a foster care arrangement where she was raped by her her foster father. Will drives her to Florida and tries to cheer things up by pointing out that he’s never left Georgia before. “Whoop-dee-doo, it’s not like we’re going to EPCOT,” Angie groans. Will wants her to go to the police about her situation, but she tells him it will just cause her humiliation and lead to no problems for her former foster parents. She points out the injustice of the world by bringing up Will’s neck scars, revealing that he got them when he tried to report a crime and was thrown through a plate glass door. Will tries to talk Angie out of doing what she’s doing and she makes him pull over, getting out of the car and proceeding on foot. He follows her, cheering her up, and the next day, he waits for her outside of a clinic with a teddy bear and a rose. “Is that an abortion bear?”, she asks. “They were all out of abortion giraffes,” Will replies, trying to make light of the situation. Angie hugs Will and thanks him for being there for her.
(ABC/Danny Delgado)
In the present, Will Trent (Ramón Rodríguez) stands shirtless in his kitchen preparing breakfast for his dog Betty, snickering at the fact that his dogsitter Nico has started dressing his pet. When Betty knocks over a wastepaper basket and pulls out a wadded paper, Will takes it from her. His dyslexia makes it difficult for him to see it for what it is, but he soon figures it out – instructions for a pregnancy test. He sets the paper on the counter when someone knocks at his door. Grabbing a shirt, he opens it to find his boss, Amanda Wagner (Sonja Sohn), barging in unannounced. A group known as the Confederate Front is in Atlanta recruiting members and their presence coincides with the disappearance of a shipping container full of assault rifles. As she fills Will in, his partner Faith Mitchell (Iantha Richardson) enters, with Will telling his protege that they’re not at the level of familiarity with which she can just show up at his place like this. Amanda called her, so he lets it slide. Faith asks if there’s coffee, entering Will’s kitchen and seeing the pregnancy test instructions. Will asks her to ignore it. Having a moment alone, he tries to call Angie but gets her voicemail.
At the shipping yard, manager Babs Carter (Kathleen York) shows Will, Amanda, and Faith around. Babs is joined by grounds person Taki Kloufetos (Demitri Meskouris), who oversees inventory and explains that all of the outbound pickups yesterday had the correct weight reports, so it’s a mystery how a whole container full of guns went missing. But Will’s attention to detail quickly spots an irregularity in the numbers on a container and upon further inspection, he discovers the numbers on the crates have been doctored. He tells Babs that someone who works there was involved and Faith goes to get a list of all the employees. As Will looks around, he asks about a collection of crates in a corner, which are old and no longer in use, but the gravel around them seems freshly disturbed. As he walks around one, he notices a human hand sticking out of some debris. “Looks like someone was trying to hide more than just numbers,” Will declares.
At the Atlanta Police Department, Angie Polaski (Erika Christensen) and Michael Ormewood (Jake McLaughlin) are dealing with a murder case. A Black man was shot in the chest while leaving a shoe store with a pair of hard-to-get sneakers that were just released, with the kicks stolen from him. As they take the case, Michael makes a joke about how when they solve it, he will be able to retrieve the shoes from the evidence locker as a gift for his son Max’s birthday. Shortly after, they are both in an interrogation room with store owner Lou Lou Maxey (Isabelle Du), who believes she knows who robbed her customer. She tells them about a shoe reseller named Pun’Kin who got angry at her when he didn’t win the store’s sneaker raffle for the new shoes. She passes the info to Angie, who steps out of the room with it. In private, Lou Lou leans in the Michael and says “You know you owe me, right?” He tells her that’s why he snatched up this case so fast. She doesn’t want people to think her store is unsafe. In the office, Angie passes another witness waiting to be questioned who is eager to leave. His name is Jerry Wagner (John D. Babcock III), owner of a record store across from the shoe store. He says the suspected shooter whore very cheap-looking shoes, similar to Bobos from the 90s.
In Will’s office, Faith has the identification of the dead body found at the shipping yard and learns that he was an employee. She can’t find any connection to the Confederate Front, but his phone records indicate that he made a lot of phone calls to Babs leading up to his death. Babs is brought in for questioning, and she seems very upset about her employee’s death. After some hard pushing, she confesses that they were having an affair. She gives them a tidbit that one of her forklift operators, a man named Craig McDonald, has a tattoo of a Confederate flag. A wake is being held for Jed at the bar the employees often hang out in and he is expected to be there.
Pun’Kin (Terrance Sims) is brought in for questioning and Michael is aggressive with his accusations. Pun’Kin tells him he got mad at Lou Lou because her raffles feel rigged, always going to the same people for the past three shoe releases. Angie asks to speak to Michael outside, sharing that Pun’Kin is wearing nice shoes, not ones like Jerry described, and she believes he’s innocent. Michael, however, insists that Pun’Kin is their guy, sharing that they found shoes exactly like the pair stolen in his trunk.
(ABC/Wilford Harewood)
Will finds Angie at her desk researching shoes. “I found the pregnancy test instructions,” he reveals. Angie steps away from her desk and leads him to a supply closet to talk. She hasn’t taken the test yet, but she’s late and worried. Will tells her he’s scared, saying he can barely keep a Chihuahua alive, but that he’s there for her and believes she will be a good mother. Angie shuts down the conversation, reminding him that she’s a recovering addict trying to get her life together. In her frustration, she tells him that the baby might not be his. “You make this impossible sometimes,” Will snaps, telling her to do whatever she wants as he leaves the closet upset.
Will and Faith go to the bar for Jed’s wake, quickly spotting Craig McDonald (Jesse C. Boyd) by the pool tables and watching him. When Craig heads out to the parking lot, Will follows him while Faith eavesdrops on other conversations. In the parking lot, Will corners Craig, believing him to be alone, and announces that he’s with the GBI. Several men step out from behind parked cars, surrounding Will and showing their guns. Will makes a run for it and gets jumped, narrowly ducking between two cars. In the skirmish, a baseball bat gets brought down on Will’s back, but he gets away, ducking into the back of a truck under a tarp. Failing to find him, Will hears Craig call his men to get in their trucks and go. Will grabs his hankie and dabs the back of his head, noticing that there’s blood on it. He passes out. And then the truck starts to pull away.
Shortly after, Faith calls Amanda to tell her that she found Will’s gun on the ground in the parking lot with blood nearby, her partner nowhere to be found and not answering his cellphone. Amanda is shaken by the news, announcing that she will get a mobile command unit out there right away and ordering Faith to stay on the stolen guns case, saying her intel is that the Confederate Front has something terrible in the works.
(ABC/Danny Delgado)
Angie arrives at Will’s house with a wrapped present, greeted at the door by Betty barking at her. Her cell phone rings and Amanda tells her that Will is missing, ordering her to stay back while they search for him and that he may need medical attention. Amanda promises to call her with any updates. Angie sits on the couch, with Betty sitting on the opposite end as she talks. She doesn’t know why she tried to hurt Will by saying the potential baby might not be his, but then realizes she does know. It’s because he’s always been there for her every time she’s made a mistake and she feels bad. She questions out loud if Will would want to marry her and raise a child with her, stating that she’s too immature for that much responsibility. She worries she would treat a child worse than she treats herself. As she talks, Betty moves closer for snuggles. “Thanks for the girl talk,” Angie jokes.
Sunlight shines through the tarp in the back of the truck as Will wakes up to the sound of a man saying “Let’s go, hurry up!” He peeks outside and sees men unloading trucks full of military rifles. He pulls out his phone to try and make a call, but the battery is dead.
Angie arrives at work and heads straight for the coffee pot, with Michael approaching to tell her he’s sorry to hear that Will is missing. She didn’t sleep and is agitated that everyone seems to expect her to have a breakdown. Their boss, Captain Heller (Todd Allen Durkin), approaches to ask for an update on the sneaker murder. Michael declares that their suspect is currently being processed, which Angie questions right on the spot. She brings up the Bobo shoes, sharing that she did more research and found that these types of shoes are given to prisoners. The deceased had done some time and his prison mate, Billy Thompson, was released suspiciously close to the date of the shooting. Heller agrees that it’s worth looking into. As he walks away, Michael becomes outraged at Angie for going above his head in front of their boss like that. She accuses him of trying to speed up this investigation to get his hands on a pair of sneakers for his son. The fight escalates to Michael breaking his coffee mug and warning Angie to leave this alone.
Faith brings Taki in for questioning, revealing that she has security footage that shows him leaving the shipping grounds on the night of Jed’s death, despite his scheduled shift having ended twelve hours prior. She reminds him that the missing weapons are going to be used and that every death will be on his hands. “Craig and I boosted the container, but it was just about the money,” Taki comes clean, revealing that he helped Craig kill Jed for his silence. He swears he didn’t know Craig’s real intentions and shares that Craig told him where the warehouse is where the guns were being stored.
(ABC/Danny Delgado)
Will watches men loading guns into a warehouse. When the activity quiets down, he takes an opportunity to sneak out of the truck, following the sounds of voices around the back of the warehouse where he sees Craig conducting target practicing, delivering instructions for attacking a peaceful protest of a statue. Will sees a single rifle unattended to within his reach, grabs it, and retreats into the alley. He quietly pulls out his tape recorder to deliver what he believes will be his parting words, describing the situation he’s in and what he’s about to do. And then the message becomes personal. “Angie, I’m sorry we fought. There’s nothing I’d love more than to raise a baby with the most amazing woman I’ve ever loved. You’re the only one who really knows me. I love you. Please don’t take Betty to the pound.”
Ending the message, Will moves in with his weapon and takes one of the men hostage, ordering the others to drop their weapons. Craig calls Will’s bluff, saying the gun he has isn’t loaded, but Will says he can’t be sure of that and also says his backup is just around the corner. Craig tells his men not to drop their weapons. Just then, Will is as surprised as anyone to find Faith and a whole GBI team descend on the scene, arresting all of the Confederate Front members. Not a single shot is fired. Faith checks on Will, calling a medic over, and hugging him. Back at the GBI, Will returns to work bandaged up from his wounds. Amanda jokingly hands him a bill for how much it cost the GBI to get him back to show how valued he is.
Meanwhile, Angie and Michael worked together to chase down and arrest Billy Thompson (Spencer Davis), who had traded his pair of Bobos for the new sneakers he stole. Back in the office, Angie stops by Michael’s desk to learn that Billy gave a full confession, applauding her instincts. She tells him she didn’t mean to make him look bad and that she appreciates that he checked on her when he heard Will was missing. Michael comes clean about why solving this case quickly was important to him. He once got rough with a suspect in Lou Lou’s store and it was caught on her security footage. Lou Lou kept it quiet for him, so he wanted to keep her happy. Angie acknowledges that the things that make her turn to drugs are the same things that manifest as rage for Michael. He brings up how he had to go through seminars after being discharged from the army to reintegrate into society, which she likens to the post-rehab experience. “Whatever this thing is that I have going on, I’m doing the work; it’s under control,” Michael swears. Angie nods her head, but her face looks doubtful.
That night, we see Angie and Will sitting together, waiting for the results of her pregnancy test. She’s not pregnant. Angie breathes a sigh of relief as Will hugs her, asking if she’s okay. She says yes and gets up to go take a shower. Alone, Will pulls out his tape recorder and pops out the mini cassette. He stares at it, looking crestfallen as he takes it to his dresser drawer and buries it under a stack of shirts. He looks towards the bathroom, hearing the sound of the shower running. Will’s eyes are misty.
Will Trent will return on ABC on Tuesday, February 28th at 10/9c with “Two Hundred Dollars and a Bus Pass.”
When a case that hits close to home comes across Will’s desk, he discovers there is more to the incident than meets the eye. Meanwhile, Angie and Ormewood investigate a murdered magician while uncovering some extra tricks that had been up his sleeve.