Emily Byrne was physically and emotionally exhausted on Absentia Season 1 Episode 9 and it was easy to understand why.

Because I'm exhausted just watching her go through all of this.

When Emily shot Nick at the end of Absentia Season 1 Episode 8, I had completely forgotten that Nick normally wears a bullet proof vest.

I didn't realize that wearing a vest in the field was standard protocol for FBI agents, but that's something that Emily would have known, so she shot Nick where it would slow him down but not kill him.

Detective Gibbs seemed to understand that far better than Nick did. Nick wouldn't cut Emily any slack.

Nick was determined to believe the worst of Emily, that the only reason she didn't kill him was because then Gibbs wouldn't have had to stop to make sure he was okay. In Nick's mind, Emily didn't kill him only because keeping him alive benefited her.

So much for the trust he claimed to once have in his wife.

The woman who attacked Charles is named Emily Byrne. She's wanted for multiple homicides and she's kidnapped my wife and my son.
Nick

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Nick was the one person Emily needed to believe in her innocence and he didn't. He even took her supposed guilt to the next left.

When Nick saw those masks across the street from the warehouse, he made a huge leap in logic.

Suddenly Emily was no longer Conrad Harlow's victim, or his pawn, or his accomplice, she was Harlow's mentor.

I was totally flummoxed by that assumption. That Nick actually believed that a young Emily not only killed all of those people, but taught her methods to Harlow, was astounding.

But then again, Emily's signature on the invoice for that giant fish tank was a detail that made my head spin, and made reporter Laurie Colson's day.

Jack wasn't left with many options and he needed to get the information as quickly as possible, but the risk of using a reporter to do your research is that anything they find becomes fodder for their work.

Now Emily's got maybe half a day before the whole world believes she abducted and almost drowned herself.

Emily's race to find who was behind her kidnapping has become this odd sort of marathon with a lot of strange sprints and obstacles thrown in.

She's forged rivers, broken into a mental facility, run through forests and scrambled over railroad tracks, many of which while recovering from a gun shot wound.

Is it all kind of far fetched? Yes, as it was when Emily just happened to pick a hotel room that had clean clothing that fit her.

But the journey has been so intense and thrilling that it's been easy to let the logic of it all slip away and just enjoy how the story unfolds.

Then we get to Alice and Flynn.

Alice continues to be the character that I find myself yelling directions to at my screen.

When she woke up again to find Flynn missing, I was baffled as to how she could allow him to be taken a second time.

If I were in her shoes I would have been wrapped around that kid in my sleep. I would have tied the sleeves of our clothing together so that they couldn't have taken him away so easily.

But then Alice pulled it together and began looking for a way to break free instead of just sitting there waiting for Nick to ride to their rescue.

If only she had done that from the start.

When she started wandering through the tunnels, I wished she had taken one of those broken boards with her to use as a weapon, and I thought the same thing about the metal leg she used to break Flynn out of the tank, not that it would have done any good against a tranquilizer dart.

However, I did cheer for Alice when she finally broke Flynn free.

In an odd way, Flynn is a lucky kid, although he's probably not feeling it right now because all of this has been horrifying, but Flynn has two mothers who are both relentless in their desire to protect him.

If only they all somehow survive the day to enjoy that fact.