When the Bough Breaks

State Profiler Audrey Macleah is called to Houston after a bag of severed hands is found in the sewer system. The hands belong to young girls from various ages, each marked with a number on the palm. The discovery triggers a dangerous investigation to identify the victims and the killer.

Captain Swaggert assigns Macleah to consult a doctor at a nearby psychiatric hospital who tipped them off about a patient. The meeting establishes a potential link between the killer and Jordan Thomas, a boy with a troubled history. Audrey begins to sense a psychic connection forming between them.

Macleah learns about Jordan's history of foster placements and institutionalization since age four. On his birthday each year he suffers seizures, his wrists bleed, and he carves numbered hands into walls. The patterns in his past hint at a link between him and the severed hands.

Audrey combs through medical files and police databases and discovers that the hands belong to girls who vanished on Jordan's birthday, July 16, from parks across Houston. The repeated timing of the disappearances points to Jordan, not random crime, raising the stakes of the investigation. The connection deepens the mystery and focuses the search.

A video from a missing girl's file reveals the ice cream truck's song that Jordan hums when visiting him, suggesting a signal the killer uses. Detectives track a pedophilic ice cream man, but the lead turns out to be a dead end. The case grows more perilous as innocent childhood icons become suspect.

On Jordan's birthday, Audrey uses hypnosis and taps into Jordan's alter-ego, Jennifer Lynn. Jennifer Lynn speaks of hands being given from ‘Daddy’ so she can play, hinting at a guardian figure who manipulates him. The scene strengthens the hypothesis of abuse behind the killings.

In the woods near a park, a young girl encounters an unaccompanied ice cream truck and is dragged inside for assault. The alarming incident confirms the predator's proximity to Jordan and to the trucks involved in the crimes. Audrey recognizes the danger closing in.

With help from colleagues, Audrey identifies Jennifer Lynn Eben as a deceased girl and uncovers birth records for Jordan Brian Eben. She learns there is a twin Jennifer Lynn Eben born with malformed hands, and that the attending physician at their birth was Douglas Eben, their father. The medical trail links the Eben family to the disappearances.

Audrey visits the Eben estate and meets a housekeeper who hints Eben is away but invites her inside. Photos reveal Jennifer, the mother, but no picture of Jenny, who is away at private school in Europe. The mother’s past as a piano prodigy adds a haunting layer to the family history.

A photograph of a dark-haired woman by a water tower leads Audrey to a house nearby. She climbs through a gate and discovers an old ice cream truck in the garage, tying the case to the Eben family and the missing girls. The discovery fuels the hunt and sets up the basement confrontation to come.

Audrey locates a basement door in the house and breaks into a locked room. Inside she finds a makeshift medical operating room with a furnace and a shower, and she discovers the missing girl alive but terrified. The room confirms the killer’s clinical, ritualistic approach to his crimes.

Audrey frees the girl and she and Jenny escape through a basement window. Doug Eben arrives to deliver Jenny as a birthday present, leading to a tense showdown in the medical room. Audrey sets Eben on fire and shoots him, saving the girls and ending his reign of terror.

Captain Swaggert drives Jenny, whose hands are pinned, to meet Jordan at the psychiatric hospital. Audrey has discharged Jordan, signaling a fragile step toward healing. The impending reunion hints at a difficult but hopeful future for both girls.

On the hospital grounds, the twins finally embrace with tears, a silent vow to heal after years of abuse and fear. The moment closes the case on a note of resilience and continued recovery. The story ends with a cautiously optimistic sense of family and safety.