Harlan Coben’s Shelter is about Mickey’s need to be a hero and save the day, especially when it comes to Ashley or his mom. Mickey’s desire to find out the truth about his dad’s death is important, but it’s not what drives the story. Rachel finally tells him this in “See Me Feel Me Touch Me Heal Me” (Season 1, Episode 5), right after their run-in with OctoFace, when Mickey races at OctoFace in Rachel’s garden and she shoots him, sending him over the fence and away from them. But after all that, Ashley isn’t in Rachel’s pool house, where she’s been said to be hiding.
Mickey is determined to find her, so he forces Rachel to use Troy’s access to his dad’s police database to look up the license plate of OctoFace’s old orange car. The two of them find him at a beautiful house with windows all the way to the ceiling. Rachel stakes out his location and holds on to the gun. They finally follow him to a dark alley that looks like a place where criminals meet or where a dirty poker game takes place. Rachel sees the two guys who tried to take Ashley guarding the door. Mickey wants to go in, but Rachel, who is his voice of reason, tells him not to.
Rachel’s boyfriend Troy is upset by her growing friendship with Mickey and the complicated relationship between his parents and Shira. He takes out his anger on Mickey at the basketball tryouts. Troy throws an elbow at Mickey’s face in the middle of the game, and Mickey tries to start a fight as blood pours out. Ema and Spoon, who were cheering for Mickey from the stands during tryouts, come over to help break up the fight. Ema gives Mickey her shirt to stop the blood. But as she goes away, Mickey sees the butterfly tattoo on her shoulder and she is out in the open.
Troy and Mickey are the best players on the team, so they only get a warning. However, the Coach calls the adults in for a serious talk, and Hannah makes it clear that she doesn’t believe her son when he says that what happened was a mistake. She later tells Shira that she is sad and that she is taking control of her life by finally opening the restaurant she has always wanted. Shira is immediately supportive, though she is a little confused by her friend’s quick change of heart. Her husband Ken, on the other hand, is the exact opposite. During dinner, he loses his temper when she says she’s signed a lease, and she tells him that he doesn’t really see her or Troy.
Mickey tells Spoon that Ema has a butterfly tattoo, so they decide to follow her home from school. Ema walks them home through a sparse forest, but when she gets to a huge house, she has to face them. She says that Agent came up with the idea for the abeona butterfly tattoo and that she hasn’t been able to get it off yet, even though he was supposed to use temporary ink. She also says that she lives in this mansion with her mom, the EGOT actress Angelica Wyatt, who is interested in the school musical. Even though they are shocked by the news about her parents, Mickey can’t stop thinking about something else she said: that Abeona was also the name of the group where Mickey’s parents worked.
Spoon and Mickey go back to Agent’s tattoo shop to find out more about the butterflies. Spoon talks them into giving him a temporary tattoo while Mickey looks around in the back office. Spoon has a bleeding heart tattoo with a place for a name and some thoughts about a loss he’s gone through. Mickey, on the other hand, finds pictures of his dad’s lion tattoo and of Brad hanging out with OctoFace. Mickey is thrown for a loop by the pictures, and he starts to wonder how much he really knew about his father.
Now that Ema’s closest friends know her secret, she chooses to tell her crush that she comes from a wealthy family. As she and Whitney get closer, she tells her about it, and they even kiss near the Hudson River (to the right tune of “Sidelines” by Phoebe Bridgers), but by the end of the episode, Whitney has also told her mean twin brother Buck. We know Buck won’t keep that juicy information to himself, so it’s only a matter of time before the whole school finds out. This makes me sad, because I really wanted Ema and Whitney to be the “it” couple at school.
Spoon later tells Ema that he just woke up from his sleep, so Ema goes with him to the hospital to talk to Dr. Kent. Even before they get into the hospital, the two see the doctor get into a dark SUV, likely by the same people who took Ashley. There are still a lot of questions about the Kent family and how they fit into this whole situation, but it’s important to note that it doesn’t look like Dr. Kent was forced into the car. He seems to have gotten out of his wheelchair and gone with these strange people on his own.
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