Hide And Seek

In a locked apartment, during a game of hide-and-seek, 6 y.o. Alina Borovko goes missing. The case is handed to senior criminal investigator Varta Naumova, who is new to the department, and special investigative agent Maksym Shumov. Borovko admits that on that day, against the wishes of his former mother-in-law, he took his daughter from the cultic church she’s been forcibly enrolled into.

Borovko’s mother-in-law Nina Sayenko admits that she asked the pastor from her church to get the girl from her dad by force, if necessary. But neither pastor nor his assistant (who was caught trying to escape as, it turned out, he didn’t have a permit to stay in the country) are connected to the kidnapping. The police follows the lead to the apartment in which Alina Borovko was kept overnight.

The police finds an abandoned vehicle that belongs to the kidnapper. But Shumov screws up and the car explodes, destroying the crucial evidence. During the show of a pop diva Didilia, her 8 y.o. son Bohdan is kidnapped. During the crime scene examination Varta has a major run-in with a local journalist Serhiy Kipling. Driven by his desire of revenge, Kipling starts digging into Varta’s past.

While in custody, Usenko helps create a sketch of the man who paid him to rent Kravchenko’s apartment under his ID. During the ransom drop police detains Pavlo Zhyznevskyi who impersonated Bohdan’s kidnapper in an attempt to make easy money. In the meantime Kipling releases an article about Varta giving up her newborn for abortion. A scandal ensues and Varta is taken off the case.

Varta figures out that the numbers the kids carry in the videos make up geographical coordinates. She is handed the case back. At the location they’ve been guided to they discover materials that enable them to establish the identity of the kidnapper. It’s Roman Svyrydov. Two years ago his 3 y.o. daughter went missing and his wife committed suicide.

Having re-examined Svyrydov’s case, the investigators uncover that Alisa’s nanny Svetlana Fadeyeva lied about her alibi on the day of the girl’s disappearance. Now Fadeyeva is serving time for theft in a women’s prison. Varta is planted behind the bars to fish out the information from Fadeyeva. Meanwhile, Svyrydov kidnaps Varta’s daughter.

Fadeyeva tells Varta she kidnapped Alisa. She took the girl to her accomplice Serhiy Lavrov aka Tsypa. The idea was to demand ransom, but Tsypa deceived her and disappeared with the girl. Shumov arrests Svyrydov at his wife’s grave. Meanwhile, a timing device on a gas trap Svyrydov set up in the apartment where children are kept is set off.

The investigators find out that Alisa was sold by Tsypa to the Laude family. They locate both the girl and her new parents. She is no longer Alisa, but Sofiya, and she remembers but fragments of her past life. It turns out that the Laudes were also duped by Tsypa: they thought they were saving the girl from a troubled family.