Gibbs a jeho lidé jsou povoláni k případu poddůstojnice, která tvrdí, že ji někdo v noci přepadl v domě a vyhrožoval jí smrtí. Ve chvíli, kdy se dostaví na místo činu, ženu si vyzvedne její vojenský psychiatr a odveze ji do nemocnice. Gibbsovi se však jeho vysvětlení poněkud nezdá a tak se pustí do vyšetřování. Jeho podezření o to více zesílí v situaci, kdy zjistí, že žena měla vazbu na svého bývalého velitele, v současnosti vyšetřovaného FBI pro podezření z korupce. Ve chvíli, kdy NCIS objeví v domě poddůstojnice, kterou mezitím někdo v nemocnici uškrtil, odposlouchávací zařízení, není už tak těžké dopadnout pachatele, protože se na jednom čipu našlo trochu krve. A to je něco pro Abby...

A young woman is in bed, when creepy voices start whispering "Jessica... Jess...i...ca... over here." The blanket is yanked off of her from the foot of the bed. She sits up, crying and trying to figure out where the sound is coming from, when she sees a figure in military battle gear standing near her bed with a knife.

The team is joking about Tony's sex life and his college nickname of "sex machine"; Gibbs comes in to tell them NCIS has got the call, the young woman is a Navy petty officer, Jessica Smith, aide to her commanding officer, and has reported an assault. Just before they leave, Tony tells Kate to check her e-mail; he has attached a copy of the photo of her on spring break in retaliation for her giving away his college nickname.

Local LEOs on the scene are happy to turn the case over to NCIS, but tell Gibbs that they don't think there actually was any assault. When they meet the girl, she is frantic and terrified. She tells Gibbs that she needs to talk to him, but not here - "they" are listening. Gibbs does not seem fazed by this, he advises her to turn on her radio so that "they" can't hear the conversation. Just as she seems about to talk, a man barges in to the room. One of the local LEOs apologizes and says that he insisted. He is Lt. Witten, her therapist. He has come to take her back to the psych ward at Bethesda. He tells Gibbs that she has paranoid delusions, and the voices and man by her bedside are common hallucinations for her. She is terrified of him, but he sedates her and takes her back to Bethesda.

As the team prepares to return Kate and Tony are still bickering about the photo.

The team background checks her, she is a model sailor. No history of any disciplinary problems, she has been Sailor of the Quarter three times. Her fiancé was killed in combat recently, which is apparently when her delusions started. She works in the Dept of Acquisitions and her commanding officer, Capt Vetter, however, is being investigated by the FBI. The team tries to pull the case file on him and - it's classified. And blocked from NCIS access.

The team goes to interview her- Tony has an encounter with a female patient in for nymphomania; but Jessica is sedated and therefore sleeping. Gibbs says he wants to talk to her when she wakes up. Witten again tries to put them off. He questions Gibbs' expertise; Gibbs says he just has a "BS meter." The FBI won't release the file when McGee enquires, but the team learns from Navy sources that Vettel was suspected of taking kickbacks to award contracts.

Late in the evening Jessica calls NCIS saying she wanted to talk to them, but when they get there, they find her dead, apparently she has hanged herself with her bedsheets. Ducky tells Witten off for the lax supervision of at risk patients. The other patients find out and Catherine (the nympho) looks shocked. The corpsman on duty has not seen or heard anything. He tells them it was Witten who classified Jessica as a non-suicide risk.

Tony is still winding Kate up about the photo and when Kate asks him what it's going to cost for him not to show the photo around, he jokingly asks if she still has her Catholic schoolgirl uniform.

Next morning, the team finds Fornell sitting at Gibbs' desk; they thought he was dead. They go for a meeting in the lift; Fornell tells Gibbs the authorities want him to back off investigating Vettel; in return he unofficially offers to help NCIS. Gibbs is taking payback on Fornell (Gibbs a fewer episodes earlier had helped him get out of a tight spot when he was being framed). But Gibbs will carry on investigating independently, of course.

So they turn up at Vettel's and Gibbs says he wants to hear Vettel's side. Vettel claims initially that he is being attacked for blowing the whistle on the corruption of military contracts. Vettel is clearly agitated.His wife appears and is in a hostile mood. Vettel says Jessica was like a daughter to him. McGee says that Jessica wanted to pass a message on to him, that the monsters were after her. Gibbs leaves, making the comment that the Vettel home is very nice, much nicer than he could have afforded as a marine.

However, back at the morgue, Ducky soon discovers Jessica has been smothered to death first and then hung up to make it look like a suicide. Abby gives a practical display of how it was done in her garage/workshop at NCIS. Abby uses an inflatable doll; Jessica was smothered with a pillow, then the rope was tied to the top of the iron-frame bed and the bed used as a fulcrum. But how come the corpsman never heard the noise of the bed?

Fornell goes to visit Gibbs in the famous boat-building basement. Fornell has discovered that the FBI thought they could get to Vettel through Jessica and forced her to co-operate, e.g by wearing a wire. However, they thought she was hiding something. Fornell is shocked to hear Jessica has been murdered.

Tony wonders if Jessica might have told Catherine Reynolds something. Kate is forced to be nice to Tony during the conversation, because of the blackmail dimension of the embarrassing photo. The corpsman has arrived and Gibbs interrogates him. He has not heard or seen anything suspicious. Now Gibbs tells him Jessica was murdered;

Now the corpsman has to admit he left his post for 40 minutes and was with Catherine Reynolds pursuing an illicit affair.

Gibbs and Jate go to Jessica's house; Gibbs has decided she was telling the truth about someone being in her bedroom; as they approach, they are shot at, but the shooter gets away and has shot the tyres on the NCIS car so he can't be pursued..In the house, Kate finds a radio receiver/broadcast setup hidden behind a ventilation grille in her house. This was producing the voices, triggered by a mobile phone signal and distorting the voice by repetition.
In the lab, Abby finds a speck of blood on the contraption; she hopes to find DNA.

McGee arrives to interview Reynolds and her friend Simons, who was also a confidante of Jessica's. Simons has been discharged, but McGee gets to see Reynolds, who agrees to answer questions if she can ask McGee some too. She straight away accuses McGee of being a virgin. Reynolds says Jessica was having an affair with Vettel and had asked Simons to deliver a message for her - that she loved him.

Tony has found Vettel and Witten were shipmates in 1999. Vettel has been brought into interrogation. He is hostile. Gibbs and Fornell confront him with the affair. He claims to have been at home with his wife at the time of the murder; but she has denied it. Did he kill her? Vettel says he loved her. Now he admits she caught him; though he had been embezzling to use the money to make a new life with her when he got divorced from his wife. The money, about $800k is in a storage locker.

The team prove this; but as they observe, Simons turns up and takes the money (which is now GPS tagged). Abby rings to say she has traced the blood (to Simons), but Gibbs (as he always does) has already guessed. Simons drives to the hospital and picks up...... Reynolds. Reynolds takes a gun out prior to throwing Simons out. Simons protests that without her (Simons), there was no way Jessica would have been re-admitted to the hospital - the voices were a trick. At this point though, NCIS is there and arrest the women.

The final scene shows Tony and Kate still bickering; Kate has photoshopped a picture of Tony as a topless cowboy; they both promise to delete simultaneously, but instead, they both send their attachments to Gibbs. The last shot has Gibbs about to open his e-mail.