V motelu blízko námořní základny je objeven pokoj plný krve a cárů lidské kůže. K případu je povolána NCIS. Následně dojde v laboratoři, kde Abby právě pracuje, k útoku kyanidem. NCIS předpokládá, že oba útoky spolu souvisejí a spojovacím článkem by mohl být Abbyin bývalý duševně narušený přítel. NCIS mladíka sice dopadne, ale na poslední chvíli zjistí, že skutečným útočníkem je někdo úplně jiný.

At a motel used by guests of a marine base, a baddie creates a gory crime scene and leaves a suitcase full of cocaine. The people who were going to stay in the room were not impressed. The TV has been smashed, the walls, bed and floor are smeared in blood.

The human fascia is examined by Ducky who soon realizes that it is medical waste.

Abby is in her lab, having come back from giving a deposition in court. McGee comes to the lab, on the pretext of inquiring after the coke tests but, in reality, to see Abby in her court outfit (but she has already changed into normal-for-Abby clothes). Whilst the reagent for cocaine is at work on the white powder, Abby is teasing McGee, until suddenly she stops, sniffs, says "can you smell that?" "what?" "Almonds" As everyone who has ever read an Agatha Christie novel will know, this is murder-mystery code for "Cyanide poison": happily, our Abby is with McGee who, upon being told it is cyanide gas, just drags our girl out of there (Hurrah McGee!). They close the door and hit the airlock button (which magically appeared in time for this episode).

Whilst the room is being decontaminated by men in lunar suits, Tony comes down to the hall outside Abby's lab to meet with the Director Jenny and Gibbs. They express surprise that Abby made a mistake (Gibbs: "Abby doesn't make mistakes") and Jenny says that she cannot have enemies ("after all, she's not DiNozzo" to which Tony growls an indignant reply). But Tony has news and, as they enter the lift, he tells how he and Ziva took a walk through the dark world of Scuito...our girl has been holding back on us, boss.

In autopsy, Abs and McGee are sitting on an autopsy table, dressed in overalls (whilst their clothes are decontaminated) and being given oxygen as a precaution. Abby is embarrassed to have made a newbie mistake, as it's not like anyone would want to kill her, after all "it's not like I'm Tony". Tony reads to her from her file: she has injunctions out on her ex-boyfriend to stop him from stalking her, he made a creepy shrine website and has called her 200 times in the last month, and "did you really buy him a straitjacket for his birthday?". Gibbs asks "Why didn't you come to me, Abby?" "Because I wanted him stopped. I didn't want him beaten around the head with a baseball bat".

Team visits the stalker and he is a very weird crime scene clean-upper. They arrive as he is staging a photo shoot, with himself as the victim, so they race in with guns ready....then Gibbs tells him "the only reason you can walk right now is because I didn't know about you until today". He has an alibi for the time of the crime: there had been a full moon, and it had been "drive-by central" (drive-by shootings from cars) and he worked three crime scenes for metro police. They cannot arrest him.

So Abby has a killer after her. Gibbs orders Tony and Ziva to do work, but McGee can't think of anything to do: Gibbs orders him to take Abby home to his place and protect her. Abby is horrified.

Abby staying with McGee is interesting: he pulls out a toothbrush that he thinks is hers from previous times when they were more intimate: Abby thinks it creepy that he kept the toothbrush but then notices that "it's a ladybug toothbrush, McGee. That's for girly girls called Gina..." McGee tries to pretend it must be his sister's. Abby plays on his computer and keeps adjusting his settings, to his dismay. She sends him out to the car to fetch her toothbrush and disobeys his orders not to answer the door. The first door knock is McGee (forgot the car keys) and he ordered her to not open the door again. The second time, she thinks it is McGee but it is the stalker! Stalker comes in. Abby throws McGee's typewriter at him (and misses). She handcuffs the guy to a rail, but he gave her the handcuffs, is flattered that she kept them and he still wears the key around his neck. She locks herself in the bathroom: when the door bursts open, she almost hits the incomer on the head with the lid of the toilet cistern...but it is McGee. We hear the stalker's bike/car zoom away through the open hallway window. McGee holds up the missing toothbrush.

Back in the bullpen, Ziva is hissing at McGee to get over Abby doing bad things to his computer. He moans that he had to reformat his computer. Gibbs enters and comments scathingly "how terrible for you". McGee is working at his desk on his knees. When Giblets offer him a chair, Gibbs barks "he doesn't deserve to sit" because he let the bad guy almost get Abby. Other Giblets do things on the big screen and suddenly McGee has an idea on how to get a computer breakthrough...so Gibbs gives him his chair and tells him to call Abby to get her to come and help him.

McGee grimaces and tells Gibbs that first he'll have to get Abby to leave the lift/elevator. Gibbs cocks an eyebrow, goes to the lift and, when it opens, there is Abby sitting on the floor in the corner.

Gibbs enters, slides down the wall and sits next to her. After she explains her logic about so few people ever dying in elevators that it is clearly the safest place in the building to hide, she shows him the self-defence equipment that the women have given her: the stun gun is from Ziva, the pepper spray is from Cynthia and the brass knuckles are from the Director. Gibbs looks at her and he simply tells her "No one's gonna harm you Abs." She scoffs that he is just saying that to make her feel better. "Did it?" he asks. "Yeah. Can you say it again?" "No one's gonna harm you, Abs". He lifts an arm so that she can scoot in for a cuddle. With her head on his shoulder and his arm around her, his chin resting on her head, she asks if can she stay in the elevator. He tells her that he'll "move her whole lab into the elevator if it will make you feel better". At this point, the elevator arrives at a floor and the doors open on Jimmy Palmer who looks in, disconcerted to see Gibbs cuddling Abby on the floor. Gibbs smiles at him which he seems to find even more disconcerting.

The team keep pursuing the bad guy stalker. The lawyer from the court case (where Abby went in the morning before the cyanide incident in her lab), arrives with her client, wishing to depose Abby about her bad judgement in boyfriends (which they hope will impugn her testimony against the client for embezzlement). True to his word, Gibbs set up Abby's office in the elevator, so Gibbs shows the lawyer to the elevator (they are old adversaries.)

After 6 hours in the lift, Abby reverts to working in her basement (figuring that the longer she stays in the lift, the worse her chances are getting...it is convoluted logic that makes kinda sense when she tells Ducky: he gives her a whistle that should burst the eardrum of the baddie...without telling us how it will avoid bursting Abby's eardrum). Abby is alone in the lab working on her computer, when she gets a mobile phone call from the stalker. She gets angry at him and starts searching for his location by tracing the call while they talk. She makes an error and he tells her how to correct it: she comments, absentmindedly, that that is a good idea...then realises that he must be able to read her computer screen. She turns and he waves at her from the little window up high in her lab, but at his feet on the pavement outside. Meantime, the Giblets via McGee have been tracing the man and realise that he has given himself a fake pass for entry onto the Navy yard, where the NCIS HQ is. Well, they positively dash down to her lab...but too late to nab the dastardly stalker.

Abby spends the night at Gibbs' house (if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself!). We see Gibbs come downstairs to his basement, because a very drunk Abby is sanding the boat and talking to herself. He tells her "You gotta get some sleep, Abby". She says she knows. "I tried" but she kept seeing Michael the stalker. Gibbs gently corrects her sanding technique ("with the grain"..."I thought I was"). Abby then launches into a rant, fuelled by bourbon, as to the iniquity of her situation and says she is worried that maybe she brought all this on herself. Gibbs, sitting on the shell of the boat, watching her, agrees with her. She has gone to his bench and picked up tools: waving them around and he gently disarms her, as they get a bit close to his face. He lets her keep talking. She does a monologue about "How could you say that Gibbs?" and goes through how she can't help it if the two bit loser can't get over the fact that she doesn't want a two bit loser. "It's not my fault" she declares. "It's NOT my fault" she repeats to him sternly. Then she pauses and says to herself "It's not my fault!" as if surprised at the truth of what she is saying. GIBBS SMILES (ever so slightly but it is there!). She then continues to do work on the boat, with a mallet and chisel. "I can see why you like working on your boat Gibbs. Very cathartic". At which point she taps something and something falls off the boat. Gibbs just looks. She looks at what fell. She hands him the tools, abashed and indicates that she thinks having wrecked his boat is scarier than having a stalker after her. At this point, Gibbs says that that is what he came down to tell her: Tony rang to say the coastguard caught Mikel the stalker, trying to cross the Anacostia River.

So our girl is safe! They haul Mikel in for interrogation. He protests his innocence, and shows that the pictures he had in his creepy stalker montage all show the same guy following Abby. The Director comes into the observation room to report that they have had a call from the Federal Marshall who was supposed to pick up Abby: someone slashed his tires and he hasn't left yet. So who took Abby away in a van, to testify in court against the embezzler?

Gibbs and Tony make chase. McGee gives them co-ordinates on Abby's phone which indicates that they are right on top of where Abby's phone is...but they can't see anything. They are in an industrial area. A big truck backs out of the way, and they hear Ducky's whistle, then hear the sounds of a struggle.

They run to the white van. The side door has been rolled back, Abby in court suit is standing there, zapping the baddie who is on the ground outside the van, in pain. Abby yells at him: "And don't look up my skirt!"

Gibbs and Tony re-holster their weapons, Gibbs grins and just says "Yep", with some incredulity.

Now leaving court, Terry Spooner and Ginger gloat about winning the embezzlement case. Their joy is short-lived, as Gibbs and Tony immediately arrest him for hiring a hit man to kill the star witness, a.k.a. Abby.

Back at the interrogation room, Mikel rants about how much he loves Abby, how scared he was for her, and how his evidence (the creepy stalker photo montage) helped solve the case. Gibbs slaps a piece of paper from Michael's car on the table - it's a suicide note in Abby's handwriting, found next to a gun. Mikel had been planning to kill Abby and make it look like a suicide. Gibbs says nothing as Mikel talks to the one-way mirror, still insisting that Abby loves him and that she can't even take her eyes off him as she watches from the other side of the mirror. Gibbs silently walks out the door and turns out the lights in the interrogation room, revealing that the observation room is empty. Gibbs continues out the door and into the hallway, listening to Mikel's screams of "Abby! Look, I know you're in there... ABBY!"