Tým NCIS přijíždí k autonehodě. Na místě leží mrtvý mariòák a na stojí mostku rozbité auto. Ale patolog Ducky po chvilce zjistí, že pod mostem leží polámané tělo mladé dívky a že mariòák nezemřel při autonehodě, ale byl zastřelen. Během pitvy čeká Duckyho další překvapení. Dívka nedávno porodila, kde je však její dítě? Pátrání přivede tým k mladým manželům, kteří se nakonec přiznají, že dívku využili jako náhradní matku, dítěte se ale nedočkali a někdo po nich nyní žádá výkupné. Aby tým našel dítě, musí nejprve najít vraha. A jako obvykle se nejlepší pomocnicí stává Abby se svou forenzní vědou.

A marine petty officer in a tuxedo is country-driving at speed one-handed, talking on his phone. Another car fails to give way, in this bushland setting. They crash. Tuxman is OK and looks over at the other car, wrecked atop an embankment. Then, belatedly, Tuxman's airbag inflates, bloodying his nose. He fights off the bag, barks into the phone, turns his head to look out his window, sees the double barrel of a shotgun in his face. Bang. He never saw the killer and neither did we. Roll credits.

NCIS HQ, start of shift. Ziva is hazing McGee about whether he has lost his virginity. McGee resents this. They are stunned to see Tony already at work. He is not cheery. Ziva offers a listening ear, but Tony points out that only super gluing McGee's fingers to his keyboard would cheer him. McGee holds up his hands, keyboard attached. Tony smiles (at last). ("Been saving that one for a rainy day") Gibbs enters, fetches acetone from his desk and puts it on McGee's: "Are you ever gonna learn, McGee?" Gibbs announcing they have to go to the hit and run death of a petty officer. They walk out leaving McGee struggling with his fingers stuck to keyboard.

At the site, Ducky examines the body and discovers the man is a stripper (his tux peels off) and sees the bullet wound so 'hit and run' became 'shoot and scoot'. The car and body injuries don't match, so Ducky hunts for and finds another body. A woman. McGee ponders why the Director didn't choose McGee for the undercover job: Ziva is gobsmacked at the thought.

At HQ: The team sift through evidence and clues lead them to track down the boyfriend of the dead woman: he is the son of a mechanic. The woman turns out to be a con-artist with a string of convictions: her name is Heidi. Ducky's autopsy on Heidi reveals that she was dead before the car accident but, much worse, had been beaten, hemorrhaged internally and had given birth. The baby is missing. He warns Gibbs of this crisis.

Abby discovers from DNA that the boyfriend is not the father of Heidi's baby. McGee finds cheques deposited to Heidi's bank account, so the team go to visit the person who wrote the cheques, Mr Nelson. He and Mrs Nelson deny all knowledge of Heidi, but when Gibbs gets Mr N alone, he admits to having known her but says she stole and forged the cheques. Surreptitiously, McGee collects DNA evidence from the couple. In the dark when the power goes out. He is a clever McGeek. Team discovers that Heidi didn't forge the cheques and that Mr Nelson is lying. Tony keeps looking for Heidi's past victims. They all hate her because she lied to them. Tony keeps defending liars as lovers. (His thesis is that lying and loving are not mutually exclusive. Most people slam down their phones on him, suggesting that his thesis is not persuasive.)

The team ponder a variety of scenarios. Ducky buys baby kit for when they find the baby. He reports no babies have been left as foundlings at hospitals. They decide the killer has the kid. Comic interlude: Tony tries to go to a real dentist appointment and the team look at him in disbelief (because he had so many medical and dental appointments when undercover so he could visit Jeanne). Tony gives in, with bad grace, and stays in the office, considering himself ill-used and condemned to periodontal disease as a punishment for crying wolf.

Abby comes up with evidence that the Nelsons are both the parents of the baby and Heidi is not the mother: she was only a surrogate to carry the baby in her womb. Did the Nelsons kill her for the baby? The team race back to the Nelson house but they have absconded, leaving a mess except for the baby's room which is pristine.

Gibbs and Ziva check the nursery for evidence: Ziva cannot comprehend what the Nelson's plan was and why killing Heidi would come into it. She quizzes Gibbs because he was a parent. He queries whether she intends to have kids. She blusters and avoids answering. Tony, having been caught out by the sprinkler system that is really a burglar deterrent, at this computerised home, arrives, dripping, at the doorway to the nursery. Gibbs leaves but Tony stays, looking at the empty crib. He gets flashbacks to Jeanne. Ziva, studying the look on his face, starts to offer support but Tony holds up a finger and frowns, to silence her.

Back in the HQ, McGee thinks he can track the Nelsons via the GPS in their thingummywhatsit device. Gibbs and Ziva go looking for the car. They don't find it. Mr Nelson had made a decoy signal to confound McGee's computerised spying. Scoffing at geekish ways of detection, Tony uses "good old fashioned police work" and rubs McGee's nose in it. McGee, insensitively, (perhaps intentionally cruelly, perhaps naively) quizzes Tony about being in love with Jeanne and living as someone other than himself. He gets nowhere. McGee speaks geek-speak to the irritation of Tony, Gibbs and Ziva.

Ziva confronts Tony about Jeanne (by following him into the men's loo for a row, and the fight turns verbally vicious. Ziva points out that Tony didn't think through the relationship with Jeanne: did he really expect to be able to live the life of Tony DiNardo to keep her? She tells him to control his heart. He scoffs at this coming from the person who fell in love with a dead man walking. Oh dear me, it is a critical conversation, (in all senses of the word critical.). Ziva yanks up Tony's zipper and stalks out. Tony has overstepped the line. Tony cannot believe her temerity.

Team finds out that the dead petty officer's car has turned up, so the team goes to check it and finds washed-off blood stains. And panda poop. (Panda guano). Abby points them to a paper mill where they used panda poop to make paper: the only one "within 100 miles". The team dash to the mill...they find the Nelsons but then realise they interrupted the handing over of ransom for the baby. The Nelsons were victims of a kidnap. The kidnapper escapes in his car with the baby.

Team back at HQ feels bad about stuffing up the recovery of the baby. Gibbs holds the Nelsons in the conference room. They wait for the kidnapper to phone the Nelsons, who explain that they got a call saying Heidi was dead and they were to pay $50,000 to get the baby. They explain the surrogacy arrangements with Heidi who had a womb but no eggs, whereas Mrs Nelson had eggs but no womb. Paid surrogacy is illegal in Virginia so they didn't alert the cops. The Nelsons believe that Heidi was their friend and not running a con. They believed she would hand over the child if she had lived.

The search is on for the kidnapper: state police and whole NCIS department are involved. Ziva asks Tony to apologise for the dead man walking attack: he does, seemingly sincerely because he knows Ziva was trying to help. When asked if she did help, he promises to get back to her on that. They get a false lead with one of Heidi's old co-conspirators but... McGee finds out he is already dead.

Abby to the rescue! She discovers that the car in which Heidi crashed had its brake pads replaced with faulty pads, so the brakes would fail. (metallic shavings in the brake drum indicate new ones had been there and then removed). That leads them back to the mechanic boyfriend of Heidi and his dad. Turns out that whilst boyfriend has alibi, his Dad does not and his car was seen at the paper mill and he has a shotgun sitting in the workshop. He is arrested. Gibbs presses him for the whereabouts of the baby. He resists. Gibbs hands his badge to Ziva (indicating that he is about to stop playing by the rules): combined with the Gibbs stare, it is enough to get the Dad to admit that baby is with the boyfriend. Tony grabs his phone and puts out a BOLO ("be on the lookout" alert to all law enforcers).

Other comments alert Gibbs and Tony to the fact that the Dad did not know the brake pads had been replaced with bad ones. He killed Heidi but didn't kill the Marine. They call off the BOLO for Heidi's boyfriend: Gibbs knows where he is.

In the Nelson's house, in the nursery, holding the baby, his country boy voice cracking with the misery of the situation, Heidi's boyfriend explains that he and Heidi had planned to keep the baby but the greedy Dad, (Pa), wanted to milk the Nelsons for more money. Gibbs hears boyfriend's confession: he really did love Heidi and planned to run away with Heidi and the baby. Pa fought Heidi, she had the baby, Pa takes the baby, Heidi was screaming, Pa kills her. Boyfriend didn't do anything until it was too late but the 'anything' was putting the faulty brake pads on the car so that it would crash with his father inside when he goes to dump Heidi's body in the bushland. The brakes failed early, the car crashes into the marine, Pa kills the marine. Boyfriend asks "Am I in trouble?" And Gibbs' quiet response is "Prosecution's going to call it attempted murder. You're going to call it self-defence." Boyfriend asks "What do you call it?" Gibbs simply replies "Family."

Tony arrives, having again run foul of the water sprinklers and is dripping wet. As he handcuffs the boyfriend, Gibbs takes the babe from the crib and leaves the room, to find the Nelsons and let them hold their baby for the first time. The Nelsons glow with instant adoration of their new son.

We watch from afar as Ducky arrives to check the baby's health, huddled with the parents on one side of the living room: we are out of hearing range of that conversation. Gibbs, Ziva and McGee retreat to the front of the room: we can see, but not hear them smiling, chatting, winding down after a successful investigation. We see Tony handing over the prisoner to another cop and entering the room, trying to wring his clothes of water: McGee smiles and says "Here you go, Tony" and uses a remote to turn on the fire for him. It is the first kind gesture since their glue war erupted.

Tony moves over to the fireside and sits, alone, by the flames, looking over at the happy couple with their baby, then back across the room at Gibbs and team relaxed and smiling. Tony pulls a letter from his jacket. He opens it. It reads: "Tony, I am not coming back. You need to choose. Jeanne." He has flashbacks of being with Jeanne, both happy, in bed. He pictures her face. He looks at Ducky with the parents and the baby. He looks back to Gibbs, McGee and Ziva. He puts the letter on the flames, and walks towards the team. Ziva and McGee watch Tony, but Gibbs, insightful Gibbs, watches the letter burn. As he reaches them, Tony pauses to wring out his dripping tie: he doesn't quite smile but the others direct smiles at him and each other. Phoomph: it's Tony's surrogate family.