Gibbse navštíví mladá dívka Maddie, aby ho požádala o pomoc před vtíravým ctitelem. Jako dítě bývala nejlepší kamarádkou Gibbsovy mrtvé dcery Kelly. Když je ale Maddie unesena a Gibbs začne vyšetřovat minulost jejího údajného ctitele, zjišťuje, že se Haas, Maddienin ctitel, před pár dny vrátil z Iráku, kde pracoval v oddělení logistiky. Krátce nato je nalezeno Haas mrtvý a do hry vstupuje organizace pro Obnovu Iráku, která prováděla finanční audit a zjistila ztrátu značné částky peněz. Podle všeho stojí za Maddieniným únosem párek bývalých vojáků, kteří Haase využili k propašování peněz z Iráku do Států a nyní čekají na výplatu. To ale netuší, že Gibbs se jim to chystá překazit.

Tony dives into water, having shot bad guys while on the run, and swims down to rescue Gibbs and a girl from a car. Gibbs indicates to Tony to rescue the unconscious girl first so he takes her up, leaves her unconscious on the dock and goes back for Gibbs. By the time he gets back to Gibbs, Gibbs is unconscious. Takes Gibbs up to dock. (how DID he get dead weight in wet clothes up onto the dock without assistance? Let's trust in the astonishing effects of adrenaline.) Tony applies cardio-pulmonary resuscitation and does considerable begging of "C'mon boss, don't do this to me" and asks Gibbs "don't make me kiss you" but proceeds to do mouth-to-mouth anyway. He has to work on Gibbs and the girl in turn, and is discombobulated that Gibbs has not started breathing before he has to work on the girl...but she has to be helped as well. Gibbs and girl are laid on deck with arms akimbo, hands thus almost touching. They are in a position rather like that of someone crucified. Tony starts freaking out. Credits roll.

Opening credits. (24 hours earlier) Scene of elevator doors opening, with Gibbs saying no to Abby's request that he pose for a photo on her cellphone. She promises never to ask for anything else ever again: he exercises patient scepticism, so she reduces it to a more realistic promise of no requests for a week. He poses but McGee distracts him and she gets a blurred shot. Next she gets a shot of her own thumb.

McGee distracted him with news that a young woman is waiting for him in the cafeteria: he does not recognise the name, but she says it is personal. Gibbs visits her: she is Maddie Tyler and, with some prompting, she manages to get him to recall "I used to come over to your house: I was Kelly's best friend" (Kelly his daughter who died as a child alongside Shannon his wife). Maddie's father, a marine, is dead: she is being stalked and Gibbs was the only person she could think of who might be able to be of help. Gibbs offers help.

Gibbs escorts her back through the building, through the squad room, because Maddie says the stalker is currently outside her house and had left bruises on Maddie's arm but she claims he may not have meant to harm her. Whilst they are marching through the squad room, Abby snatches another phone-photo of Gibbs and captures Maddie as well. He arrives at the exit elevator as Jen arrives: she tries to assert authority to compel him to stay to discuss the East Africa threat assessments but he ignores her and leaves. She looks hard at the young woman. Her thoughts are not clear, other than she is speculating hard.

The Giblets speculate about the nature of the Gibbs/Girl relationship and do their Google search via McGee and found Maddie Tyler on Myspace, where her friends' photos include a photo of Kelly, her first and still best friend from childhood (it is a form of memorial, as befits a requiem theme). The Giblets recognize that Gibbs' daughter's name was Kelly (well, Abby voices it) and they now understand the personal connection between Gibbs and the pretty young woman. Mystery solved. Giblets are much more subdued after finding Kelly's photo: they appreciate the significance of Kelly's friend all grown up being with Gibbs and that Gibbs is treading difficult territory.

Gibbs and Maddie arrive at Maddie's house, noting stalker car is empty. Mailman is leaving. Stalker emerges from foyer of Maddie building. Gibbs takes him in hand: the marine accedes to Gibbs' threat (which is backed with some force). Gibbs then smiles at Maddie and ushers her into her house. The reassuring smile disappears the instant Gibbs is behind Maddie and watching the stalker drive off. (Gibbs uses the smile to reassure Maddie as the display of force is somewhat disconcerting for being so effective, so quietly: if Gibbs scares the stalker, how scary does that make Gibbs? Gibbs appears to appreciate how he would appear to Maddie and makes the effort to be 'normal dad' in style).

In her flat, Gibbs is sitting at the dining table, trying to avoid drinking dreadful coffee, whilst Maddie hunts for a photo album. She finds it and opens it to a photo of Maddie and Kelly aged 8, just before Gibbs deployed to Iraq. Maddie says she doesn't know who took the photo. Gibbs flashes back in memory and recalls the two girls giggling and laughing and he takes the photo but says he never did find out what was so funny. Maddie smiles and queries "she never told you?" and then realizes that Kelly couldn't: Gibbs was gone then Kelly was dead. Maddie is dismayed at her own insensitivity.

Maddie reports that they were hiding a time capsule. Gibbs and Maddie recall shared memories. Maddie says she wonders what Kelly would be like: Gibbs says, very quietly, "Like you". He is serious and sombre but certain. He clearly approves of Maddie (even if he dislikes her coffee). Maddie gives him the photo: he declines: it is your memory. Maddie smiling shakes her head "Our memory". This seems to lighten Gibbs' face (it must be lonely to be the only one who remembers a loved one). Gibbs accepts the photo. As he leaves Maddie, he instructs her to call if she has more trouble and warns her to lock her door behind him. Gibbs emerges from the house and finds that Haas, the stalker, is still there. Haas drives off at the sight of Gibbs. Haas is on his phone on a troublesome call.

In the squad room, Gibbs is setting the Giblets to work on finding out everything about Haas. Director enters and immediately says that this is a private matter for Gibbs and asks questions (that is, she immediately makes a connection between preoccupied Gibbs and the girl). Gibbs describes Haas as a stalker. Maddie didn't file a complaint so it is not yet a case. Director presses on whether it is a personal matter.

"Are you asking do I know her, the answer is yes. Is it personal? No." Gibbs leaves. Director tells the Giblets to "do it". She leaves.

Giblets in both bosses' absence discuss how easily Jen can read Gibbs. She reads him like a book. That leads to a discussion of how rarely Tony reads a book. He claims to have had a subscription to National Geographic since 1981. (Let us hope that that increases their circulation as a free advert and that he did not only seek out the photos of topless indigenous peoples from cultures less prudish than our own (or at least people living in warmer climes than northern hemisphere western countries)).

Gibbs at home in garden. Unearths the time capsule from raised garden bed. Brings it to basement. Touching what Kelly touched causes him to remember both Shannon and Kelly. He recalls hand with rings. Recalls singing "hush little baby don't say a word, Daddy's going to buy you a mockingbird, and if that mockingbird don't sing, Daddy's gonna buy you a diamond ring". He recalls Kelly pleading tearfully "Daddy, don't go" as Shannon is in the background, looking on somewhat helplessly but looking rather gorgeous in mint green. As the recall flashback is starting to get morbid and sad, he gets a call from Maddie: stalker is back. Action time.

Gibbs rushes over to her house: house is trashed and he sees her being bundled into car and taken away. He presumes it is Haas. Back in squad room, Gibbs is pushing Giblets for info in relation to the presumed abductor, Haas. Jen arrives and asks if she was going to be briefed. Gibbs reports.

Jen spots that he is presuming that Haas is the abductor: Gibbs says best guess. McGee sources the phone log for Haas and finds that he was in communication with a private security mercenary firm with ops in Iraq. They call in the MD who says that Haas turned down a job offer. He explains why a logistics expert like Haas is worth more than a soldier. Gibbs is reacting very badly to the MD withholding info: Jen and Gibbs can both tell that he is not telling all. Jen restrains Gibbs from illegality in relation to a non-arrested citizen.

Jen debriefs Gibbs as to how long he has known the girl: it is only when she says "how long? 5 years, 10 years?" and Gibbs just softly says "15", which is when the penny drops for Jen as to why the girl matters so much when it is not personal to Gibbs. McGee in squad room reports to Gibbs that he has tracked a location that Haas uses often (by monitoring which towers processed his phone signals). Tony has found Haas' work record and tracked a warehouse in that area. They work on the presumption that people like to hideout in familiar places.

Team goes to the warehouse and Johnny Cash is playing on the radio in the warehouse. Ziva has her spidey sense on extra alert: she can hear something. They turn off Johnny Cash singing about "until I die" and they can all now hear what Ziva heard: flies buzzing. They track the sound and thus call up the industrial lift: it opens to reveal Haas laid on floor of lift, crucified, hands and feet nailed to floor, flies already feasting on the blood (insect activity is an indicator of time of death).

Ducky arrives and gives a mini-lecture on the countries that have used crucifixion as an execution mode, up to and including Japan in WW2. Ducky stares down McGee until he gets the hint to give Ducky and Gibbs some privacy. Ducky then reports to Gibbs that time of death was 12 hours ago and thus before Maddie was abducted. McGee and team are in Haas' car and Gibbs gets irritated with McGee not reporting in but continually poking around. McGee produces a GPS locater that is still active and thus vindicates himself. The stalker was being stalked. The plot thickens.

Ducky in autopsy talks quietly to Gibbs. He tries to alert Gibbs to the likelihood that the girl, after 6 hours, could be dead without saying the word "dead". Gibbs plays dumb. Ducky reports that an allergy killed Haas: he was allergic to seafood and being in the presence of it or touching it, will have killed him. Anaphylactic shock. Ducky pushes Gibbs to admit who he is trying to save: Gibbs says that he wasn't there for Kelly but he can be there for Maddie. Gibbs is trying to redeem himself over his failure to be there for his own girls.

Abby arrives: she is anxious. Babbling. She hugs Gibbs when she cannot articulate enough reassurance for him that Maddie will be found. She collects specimens from Ducky. She then orders the guys out of her lab. They just look at her, rather embarrassed. Then, disconcerted, she realises her error. "Sorry, this isn't my lab. I am going to go". Abby is the barometer of how Gibbs feels. When Gibbs feels bad inside, Abby is a babbling mess who makes errors. (Gibbs made an error in assuming that Haas was the villain who abducted Maddie).

McGee has shown that the GPS was purchased by the mercenary company and they haul the MD back in for questioning. He calls in the Pentagon: a colonel who officiously explains that the MD is helping the army track stolen Iraqi treasury. Haas is supposed to have worked out how to smuggle serious money out of Iraq but they don't know how it is arriving in USA and they were watching him to try to work it out and find for whom he was smuggling money.

Director Shepard has to pull rank when Gibbs gets upset on finding that the army surveillance team watched Maddie get abducted and did nothing. Gibbs leaves when Jen intervenes. The colonel takes that as a victory "I think we're done here": Jen puts her right "The hell we are". Jen threatens the colonel and gets the info that Jethro could not...where exactly did you lose the abductor?

Gibbs arrives in the squad room. He issues instruction to Tony: Abby gets anything, you handle it DiNozzo. Tony says he'll call Gibbs straight away: Gibbs asks is that what I said? Tony changes answer to "I'll handle it". Gibbs is putting stuff in drawers of desk while they talk. Gibbs looks up and sees the mail clerk distributing the internal mail at NCIS. He then decides to take off.

Jen arrives as he is leaving and says to Gibbs where the abductor was last seen (warehouse in docks district). Gibbs says tell DiNozzo. Jen asks Tony what is up: he took his badge and his gun, maybe he is going to shoot someone. But McGee checks the desk: the badge and ID are there: "oh boy". Gibbs in lift: makes phone call. He is talking to the villains. He is going to go and collect the thing they need in return for the girl.

McGee in the squad room is being sent up by Tony for staring at the plasma for an hour: "This is ground control to Major Tom, Ground Control to Major Tom" ( a reference to a spaced-out astronaut, of David Bowie song fame). McGee says it has only been 5 minutes and he is staring at a diagram that is related to the missing money. Tony is doing send ups and is in manic mode. He then challenges Ziva for trying to phone Gibbs. Ziva reports that Gibbs didn't pick up.

Tony opines that he would not phone Gibbs: "I would have to be deeply discombobulated to even think of calling h....alright McGee, you win: what are we looking at?" Tony, Ziva and McGee all stand in a row in front of plasma and toss around ideas as to why did Haas pursue Maddie: where does she fit in the currency heist.

Director Jen turns up and realises that what Maddie had that a base-quartered marine does not have is a street address with a mailman delivery. Ziva and McGee leave to pursue the mailman. Tony and Jen talk re Gibbs: they realise that Gibbs figured it out. They each have phoned him: he didn't pick up. (Tony is not in manic mode with the Director: he was doing diversion on Ziva and McGee to diminish their fears).

We see Gibbs at Maddie's flat, sitting and remembering while he looks at the photo. We hear Gibbs singing "Mockingbird" to Kelly. We hear Kelly laughing. We hear the pleading "Daddy don't go". We see/hear his recollection of adult Maddie saying "I wonder what she'd be like" and Gibbs smiles and says, out loud, "like you" and it appears to please him to have 'seen' his grown daughter.

The mailman arrives: Gibbs takes receipt of a voucher for luggage (another private's personal belongings).

In Abby's lab: the "guck" on the nails in the hands of Haas is bluefin tuna which is rare and so they can track where the dock warehouse is. Abby then dogs the footsteps of the Director who realises Abby wants something: Abs says she phoned Gibbs, he did not pick up and he always picks up. Director tells her "good work Abby" (as if she were a puppy, but is using the stock phrase that Gibbs uses: reassurance again).

Gibbs contacts the villains. Gets instructions where to meet. Goes to the docks. Maddie is being held there. He has brought one bag (full of money) and says another one is downtown. Maddie's face when she sees Gibbs has come for her is a picture - mixture of astonishment, gratitude and apprehension - good acting.

There is a fight and Gibbs and Maddie escape in a car. The villains shoot. Gibbs reverses the car from the shooting and backs it at speed off the dock into the water (a mistake? Only way to escape bullets?). DiNozzo has arrived in time to see this and he runs. (boy, does he run).

Tony runs just like in the ....opening scene: (watch it again). Shoots the villains, discards his gun as he runs, takes a flying leap and swandives off the dock into the water and plunges down, down, down to the car resting at the bottom of the Washington Channel (remarkably blue, translucent water for the WashChan, but... what the heck, we don't want Harmon and Weatherly et al to die of water pollution, do we?) Tony tries to open the car doors (but electric locks short out in water so they won't release). Goes to the bullet-holed windscreen and manages to lift it out. Creates hole big enough to grab the unconscious Maddie. Gibbs is trying to release the steering wheel which has collapsed onto his legs and pinned him down. (well, there has to be a reason for Tony to do the rescue and for Gibbs to, technically, die because...)

Gibbs' added element: whilst Tony is taking Maddie up for air, we see what is going through Gibb's brain: he has a vision of Kelly saying "It's OK, Daddy, It's OK. Go back Daddy, go back. It's OK. I love you Daddy, I love you" and Gibbs is reaching out to his radiant daughter and wife (Shannon still in that green figure-hugging demure mint green dress...but only Kelly talks. Light spills around them, emanates from them. They are beautiful, whole, as per his happy memories and not per the car crash that killed them).

Gibbs stays silent but, in his vision, he is smiling at them and they are smiling at him. Permission to live. By time the vision stops, we see Tony has dragged them both onto the dock, he has revived Maddie and she is touching Gibbs' outstretched hand. His hand responds to the touch and then his eyes, which are open but fixed, blink into normality and we hear the sigh of his breath over the music. And a very tired Tony sits back on his haunches, pulling in air after doing CPR on the two of them and he is looking decidedly perturbed and discombobulated, and stressed and shocked, and wet, wet, wet. And shocked, relieved and wet.

(Our suspension of disbelief is such that we accept the absence of the messy and unpleasant aspects of getting water out of the lungs to let air back in...we don't ponder Tony's failure to put them in the recovery position whilst he works on the other one, as recovery position is not photogenic.

CODA: In any event, we finish with an alive and alert Gibbs in his basement, bounding down the stairs (no residual effects of death discombobulate our hero) and he goes over to the bench where the metal lunch box containing the Maddie/Kelly time capsule, is waiting for his perusal. He has two photos: the one of the 8 year old, Maddie with her arm around Kelly plus the photo taken by Abby in the squad room of Gibbs with Maddie, grown up, by his side. (Abby gave the photo to him when they needed one to aid the searchers upon initial discovery of the abduction).

Gibbs smiles, puts the photos down and picks up the lunch box and the trowel. He heads out to rebury the unopened lunch box (I tell you, the man has superhuman powers of resistance to temptation to peek)

And you can see that scene on the website where you can also look at what is inside the lunch box time capsule because we are not meant to be incurious. You can see that the photos end up overlapped, such that it looks like Gibbs is standing with his arm around adult Maddie and, to his right, his arm around 8 year old Kelly. (and someone in the production team had to dream up that image and that is a nice thought that they are so sentimental in the hard nosed world of TV).