Mark Harmon says "Previously on NCIS" and we get a quick recap of the "there's a mole in NCIS" plotline: images of Agent Brent Langer lying dead on the floor (shot by Agent Lee in "Last Man Standing") are intercut with Gibbs explaining about the team's covert mission in "Cloak." "Code Name Domino," he says. "We're going to steal it. Nobody gets hurt--" cut to quick shots of Tony and Ziva taking vicious hits when they are intercepted in the military facility. Next shot is Gibbs telling Tony and Ziva, "It was a trap. There is a mole in NCIS." Ziva, startled: "You mean Langer was not a mole?" Tony asks if Gibbs knows who the mole is. Cut to Gibbs interrogating Agent Lee, who confesses that Langer was an innocent man who took no part in the conspiracy. "Who are they?" Gibbs roars. Lee says she doesn't know. She produces a photo of a young Asian girl, about eight years old. "This is Amanda. She's my daughter. And if I don't deliver what they want, they will kill her. What am I supposed to do?" Cut to the last scene of "Cloak," with Gibbs sitting in the back of Agent Lee's car and telling her, "Looks like we're working together."
A man runs through a wooded area in the dead of night. He is chasing a young Asian girl--Amanda, the girl in Lee's photograph--who is obviously terrified. The man catches up to the girl; she screams. He slings her over his shoulder. As he carries her away, one of her shoes drops to the ground.

Stakeout: DiNozzo and McGee are in a coffee shop; Gibbs is in a parked car outside. Tony mutters that he hates coffee shops that don't have restrooms. "You're not actually drinking that, are you?" McGee asks, eyeing Tony's coffee. "You're on stakeout!" McGee demonstrates what he calls "the Gibbs sip," in which no liquid is actually ingested. Tony agrees that despite the boss's prodigious coffee intake, he never seems to need to hit the head. "DiNozzo, change the subject," Gibbs growls. He's heard the whole conversation. As Agent Lee arrives, Gibbs takes several photos of her and alerts Tony. "I've got her in my cross-hairs," Tony assures him. "Finger on the trigger."
McGee seems a little shocked by DiNozzo's callous attitude. He thinks Tony should show some sympathy since Agent Lee's daughter is being held hostage. "She lied about killing two men," Tony points out, "lied about stealing secrets--how do we know she's not lying about her daughter?" It's not as if any of them have actually seen Lee's daughter. McGee says if the "pick-up man" shows up at the drop, then they will know Lee is not lying.

Tony stares at Agent Lee, who sits at a table alone, methodically folding a newspaper into thirds. He doesn't trust her. "I smell a nonfat soy double-cross latte," he tells McGee. Lee slips a flash drive inside the folded-up newspaper. Then she looks Tony right in the eye and shakes her head slightly. She exits, leaving the newspaper on the table. A moment later, a man walks by and picks up the newspaper. He is frustratingly nondescript: medium height and build, middle-aged, wearing a coat and a scarf and a dark brown fedora and, even indoors, sunglasses. Tony gives the description to Gibbs. "That's him," Gibbs confirms. "On his tail, DiNozzo."

Gibbs snaps pictures of the pick-up man as he leaves the coffee shop. However, as Tony leaves in pursuit, Agent Lee, who has stayed around outside, deliberately bumps into Tony and spills her coffee down his shirt. "Get out of my way!" Tony shouts, furious. Lee apologizes profusely but delays him further, so he has no chance to pursue her contact. McGee runs past Tony and into the parking garage, but it's too late. "Boss, we lost him," McGee reports.

Tony wants to know what Lee was thinking. "You were too close--he could have made you," she protests. Gibbs is out of the car and hauling Lee away by the elbow. "My show--my call," he tells Lee. The boss is definitely not pleased with her tactics.

Back at NCIS, Tony tells Ziva that Agent Lee's stunt with the spilled coffee was no accident, and when Lee walks into the squad room and asks if there is any news about her daughter, Tony lashes out at her. "I did my part," Lee says defensively. "I made the drop. But I couldn't risk him seeing anything unusual." Gibbs shows Lee a photo he took of her contact; what does she know about this guy? Unfortunately, nothing--Lee only sees him when she's making a drop at the cafe, and he always hides his face.

When Gibbs, Tony and Lee go into MTAC to study some satellite footage, Director Vance takes Gibbs aside and asks what happened. "Her rope got shorter," Gibbs says, referring to the watch he will keep on Agent Lee. "Lucky she's not hanging by it," Vance retorts. They watch footage from an NSA satellite that repeats the incident from the opening scene, of the man chasing the young girl through the woods. This was taken at Hickory Grove, Virginia at 4:46 a.m., McGee reports. They can't get facial recognition software to work on the man, who doesn't raise his head, but they can isolate the girl's face. Agent Lee confirms that it is Amanda.



In the squad room, Ziva comments that Agent Lee was telling the truth. Maybe, says Tony; he's still very skeptical. Gibbs sends them off to Hickory Grove in search of Amanda. Agent Lee wants to go, too, but Gibbs won't let her leave the building. "You're not going anywhere," he growls. "Sit." He has McGee compare the photo he took of the man in the cafe with the photo from the satellite of the girl's kidnapper. The man in the woods is taller, so they are dealing with two different suspects. Since Agent Lee gets her instructions through text messages, they could have come from either man, or from someone else entirely. Gibbs tells McGee to put Lee in a conference room and watch her. Lee is now under guard.

Gibbs reports in to Director Vance, who wonders if they are now looking for three people. Gibbs shrugs. He doesn't know. "Someone's taken the bait," Vance says. "He thinks he's gotten away with a sample of Domino that details how our military will respond" to an incident in Israel. Vance and Gibbs both know that Lee's contact will want to "test" the sample to see if the U.S. military reaction to that type of incident is what the Domino sample predicted. "Only way to prove to him that Lee has access to the complete Domino," Gibbs says. Vance says that SecNav has reservations about Gibbs's plan and thinks it's too risky. Gibbs points out that Lee is the only way to get to the higher-ups. Looking like a man who has to deliver bad news, Vance says that the Secretary of the Navy wants the pick-up man taken into custody at the next opportunity. "That's a bad idea," Gibbs mutters. "Maybe," Vance says, "but that's an order."

In the conference room with McGee, Lee is distraught to learn that the text messages from her contact could not be traced. She reminds McGee that he bent the rules himself to protect his sister when she was accused of murder (in the episode "Twisted Sister"). "You did what you had to do to save someone close to you because you were scared for her." Lee's face is grim as she tells McGee that she knows she is "going to have to pay" for what she did. "I'm just saying don't judge me without remembering who I was scared for."

Out in the boondocks, Tony and Ziva reach the spot where Amanda was caught by her kidnapper. Ziva spots Amanda's shoe and picks it up. They set off on foot, searching for any place the girl could be hidden. Tony can't understand how they could have worked with someone for three years but not known that she had a kid. "I can understand someone wanting to keep their personal and professional lives separate," Ziva replies.

Back at NCIS, Abby refuses to say one word to Agent Lee when she escorts her to the ladies' room, and Lee can't enter Abby's lab; she has to stand in the doorway. Abby doesn't trust her. Still, Lee thanks Abby for the work she did helping to find Amanda's location. Abby explains that she used the hair samples of Amanda's that were sent by the kidnapper to offer "proof of life" and analyzed their composition. Data about the water the child had been drinking since her kidnapping made it possible to guess the general area in which she was being held. When Lee asks if Abby could tell if Amanda was still healthy, Abby says yes and softens a bit. But Abby tells Gibbs privately that until they get full DNA test results back on the hair, they won't even know for sure if the hair sample actually belongs to Lee's daughter!

Tony calls McGee for help. He and Ziva are lost in the woods. "McGPS, are we close to anything?" McGee says they are six miles from where they started, and the only possible structure that could house a child is 200 yards away to the northwest behind some trees. Tony and Ziva find a rundown cabin. "Someone has been coming here regularly," Ziva says, pointing to tire tracks. The cabin appears deserted, but after searching, they find a hidden room which was obviously used to house a little girl--canopy bed, lots of stuffed animals, child-size table and chair. But the girl is no longer there. "Looks like the help's been fired," Tony adds. The kidnapper lies on the floor in a pool of blood. He's been shot in the head, and he's dead.



Tony phones Gibbs and reports the situation. The dead man is in full rigor and must have been killed shortly after that satellite image was taken when he recaptured Amanda. "Gunshot to the head, execution-style. Should keep Ducky busy for a while." Tony expects to be told to document the scene and wait for Dr. Mallard, and he is visibly surprised when Gibbs says no, that Ducky won't be coming. "Document everything and get the hell out of there," Gibbs says. Tony hesitates: "Boss, this is a crime scene!" That's right, and Gibbs is worried that his agents are vulnerable. "Whoever is behind this could come back."

Tony gets Gibbs's point. "Wrap it up, shutterbug," he tells Ziva, who is shooting pictures of the crime scene. "Gibbs doesn't want any lights, camera, action . . . in case the guy who shot him comes back." Ziva looks around and notices there is no refrigerator in the cabin; no food storage. Supplies must have been brought in regularly, then, and the little girl was smart enough to recognize the routine and plan an escape. Even though the man in charge of watching her managed to catch her and bring her back, once the boss found out what happened, he can't trust the safehouse any longer. "Kills the guy, moves the girl," Tony agrees. Tony has lifted fingerprints from the corpse, but he tells Ziva that the rest of the cabin has been wiped clean--they won't get any help in identifying the mastermind behind the kidnapping of Lee's daughter.

Ziva gives Tony some hair samples she's bagged and tagged. Looking at the mattress on the bed, she notices methodical hash marks on the side of the mattress, written in an orange-red liquid--not blood, but ketchup. The little girl was using her food to count the days she's been held captive (and there are rows and rows of hash marks). "Brave girl," Ziva says, with obvious compassion for the child.

In autopsy, Ducky is not pleased to have only photographs of the kidnapper's dead body rather than the corpse itself--he can't get evidence from a photograph. He does offer Gibbs some psychological insight into the blackmailer, though. Unlike Ducky himself, the blackmailer is a very patient man. "He's had the girl for eight months," Gibbs agrees. "He's also methodical and calculating. Confident in his ability to plan and execute," Ducky says. Even when Agent Langer was killed and Agent Lee was under so much scrutiny, he didn't give up his plan--he just put everything on hold for a while. Gibbs acknowledges that Lee didn't do anything for two months after Langer's death. And yet, Ducky says, when the security at the cabin was breached, the blackmailer killed the man in the photograph and moved the girl "within hours of her near-escape. Fast and slow--the man is a contradiction." He has compassion when it suits him to show it, as in his careful planning to provide a full wardrobe for the kidnapped girl, but is cold and cruel when the situation requires it.

Ducky uses a poker analogy to describe the mastermind: he's a grinder. "The only way to get at him is to make him believe he has a winning hand," Ducky explains. "He needs to feel safe so he can show all his cards." Otherwise he'll just fold, and go back to waiting, Gibbs says, nodding. Unfortunately for the kidnapped girl, her attempt to run away will have shifted the man's perception of her. She is no longer just a pawn in his game, someone he could control. Now, Ducky warns, he will most likely see her as "a witness to be disposed of." They don't have much time to find her if they want to save her life.

In the conference room, Tony relieves McGee of the task of babysitting Agent Lee. He tells Lee that they didn't find the girl; just the place where she was being held. When Lee asks more questions, wanting details, Tony responds, "He moved her--which means she's alive." But he won't say anything else. Faced with Tony's obvious hostility towards her, Lee asks, "What do you want me to say?" Nothing, Tony replies. "I've had enough of your lies." Lee argues that she "had no choice" but to cooperate because they had Amanda. Tony slaps a file down on the table in front of her and says this is for her drop tomorrow. The same routine? Yes, Tony says, except this time NCIS will arrest the pick-up man. "And you're not going to burn us . . . or me, with your coffee."

Lee gets frantic. They can't arrest the man who could lead them to her daughter! "We should be following him," she argues. "The only person I'm going to be following is you," Tony says curtly. "Home. Now. Get your things." Lee's face hardens; her alarmed expression transforms into one of resistance.

Coffee shop stakeout, day 2: This time Gibbs is the agent inside the shop. He directs a steely glare over the top of a newspaper as Agent Lee enters and orders a large coffee and a paper. Tony and McGee are outside in the car; Tony has the camera. "Same routine," he mutters. I"m having a splash-back." McGee thinks Lee looks nervous. He has a more sympathetic attitude towards her; the time he spent with Lee in interrogation has given him some insight. "You're so naive, McGullible," Tony says. He reaches across and makes brushing motions around McGee's face, almost as if he's swatting mosquitoes. What's he doing? "Removing the wool she's pulled over your eyes." McGee says he doesn't trust Lee; he just understands her. A little.

Tony notices that Agent Lee is applying lipstick. He alerts Gibbs: that's a change in her routine and she could be sending a signal to her contact. Lee sips her coffee and leaves a clear red lip imprint at the rim of her cup. Then she turns the cup around so the lip print is facing away from her. Is it a signal?

Abby is startled when Director Vance visits her lab to check personally on the evidence; he's never done that before, and Abby has trouble finding the right tone to take in their conversation. There is none of the playful give-and-take she has with Gibbs. When Vance asks, "What have you got?," she thinks he's doing a deliberate Gibbs impersonation, and she tells Vance it needs "a little more swagger . . . a little gravitas." Except he's not doing his Gibbs impression; he's just being Vance. Awkward. Abby gets a hit on the dead kidnapper's fingerprints from AFIS, but there is no data; all the information has been deleted. Vance swoops to the keyboard and with McGee-like speed navigates through a couple of databases and confirms that the man's identity has been erased. "A spy?" Abby asks. Vance doesn't reply.

Abby also gets DNA results back from the hair samples Ziva brought from the cabin. Most were from the little girl, but Abby found one different strand that must have belonged to an adult female, based on the amount of hair spray around the cortex. "The blackmailer is a woman?" Vance sounds quite surprised, and Abby reminds him that women can be criminals, too. "Like Agent Lee." Abby gets a printout with the final DNA analysis of Lee's daughter's hair. "Oh, Leon," Abby blurts, and the director's head jerks back; he's not pleased. "Too soon for the Leon?" Abby mumbles, embarrassed. Definitely too soon. "Sorry," she says. She stares at the DNA printout. "This is bad."

At the coffee shop, Tony gives Gibbs a heads-up that the pick-up man has arrived. He is dressed just as before, in a fedora, sunglasses, and a scarf that hides his face. But something is wrong: Agent Lee has gone off-script and isn't leaving her table.

Gibbs gets a call from Director Vance, informing him that they have a problem: the DNA tests are back on the little girl's hair, and she is not Lee's daughter. "No relation. Lee's lying." Gibbs sees Lee sliding a gun into the folded newspaper. He rushes to restrain Lee as she threatens the pick-up man. "Tell me where my daughter is!" Gibbs grabs Lee's arm and tells her to drop the gun. "Let him go!" Instead of running for his life, the pick-up man stands arguing with Lee. He wants her to stick to the script and give him the newspaper. "You're screwing everything up. What if he's watching? He'll kill her!" Who is he talking about--Amanda? "No," the man replies. "My wife!"



Back at NCIS, Tony and McGee watch through the window as Gibbs interrogates Agent Lee. DNA tests have proven that the girl is not Lee's daughter, so who is she? Lee says that Amanda is her sister; her parents adopted Amanda, and when they died, Lee promised them to raise her and protect her. "By killing two innocent people?" Gibbs asks, thinking of Agent Langer and Petty Officer Vargo. "To save her life," Lee replies. She tells Gibbs that she has gone to bed every night praying for this to be over, but she does not express remorse for having killed Langer and Vargo. Instead--she is a lawyer, after all--she shifts the subject away from her actions and onto Gibbs. "Don't tell me you don't know what this is," she says tersely. Gibbs resists the emotional blackmail. Instead he asks if Lee claimed Amanda was her daughter rather than her sister because she thought that would make him (as a bereaved father) care more. "You wouldn't do what I did to save your daughter's life?" Lee insists. She expects him to agree, but Gibbs will not endorse what Lee did. "You should have come to me as soon as it happened," he shouts. "Before you murdered two men!" Gibbs stalks out of interrogation, leaving Lee in tears.

In a different interrogation room, Director Vance is questioning the pick-up man. His name is Ted Bankston, and he is a former security analyst for the NSA, but he left the agency under a cloud a year ago, accused of "mishandling classified information." Bankston admits that's true. "When you lost your security clearance, you needed to find a new source," Vance theorizes . . . so he hired someone to kidnap Agent Lee's daughter, and started blackmailing Lee. Bankston denies that vehemently. "You're getting everything wrong," he whines. "I don't have anybody--he has my wife! And if I don't deliver the rest of Domino, he will kill her!"

Vance asks how Bankston knows the blackmailer has his wife. "He's been sending hair samples in little envelopes" (Agent Lee has received the same kind of "proof of life" for Amanda). This has been going on for almost a year. Bankston thought his usefulness would end when he got kicked out of the NSA, but instead he's been used as Lee's drop man. Bankston promises full cooperation as long as Vance promises he won't let Bankston's wife die.

And what does Bankston do with the information he picks up from Lee? He gets a text message with a place to make a drop, Bankston replies, but he has never seen the blackmailer. He has spoken to him on the computer a few times. "He calls himself 'The Weatherman,'" Bankston says, with some awe in his voice. "Like he can predict the future, like tomorrow's weather." And why does he want Domino so badly? Vance wonders why he would want to know what U.S. troop movements would be in response to an incident in Israel. "Money," Bankston replies. The markets are volatile and react overnight to such news. "He buys and sells stocks and makes millions every day, simply by knowing one thing--what's going to happen tomorrow." So the motive behind all this is not politics--it's greed. "And I don't even know if my wife's even going to be alive tomorrow," Bankston adds melodramatically.

Abby's lab: McGee tells Gibbs that a report from the NSA confirms what Bankston told them about working there. Gibbs turns to Abby and says, "Whatta ya got, Abbs?" When she hears the familiar cadence, Abby beams with joy: everything that was out of sync when Vance was there is suddenly right again. Abby reports on hair samples: the mystery woman's hair from the cabin and the "proof of life" hair sample from Bankston's wife are identical. But there's bad news; both samples show signs of decomposition. "Bankston's 'proof of life' was actually proof of death," Abby explains. "His wife is already dead, Gibbs."

In MTAC, Director Vance and Gibbs watch a news feed from Israel--it's the military response to that "test" of the Domino sample. "Now the blackmailer knows Domino is real," Vance says. "At least the part we gave him." What's the next step? Gibbs says that Bankston will tell the blackmailer that he has Domino but refuses to hand it over until the blackmailer hands over the girl. "It's risky," Vance comments. "Oh, you haven't heard the risky part yet, Leon," Gibbs responds. "We're going to need the real Domino."

Vance glares. That's not going to happen. "If he finds out it's a fake," Gibbs protests, "the girl dies." Gibbs hands Vance a form; it's paperwork authorizing the use of the real Domino in the operation, and it needs the director's signature. "We're not risking our government's military playbook," Vance says firmly. "You are authorized to use a decoy. That's it." He tosses the form into his outbox, unsigned, and wishes Gibbs good luck.

Squad room: Gibbs and Tony hover over Bankston, waiting for the blackmailer to make contact. Bankston gets a text message:"Do you have it?" Gibbs dictates a response that Tony texts back: "Lee has it." They are not letting Bankston touch the phone. "Get it now!" the blackmailer orders. Gibbs tells Tony to reply that Lee has a gun on him, and that he'll get Domino when she gets her girl. Tony types: "Domino for the girl. She's got a gun." Ad-libbing, Tony adds, "This chick is crazy." Gibbs glares at him for going off-script, and Tony promises to type only what Gibbs says. "Domino for the girl," the blackmailer replies. "One hour. Adam's Tavern." Gibbs agrees and Tony texts: "Deal." Tony says he will tell McGee that Adam's Tavern is the dead drop and to get unmarked units patrolling a five-block radius around the bar. They will want additional agents inside. Gibbs leaves Bankston in Tony's custody and tells him to be in the evidence garage in five minutes.

Evidence garage: Bankston watches Tony putting in an earwig and asks if he gets "one of those." No, he doesn't. Agent Lee gets one, though. As Ziva helps Lee adjust her earwig, Ziva wonders why Agent Lee hasn't tried to "plead her case" with her, since she's tried with everyone else on the team. "I'm done trying to explain," Agent Lee says. "No one understands." Ziva replies, "I do." Lee looks surprised and touched. "You would do what I did?" she asks. Ziva can't say yes, so she doesn't answer at all, but she does look sympathetic, not hostile. "Thank you," Lee says. Lee watches the preparations around her as agents gear up. The blackmailer has promised to deliver Amanda, but will he really do so? "I'm never going to see my daughter again, am I?" Ziva is too honest to lie to Lee. "Probably not."

Gibbs arrives, barking instructions and warning agents to be careful not to get "made," since he's sure the blackmailer will be there watching them. He goes over to Agent Lee and hands her a flash drive. "You're going to need this," he tells her. Agent Lee looks at the flash drive and then gapes at Gibbs in amazement. "The Pentagon let you have the real Domino?"

In MTAC, McGee tells Director Vance that their people have just arrived at Adam's Tavern. Vance is distracted by a call from SecNav, and although we only hear Vance's end of the conversation, it's clear that NCIS is in big trouble with their boss: Domino has been accessed. "I'll deal with it immediately, sir," Vance says, sounding shaken. He hangs up. McGee asks if there is something wrong. Vance, with escalating fury, reports what SecNav just told him: "Somebody hacked into the Defense Intelligence computer and downloaded Domino. The real Domino," Vance fumes. "They traced it back to your computer, McGee. You and Gibbs have just committed treason!"



Inside Adam's Tavern, Gibbs is shooting pool with a female agent and drinking a beer (presumably using the "Gibbs sip"). A very nervous Agent Lee sits in a booth across from Bankston, who is watching his cell phone waiting for instructions. Tony and Ziva sit in a communications truck outside along with other agents, monitoring the tavern. Tony praises the "Gibbs sip" to Ziva: "The man is an artist. We have a lot to learn."

As Gibbs covertly watches Lee and Bankston, his phone rings: it's Director Vance and he's furious. Vance orders Gibbs to shut the operation down. "It's a little late for that," Gibbs replies calmly. "I know you downloaded the real Domino," Vance snaps, and curses. "Shut it down!" To which Gibbs says, "I'm a little busy here. I'll call you back." He hangs up, leaving the director powerless for the moment.

Bankston gets a text message: "Put Domino in the menu." Lee slides him the flash drive, and he follows instructions.

Gibbs's phone rings again; this time, it's Abby. She has tracked down the identity of the dead kidnapper from the cabin. His name was Paul Winton and he was in a federal witness protection program; he had been a witness in an NSA-FBI joint investigation and had been installed in an FBI safehouse only four blocks from Adam's Tavern. "Address?" Gibbs says, and Abby gives it. She adds that she has looked into the power records, and that particular house has "a massive juice use." Interesting. Gibbs compliments Abby, hangs up, and then contacts Ziva in the communications truck. He tells her to check out the safehouse and gives her the address.

Lee lurches to her feet and Gibbs tells her to stay put. No matter how much she wants to investigate that safehouse, she has to stay in the tavern. In the communications truck, Tony sees the frantic look on Lee's face and he can't help feeling pity. "Boss, I'll go," he volunteers. Gibbs agrees, and Tony leaves with Ziva.

In MTAC, Vance notices the agents leaving the rendezvous point. "DiNozzo, David--where are they going?" McGee studies the tracking map on the plasma--they are going north. Fast. "I want to talk to them," Vance orders. "Already dialing," McGee says, but Tony and Ziva aren't answering their phones.

Safehouse: Tony and Ziva get inside and find that the living room has no furniture--it's stacked floor to ceiling with computer hardware instead. Neither Tony nor Ziva can tell what the installation does, so Tony snaps a picture on his cell phone and sends it to McGee. He gets an immediate call back. "Probie, what am I looking at?" he asks. "A career in the fast-food industry," snarls Director Vance, who had just walked behind McGee and was looking over his shoulder. The tech-savvy director identifies the installation as "sequentially-linked network racks." Vance thinks the blackmailer has developed his own Internet hub; that's how he covered his stock purchases and made it look like there were 500 different sellers when there was really only one--him.

Tony has found a computer screen that displays all the messages sent from the blackmailer's phone to the tavern: Put Domino in the menu. Pass to waitress. Do not leave the bar. "He's using an auto-response program," Tony reports. "He doesn't have to be here to send text messages." He could be sending them from anywhere . . . .

Ziva interrupts. She's found a padlocked room. Tony hangs up on the Director--that's happening to Vance a lot lately--and follows Ziva as she cracks the padlock and enters the bedroom. Inside the room they find Amanda. She is sleeping soundly, a picture of innocence. Tony finds a bottle of sleeping pills; she's been drugged. When Ziva pulls back the blankets so they can take the girl to safety, she and Tony see that the bed has been booby-trapped--it's been wired into the electrical system and the bed itself is set on a pressure plate, so that if the girl moves, or they move her, it will set off a bomb. The wiring links to the computer network, so the explosion will kill Amanda and incinerate the computers and all the evidence.

Suddenly the words Command Activate Alarm flash across the computer screens in the safehouse.

At the same moment, an alarm blares inside Adam's Tavern. "Cover the exits!" Gibbs yells. "Shut down the alarm. Lock it down!" He rushes to check the box on the bar where the spare menus are stored, looking for the flash drive that holds Domino--it was supposed to be passed to a waitress inside a menu. In the confusion, both Bankston and Agent Lee rise and start to slide out of their booth. Gibbs' glare freezes them in mid-step. "Search everyone!" he tells the undercover agents in the bar. "No one leaves."

Back at the safehouse, Tony asks Ziva if she's ever seen Raiders of the Lost Ark. He has an idea about substituting an equivalent amount of weight for Amanda's body, and then shifting her off the pressure plate. Unfortunately the little girl is starting to wake up, and if she fidgets too much she will set off the bomb. "Too late," Tony says. "Gotta move her." Ziva grabs Amanda's feet and Tony grabs her shoulders; together they hoist her off the bed. Immediately the bed ignites. It's a ball of flame. Amanda is wide awake now and screaming. Tony carries her through the apartment as the computer towers start to incinerate, sending out showers of sparks like six-foot-tall firecrackers.

In the tavern, Gibbs is riffling through menu after menu. There's no flash drive hidden inside them. "Nobody leaves," he repeats. Agent Lee comes up to him and pleads. She wants to get to that safehouse. "Gibbs, you've got to let me go. Please!" Gibbs won't budge. "No one leaves," he tells her. Lee backs away from him, slowly and stealthily; it's clear (as it was earlier in the coffee shop) that she has no intention of following orders. Gibbs completes his search of the menus and slaps them down on the bar. No Domino. "It's not here," he announces. His gaze narrows on Bankston, who is sidling toward the other side of the tavern. "It never was," Gibbs says.

Agent Lee looks startled. She darts a look over her shoulder to see if Bankston, who is behind her, has registered the implications of what Gibbs just said. He hesitates a second, processing the fact that Gibbs knows he is the mastermind behind the plot; then he hits a female NCIS agent in the small of the back, hard, and dislodges her weapon. Using the stolen gun, Bankston fires a couple of shots straight at Gibbs's head. Gibbs ducks, and the bullets smash the mirror behind the bar. Bankston uses the few seconds of confusion to grab Agent Lee and take her hostage. He backs toward the exit, using Lee as a shield, and escapes from Adam's Tavern.

"Keep everyone inside!" Gibbs shouts. Weapon drawn, he runs out into the darkness after Bankston and Lee.

Outdoors. Adam's Tavern is near the intersection of two city streets; it's a commercial area, but it's late at night. The shops are closed and the streets mostly deserted. A half-empty bus has just pulled up to the bus stop and opened its doors. Bankston notices the bus and decides it's his escape route. Gibbs has just emerged from the tavern and is pursuing him. Bankston turns back and fires at Gibbs, shattering one of the plate-glass windows on the store opposite the bus stop. Gibbs returns fire. Bankston jumps up the front steps of the bus, pulling Agent Lee with him. He shoves his gun into the bus driver's side and shouts, "Drive! Now!"

The driver obeys. The bus begins to pull away. Gibbs shoots out the right front tire and the bus stops. The passengers inside are screaming and ducking for cover. The front door is open, and Bankston knows Gibbs is headed for it, so Bankston backs down the aisle toward the other door, dragging Agent Lee with him. He has his gun out, and he doesn't hesitate to hit passengers who get in his way.

Gibbs hurtles up the front stairs, and Bankston fires at him. Glass from the bus windows shatters all around Gibbs and he sinks down on the stairs. He's not just taking cover--he's wounded. He has cuts around his right eye from flying glass, and one of Bankston's bullets got close enough to open a gouge in the index finger of his right hand, just above the first knuckle, and fracture the bone, which is partially exposed. With a broken trigger finger, will he even be able to fire his weapon?

Bankston tries to kick open the back door of the bus. It won't open. He's trapped. Gibbs stands up, with effort. The back of the bus is a blur, and he tries to blink away the blood that is filling his right eye and affecting his vision. Bankston fires at him again.

Gibbs hears McGee's voice through his earwig; McGee says that Tony has Amanda and that she is safe. Agent Lee is also wearing an earwig, and she hears the news, too. With Amanda safe, Lee feels empowered to fight Bankston. When he takes aim at Gibbs again, Lee grabs his gun hand and ruins his shot. One bullet goes wide and shatters the glass in the back door panel; another goes over their heads and lodges in the roof of the bus.

Using both hands, Gibbs takes aim. Bankston treats Lee as a human shield and is hiding behind her, holding her tight to his chest. Struggling to keep Bankston's gun arm pointing overhead, Lee looks right at Gibbs and silently mouths, "Shoot!" She wants him to shoot straight through her to kill Bankston, too. Gibbs hesitates, his face anguished, and Lee nods emphatically. "Shoot!" Gibbs shakes his head a little, letting Lee see his regret. Then he puts three bullets through Lee's chest and she falls. Bankston falls, too. The gun slips from his fingers and clatters to the floor.

Gibbs walks down the aisle of the bus and kneels over Lee as she dies. He checks for a pulse in her throat, finds none, then gently removes the NCIS badge from her belt. He holds her badge in his bloody hand and stares down at Lee, grieving.

Director Vance's office at NCIS, the next morning. When Gibbs enters, Vance says that they have found Bankston's wife; she was buried in the back of an old rental property. Bankston had killed her 12 months ago, but planted her hair in the cabin where Amanda was being held as an insurance policy. He wanted his wife's hair to be there to support his cover story--just in case he got caught and had to claim someone had kidnapped his wife to force him to cooperate. "He thought he was going to walk out of that bar with Domino in his pocket," Gibbs comments. But when Vance says that Bankston "thought of everything," Gibbs replies, "Not everything."

Vance studies his battered agent. Gibbs has had medical treatment and now has stitches in his eyebrow, cleaned-up cuts around his right eye, and splints and lots of gauze bandages wrapped around his broken finger and braced around his wrist for support. Vance searches for appropriate words of consolation. "It was probably the best way for this to end," he finally says, referring to Agent Lee's death. "Treason, double murder--she was headed for a life sentence. Or worse. She was never going to see her sister again." That's all true, but it does little to abate the sadness in Gibbs's eyes.

The director does have one urgent item on his agenda still: "SecNav wants Domino back," Vance says. Oh, that's right. That matter of treason . . . .

Gibbs gestures with his bandaged hand toward a manila envelope in Vance's outbox. When Vance does nothing, Gibbs picks up the envelope and hands it to Vance. "It never left the building, Leon," Gibbs says quietly.

Vance's eyes widen. He was completely fooled by Gibbs's charade. He hastily opens the envelope and pulls out a flash drive. "I needed everyone to think it was real," Gibbs explains. "Even me?" Vance protests.

Seeing the director rattled brings Gibbs some satisfaction. He walks toward the door and Vance asks what he is going to tell Amanda about Agent Lee: "Is Lee a hero or a villain?" Gibbs says, "Both . . . ."

In the squadroom, Amanda sits at Ziva's desk, coloring a hand-drawn picture of an apple. An actual apple (perhaps Ziva's idea of a treat? She did bring one as a gift for McGee once) sits on the desk. Ziva compliments Amanda's artwork and smiles at the child. Tony arrives with "breakfast" for Amanda--a chocolate chip cookie and hot cocoa, probably from the vending machines. Ziva tells Amanda that "her aunt" will be there soon to pick her up, but Ziva does not explain that it won't be her Aunt Michelle; the task of breaking the news of Agent Lee's death will fall to Gibbs.

Gibbs joins the group at Ziva's desk. "You are one brave little girl," he tells Amanda. She looks at him--another kind stranger--and with innocent curiosity asks, "Where's Michy?" Silence. Tony and Ziva exchange worried looks as Gibbs takes Amanda by the hand and walks her over to the big window where they can be alone. "What happened to your hand?" she asks, noticing the bandages.

Gibbs doesn't answer. Instead he puts Agent Lee's NCIS badge into Amanda's palm. "Michy would want you to have that," he says.

Ziva watches and her eyes fill with tears. She rushes out of the room as Gibbs goes on talking to Amanda, offering the heartbroken child gentle words of comfort we cannot hear.