The episode began with a burglary in progress. A young girl, Kelly Donovan, risked her life to get to her cell phone in the hallway while an intruder was beating someone in another room. Kelly wad dialing 9-1-1 when the burglar burst in, and the theme song began.
Next scene was Danny and his mother. Each had a secret. She was going out and wouldn’t tell him where she was going. He had a number of secret boxes delivered by UPS.
Meanwhile, McGarrett was just coming in to shore at his home from a swim in the ocean. As he dried off with a towel, he noticed Jerry bringing out a spread of food. He approached Jerry and, even though Jerry said this was a farewell breakfast, McGarrett reminded him that it was indeed time for him to move on. He appreciated the breakfast and the farewell dinner the night before. Jerry was concerned about Chinese spies being at his house. McGarrett reassured him that it was safe to return home. When Jerry was giving him a farewell bear hug, McGarrett got a call to go to a crime scene.
At the scene was the body of Russell Donovan, Kelly’s father, and Kelly was nowhere to be seen. Kono walked in, and said a neighbor had spotted a car fleeing the scene with Kelly in the passenger seat. They got the plates. Kelly’s cell was also found at the scene, with the first two numbers of 9-1-1 pressed into the phone. This was an abduction.
When McGarrett and Danny tracked down the owner of the car, he had no knowledge of the crime. He had taken his car to a local garage a week before and left it. At the garage, the owner said when he arrived that morning, that particular car was gone and so was one of his employees – Tommy. But this was not like Tommy’s normal behavior.
The team did a check on Tommy and found that he had a record, but nothing like murder. He also had been abused as a child and raised in foster homes.
Jerry arrived while the team was around the touchscreen, and he brought McGarrett’s tool box along. He told McGarrett the box had been painted by someone in order the hide something. The color of the box was the wrong color red. It was not crimson, as it should have been, but rose. Jerry had found a code of some sort under the paint and showed it to McGarrett. It said something about Shelburn, but the name was spelled without the ending “e.” Jerry wanted to look into it, and McGarrett said ok.
In the meantime, Tommy and Kelly had stolen another car, and Tommy had shot the owner in the leg.
Danny came home early and gave his mother a trip to the spa. He had to get her out of the house for a surprise he was planning.
Back at HQ, the team found that there had been calls between Tommy and Kelly for 3 months. They were in a relationship. There was also a call to Tommy from Kelly 30 minutes before the burglary. Why did Tommy need to break into the house if Kelly were there to let him in?
McGarrett walked into his office to find it covered in post-in notes of various and sundry colors. Jerry was also there. He promised to clean it up, but first he had something to tell McGarrett. He figured out a code in numbers and concluded that part of the message on the tool box was a geographic location – Cambodia.
Meanwhile, Kono went to see Amy, Kelly’s friend, at school. Amy told Kono the Kelly had been abused, not by Tommy, but by her father. Kono went back to Kelly’s computer and found photos of Kelly proving this. When she reported this, McGarrett said Tommy wasn’t there to hurt her, he was there to save her.
The photos Kono had found later proved to be fake, with the wounds self-inflicted. The dates in the photos did not match the dates in Kelly’s journals. There was also evidence that Kelly had done a background check on Tommy, and that she set him up to murder her father for a million dollar life-insurance policy.
A call then came in about a convenience store robbery involving Tommy. McGarrett and Chin quickly joined in the chase underway by HPD. As they caught up to Tommy and Kelly, they had been surrounded by HPD. Tommy confessed to Kelly that he wanted to help her. This was not how this was to end. Kelly said it was exactly how it was supposed to end. Then, she raced from the car toward the police, screaming that Tommy had kidnapped her. Just as Tommy got out of the car after her, McGarrett jumped out of the Camaro and ordered everyone to hold their fire. Tommy was still holding the gun he had used at the convenience store and when the police saw it, they commenced firing. Tommy was shot several times. McGarrett ran to his side and yelled the order to call an ambulance. Tommy died later at the hospital.
Kelly was taken to 5-0 interrogation, where Kono and McGarrett told Kelly they were fully aware that she was not a victim. She planned everything. They also told her that in order to save money for her college education, her father had stopped paying the premiums on the insurance policy. Kelly got nothing.
At the end of the episode, McGarrett met secretly with a CIA agent, who refused to tell him anything about Cambodia, until McGarrett showed him a wire he was wearing to record everything. The information would be destroyed once the agent told McGarrett what was at that spot in Cambodia. The agent was already in trouble for admitting Doris was an active operative, so he told McGarrett what was there – a grave.