This episode of NCIS began with two women waiting for a co-worker to make a delivery as they wait outside a diner. They eventually go inside, only to find multiple dead bodies strewn all over the place.
In the squad room, Tim comes in to questions about watching cat videos and how his shirt is nice and white. He realizes that Tony stole his New Year’s resolutions list that he had in his desk. Tim tells him he has to show him his resolution and Jimmy comes in talking about Gibbs no longer drinking coffee. He had apparently overheard a conversation between Gibbs and Ducky and as he talks, he realizes by the looks on Ellie, Tim and Tony’s faces that Gibbs is behind him.
The team goes to the crime scene and Ellie sees that it looks like everyone shot one another. Jimmy is unsure where to start and Gibbs directs them to the body of Captain Sharon Hanover, who worked at the Pentagon. Tim says the manager doesn’t know what happened and that none of the victims are employees. When Tony questions him, his co-workers tell him to admit about the pickles as Gibbs notices his ex-wife, Diane, outside the diner. Then, he sees another ex-wife come up to stand beside her.
Gibbs’ ex-wives are teasing him as the rest of the team quietly watch in fascination. Diane brought ex-wife number two so Gibbs could talk to her and Gibbs is annoyed that they ambushed him. He orders Ellie, Tim, and Tony back to work as he tries to work out a time to talk (and Ellie snaps a photo, gotta love her!)
In the squad room, Tony talks about victims Staff Sergeant Samson Delgado and Chief Petty Officer Beau Lordin before Tony accidentally brings up photos of Gibbs’ ex-wives. Tim immediately backs out of being curious when Tony asks about the second wife, Rebecca, cheating. The victims, along with Robert Elmerly, Hanover, and Scott Jalisman, all failed to report to work and they hadn’t paid taxes.
Down in the lab, Abby tells Gibbs that Captain Hanover was actually being ambushed by the mail victims and the guns had all their serial numbers filed off. She also found that the victims had appointments with We Got Your Back Taxes. Gibbs says he’s going home, mostly to avoid seeing Rebecca.
Gibbs goes home with a paper bag and a cup of coffee that he sniffs before throwing away. He gets a call from McGee, who tells him their tax firm is in Bridgewater and that Diane is pulling the victims tax records for them. She had come in with Rebecca and they were mad that Gibbs left. Gibbs hangs up as Rebecca comes in.
She is angry at first, but knows he never promised to stay. Rebecca admits that she had a hard time with alcohol and she is making amends. She apologizes to Gibbs for sleeping with another man, but he says everything is in the past. They talk and Gibbs mentions he has a headache, so she gives him a massage to the temples.
The next morning, Tim is trying to quietly wake Gibbs, who is asleep on the couch with Rebecca. Diane comes inside after waiting and is shocked, causing Gibbs and Rebecca to wake up as Tim tries to leave. Diane tells her she wasn’t supposed to sleep with him and Rebecca says ‘Yuck,’ much to Gibbs’ dismay. Diane has news she found about the tax filings, apparently someone hacked into the IRS to find people who were late in payments. Diane gets Rebecca to leave, but not before Rebecca gives Gibbs a wedding invitation.
Gibbs and Tim go to the office where We Got Your Back Taxes is, but they only find an empty room. The person who rented the place did so under a fake name. Tim begins asking Gibbs about the wedding and his sleeping beside Rebecca, but when his boss begins to get annoyed, McGee redirects his attention to some evidence he notices. A bullet casing is lying on the floor. They use tools to see blood and when McGee gets the black lights, they discover the wall is covered in blood.
Ellie goes to see Abby, who has strange news and is avoiding the gossip about Gibbs. She tells Ellie the blood in the building came from the five victims and that none of their clothing had gun shot residue on them. She thinks that someone killed the victims in that building and then took their bodies to the diner to stage it like the crime happened there. Abby ends up slipping about Gibbs and the girls are gossiping when Ellie’s phone rings. She tells Abby they have another case.
The victim is Master Chief Ekim Beans. He appears to have been stabbed. The team are still stuck on the gossip about Gibbs (with Tony opening his own big mouth) and he looks at Tim annoyed, who swears he never said anything. Ellie tells them she found a card in the victim’s pocket that is the same kind of card found on a victim from the diner.
Ducky is speaking to the victim when Gibbs comes down. He feels there is something familiar about the victim, especially the wound where he was killed. Jimmy mentions a small tool was left behind that could be the murder weapon. Gibbs gets a flashback of Mike Franks lying dead in the rain, having died in a similar manner to the victim. Abby comes down with her own news, since she had felt something was familiar about the diner case. She pulls up a sketch of a crime scene at a diner, but it’s not their current case. It’s from when the previous NCIS Director Jenny Shepard had been murdered. It appears someone is recreating Gibbs’ old cases.
The team discusses the fact that someone is going after Gibbs by recreating the murders of people he cared about. Since only few people knew the details of Shepard’s murder, Tony would question them and then he tells Gibbs that the cases all took place when he got personal visits, especially Rebecca. She apparently got money from an offshore account and the computer that hacked the IRS came back to her. Gibbs is unsure that she is actually a killer.
Rebecca is admonishing Tim for dragging her to interrogation, who opens the door for her without a word. As Gibbs gets ready to interrogate Rebecca, Tony, Tim, Ellie, Ducky, and Palmer watch. Rebecca’s lawyer comes in and then we discover he is not only her fiancé, but the man she slept with (I really do urge you readers to watch this scene, it’s too good!) Gibbs steals the lawyer’s coffee before Rebecca tells him her uncle died and left her the money. She has no idea how anyone could have used her to hack into the IRS and she tells Gibbs someone had to know she was coming to visit.
Abby looks at Rebecca’s cell phone, which has been bugged, and she had been using it to communicate to Diane about Gibbs. She is tracking the device to see if it matches any other crimes. Tony, who is with her, asks about the texts to Diane, but Abby refuses to say. But he takes one look at her and knows Rebecca wants Gibbs’ approval to marry. She finds a similar bugging in a case against a Russian mercenary named Ghenna Ulinov who was involved in suspected espionage. Then, they discover the man worked with Sergei Mischnev, Gibbs’ nemesis from the beginning of the season.
The team goes to the address where Ulinov lives and discover photos of Rebecca. Gibbs gets a call from Diane to meet her and that she knows about the case. He goes up to a roof to meet her, but she is acting like she has no idea what’s going on and that she got a call from him. Gibbs realizes it’s a set up and rushes to get her to the car. But just as he does, Sergei fires a bullet into Diane’s head, mirroring the murder of Agent Kate Todd.
Gibbs rushes out to the street as Sergei gets into a car. He fires at the car, but they keep going. He goes to the office, where he is trying to organize everything and figure out where Fornell and his daughter are. Tim was able to find out the audio of Diane was distorted to sound like her and that Sergei left a video message for Gibbs, telling him more was coming.
Ducky is preparing to take care of Diane’s body, but Palmer doesn’t want to do an autopsy on another friend. Gibbs comes to see Diane’s body as he gets a flashback to a moment they had together. He wants to know what Sergei is doing and Ducky surmises that his game plan is to make Gibbs suffer. Abby comes down and she tells Gibbs that the computer virus IT Kevin made for Sergei allowed him to get Gibbs’ personnel file on everyone he has worked with over the years. She suddenly gets an idea and runs off.
Tim comes down with Abby, who wants to release the virus to see how it traces back to Sergei. He is not happy with the idea considering how badly it damaged their systems, but she has been working on figuring the virus out to make sure it doesn’t happen. They briefly discuss calling Gibbs, who left to see Fornell, but then decide to trace the virus.
Gibbs gets a call from them, as well as Ellie, to tell them it traced back to an apartment near where Diane was killed. He immediately turns around to go to the building. He goes into the hall, where he gets flashbacks of moments with Diane. Angry and upset, he goes into the apartment and shoots two individuals before confronting Sergei. He begins choking him, but someone hits him over the head.
Gibbs wakes up to his team there, with no sign of Sergei. They took some blueprints for U.S. military information, but they think they stopped whatever the men were planning. Tony sarcastically tells Gibbs “thanks for waiting” just as Gibbs gets a call from Fornell.
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