NCIS opened with a high school reunion where a man named Neal Harshman began to get into a scuffle with an old bully named James Bruno. After their fight, Bruno suddenly collapsed.
At NCIS headquarters, Torres arrives to get his desk set up three days before he has to actually start work. But just before Tim and Ellie can leave, Gibbs comes with a case. They arrive at the high school auditorium to investigate Bruno’s death. Quinn also comes to work her first case with the team.
Neal is there and tells them he didn’t throw him down hard enough to hurt him. He also claims he has not seen the man in years.
While Ducky tells Gibbs that Bruno appears to have died of poisoning, Tim comes to them with urgent news. They discovered a bomb in one of the lockers.
In the bullpen, Ellie tells Torres how to use the remote for the monitor so they can tell Gibbs about Bruno. He had a criminal record and surveillance cameras had captured him assembling the bomb. The team gets to work, with Tim and Quinn looking into high school records.
Ellie and Torres go back to the school to speak with Vice Principal Vic Castor, who said Bruno had made lots of enemies. He had spent eight weeks in detention and he could never get through to him.
In her lab, Abby goes through her high school yearbook, telling Gibbs about finding the goth look and blood spatter patterns. Once they get back on the case, she confirms Bruno’s nicotine patch was laced with cyanide and that it had been applied before he arrived at the auditorium. This means no one at the reunion killed him.
Tim and Ellie find the rental where Bruno had been living. It was with a woman named Mrs. Frimkes, who is old and has trouble seeing. She had known Bruno in school and talked about how he turned his life around. After giving Tim coffee, who did not drink it, she took them to the outside house where Bruno lived. There, they discover stolen items such as paintings and jewelry.
Down in the garage, Abby organizes the stolen items while Tim updates Gibbs. The stolen items were part of robbery cases where it appeared a robbery ring was in the works for a decade. Evidence from his rental found someone with a lot of dandruff was inside.
Quinn and Tim stake out the house, where they spot Mrs. Frimskie watering despite being told not to go outside. They spot a woman coming toward the house on a bicycle, but then she pedals off once she sees them.
In the interrogation room, the woman won’t talk. She is dirty and unkempt. Gibbs has Torres come with him while Tim and Ellie watch the interrogation. When Gibbs can’t get her to speak, Torres interrupts, bravely, to ask if she’s hungry, he gets a reaction from her. After eating a candy bar and finding out what happened to Bruno, she is adamant that he would not hurt anyone even though he has a criminal record. She refuses to believe he would bomb the school and someone else is a part of it.
In autopsy, Ducky shows Gibbs old burn marks on Bruno’s body and tells him Bruno had recently been in a fight. However, he had no defensive wounds and he had found an earring that was forcibly put in his ear even though the lobe has closed long ago. The earring has DNA.
Agent Quinn meets Abby, who tells her the DNA came from a female and the earring was only recently put in. They go through photos from a camera and Quinn spots Neal Sherwood with their victim. He had lied about not seeing Bruno in years.
While the team tries to find Sherwood, they also discover DNA on the earring belonged to Katrina Cooper, who was the popular girl in high school. Ellie and Torres go to talk to her, but she claims not to know Bruno. She then makes the mistake of mentioning Neal before Ellie has a chance to inquire about him. A loud noise stops the interview and Torres and Ellie go to investigate. They discover Neal Sherwood dead from a self-inflicted flair gun shot.
After watching a video “confession” from Neal, in which he did not say exactly why he was doing what he was about to do, Abby looks for information on his laptop. On the laptop, there is a confession about the robbery ring. Katrina Cooper, her husband Adam, Bruno, Neal and Bruno’s friend Angela were all part of it.
Adam’s job would help them find marks, Katrina would flirt her way into the homes to find out about the security systems, Bruno did the robberies and Angela fenced the stolen goods. When Jimmy overhears, he tells the team it reminds him of a film, but none of them get it.
After finding out Angela thinks she knows who the killer is, they interview Adam. He admits to the thefts, but claims he did not kill Bruno. He thinks Katrina was part of the plot to bomb the school, which she later denies. Despite the team discovering the robbery ring, they still don’t have their killer.
They go over the case once again, bringing up the fact one painting is unaccounted for. Quinn decides to do a forensic profile of Bruno’s last known movements. Security camera footage found Bruno’s former teacher had punched him.
Abby grabs Gibbs and tells him that the bomb they found had not been enabled. Bruno had disabled the remote detonator, meaning no one at the school was in danger of being killed after all.
In interrogation, Vic denies involvement in the murder, saying he had made a promise years earlier to kick Bruno’s butt. But when Bruno didn’t fight back as expected, he had gone to his home to apologize. He didn’t see Bruno, though, only his landlady, who noticed he had a bruise on his knuckles. Gibbs has to get his glasses to even see the bruise and realizes the woman was lying about her vision.
Going back to the house, they discover Mrs. Frimkes making a move to run. They also find the painting, which she had hidden in the flower Tim and Quinn saw her watering. She is their killer.
In the bullpen, Tim is surprised to see new desk arrangements, aghast they did not discuss it with him. After a headslap from Gibbs, he quiets down as Torres tells Gibbs an e-mail was found on Bruno’s computer. He had been planning to come clean about the robbery to the police.
As the team settles in, Torres plays some music. After a brief moment of dancing, Gibbs interrupts and turns the music off, much to their amusement.