NCIS this week opened with a woman who was chained up in a basement. As her captor came downstairs with food, she managed to beat him with a heavy weight and escape.
Back at the NCIS building, Tim was having difficulty with a phantom e-mail not showing up on his computer. As he dealt with his computer woes, Quinn came in wearing the sweater Abby made for her, complete with a secret pocket in the stitching. However, Nick was not wearing the vest she made.
An awkward moment when Abby arrives is interrupted by Gibbs telling Quinn and Tim they are needed at a homicide. Their missing petty officer’s prints were found at the scene. Kelly Bristow had been missing for five days.
Tim, Quinn and Gibbs are at the crime scene, where the detective is not being very helpful. In order to get the sim card from the perp’s phone, Quinn secretly hides it in the sweater as Tim distracts the detective.
Gibbs discovers their victim is at the airport so he arrives. When the TSA agent opens the door she is in, Kelly bursts out and tries to escape, but Gibbs holds onto her.
When he gets back to work, Tim continues to try to fix his e-mail, but nothing is happening. The team updates Gibbs on Kelly Bristow, whose husband Christopher Bristow has not been heard from. Their kidnapper is a man named Olek Lazarenko. Tim and Nick are sent to Chris’ work at a law firm.
Quinn and Ellie interview Kelly, who is distraught and wondering where her husband is. He had said he would meet her at the airport when she called about her escape, but he never arrived. Ellie breaks it to Kelly that her husband never reported her missing and they feel he is involved. Kelly doesn’t believe that’s possible.
Tim and Nick go to the law firm, where Nick is curious about the statue bust he feels is fake. They speak to two co-workers, Ned and Sullivan Brady, who are both surprised at the news about Chris being missing. While Nick leads Ned away, Tim talks to Sullivan. Sullivan says Chris had quit five days earlier and that he once talked about Kelly cheating on him. There is also a claim Chris was involved in theft.
At the Bristow home, Ellie and Quinn arrive to find the place is trashed. They try to locate the family dog, Frank, but the dog does not respond to their calls. They notice a laptop and watch are not disturbed, meaning someone had been searching for something.
Abby has the SIM card and tells Gibbs someone had been texting with the kidnapper about holding onto Kelly. She had been the target of the kidnapping.
Quinn and Ellie speak to Kelly and Quinn questions her about whether she was involved in the theft. Kelly is adamant her husband is not a thief. Quinn can tell by her reaction she was not a part of it.
Tim and Nick tell Gibbs the evidence is stacking up against Chris as he had a life insurance policy on Kelly. They also can’t figure out what happened to Chris after the phone call from Kelly, although he did make a call to her sister, Dakota James.
Quinn and Ellie go to talk to Dakota, who claims not to have spoken to Chris or know where he is. However, Ellie spots dog hair on her sweater and discreetly goes to the door to call for Frank. The dog appears at the door when he is called. Chris had dropped him off before leaving for the airport.
Abby tells Gibbs that Chris is the CEO of a National Corporation called QFire, which actually has no products. She found signatures from the men at the law firm he worked at and supposedly $3 million in the company’s name. They just do not know who owns it.
Ellie calls to update them that Chris had said he was going to the bank before the airport to get passports for both him and Kelly. Quinn and Ellie go to the bank and find Chris’ car. After searching, Ellie makes a gruesome discovery. There is blood dripping from underneath the trunk of the car. They open it to find Chris’ body.
Ellie goes back to see Kelly to break the news about what happened to Chris. Kelly is distraught to discover her husband is dead.
Ducky finishes his autopsy and tells Gibbs he was shot in the head, heart and also in the knee. He had been tortured for information.
Quinn and Nick go to see Ned, who tells them QFire is a shell corporation but he won’t tell them who the owner is.
Dale from accounting comes to talk to Gibbs with Abby and Tim. However, he is very nervous about talking to Gibbs. He is able to tell them the owner of QFire is Leonard Weiss, who is a very big deal in political circles.
Vance is not too happy about Weiss’ possible involvement and orders the team to be sure about their evidence before picking him up for a murder for hire plot. Torres comes to tell Gibbs and Vance someone from the law firm wants to meet secretly.
Nick and Gibbs wait in a parking garage for their informant. Sullivan comes with paperwork showing that Weiss was involved in kidnapping Kelly after Chris embezzled money. But when Gibbs calls Tim to pick Weiss up, he discovers Weiss is on his way to Serbia.
An update on the e-mail error finds that Tim hacked into the e-mail server and found a bug that he helped to fix. Ellie and Nick are amazed to see he had fix an issue for people who used that server. Gibbs tells the team they have Weiss on call in MTAC. Weiss informs them that while he did own dozens of shell companies, he was not involved in any murder. Plus, $3 million dollars was practically pocket change to him and he would not be homicidal over it.
Kelly is adamant her husband did not steal money, even though the evidence says otherwise. It turns out she is correct when Dale finds the papers Sullivan gave them had been doctored to make it look like Chris and Weiss was involved. Chris was actually the whistleblower and had prepared an e-mail to a reporter where he planned on giving her a flash drive with the information on what the law firm was doing. He was killed before he could give it to her.
Abby, Quinn and Ellie watch Sullivan from the interrogation viewing room as Nick comes in wearing his vest. Abby is thrilled. Meanwhile, Gibbs tells Kelly they cleared her husband’s name. As they talk, Gibbs takes notice of the dog collar in the photo of Frank and the one he is wearing beside Kelly. Gibbs takes it off and turns it over to find the flash drive. Chris had purposely left the flash drive on Frank and took him to Dakota for safety.