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Recap

A little 10 year old girl named Rachel Barnes arrives home from a sleepover at a neighbor's place, to find her mother Dr. Valerie Barnes dead of a gunshot wound to the back.

Valerie was a therapist at a counseling centre in Richmond. Her husband Commander Ryan Barnes was in survival training when she was shot.

Ryan's name and picture was posted to a jihadist website hit list after personnel details about a military op were leaked.

Thinking that Valerie's murder had something to do with the jihadist information, Abby, Bishop and McGee come up with a plan to contact the website's owner, Dorian Hobart, a man who had been dishonorably discharged from the army, and who then had become involved with several anti-government extremist groups.

McGee poses as an electronics expert who specializes in detonators.  He meets Hobart at a park, where McGee hands over a sample of his work. Just as McGee gets set to arrest him, he is tackled to the ground by a woman who turns out to be ATF Special Agent Zoe Keates, an old Philadelphia PD partner to Tony.

It turns out that the man McGee was dealing with isn't Hobart - he is another ATF agent posing as Hobart. The two teams had stung each other.

After Ducky finds out that Valerie had an old facial injury for which there was no medical record, Tony does some digging and discovers that she had been severely injured while working as a forensic psychiatrist in Maryland. One of the prisoners had gone berserk during his pre-trial evaluation and had injured her. The prisoner was a serial killer and cannibal named George Burton.  The team finds out that Valerie had paid him a closed-door visit two weeks prior to her death.

Upon interviewing Burton, Tony and Gibbs find out that she had sought his advice about another unnamed sociopath - one who scared her more than he did.

Abby pieces together the fragmented bullet that had killed Valerie, and ties it to a ballistics report about a gun that had misfired. There was no injury involved and therefore no charges were laid. The gun belongs to Nathan Curtis - the man who had hosted the sleepover that Rachel had attended.

Curtis tells Gibbs and McGee that he knew something was wrong between Ryan and Valerie: he saw that she was on edge every time Ryan was around Rachel. When Curtis saw bruises on Rachel, he had confronted Valerie, but didn't report his findings to anyone because she told him that  Ryan would never hurt his daughter.

Suspecting Ryan may be the killer, Tony and Bishop go to his hotel, only to find that he and Rachel had never been in their hotel room.

The team pings Rachel's phone and discovers that she and her father were in a park.  They go there and arrest him, upon which he confesses to killing his wife.

Meanwhile, Ducky uncovers some medical reports about Rachel, who had suffered broken bones, two concussions and multiple lacerations - all of which happened when Ryan was deployed overseas.

Gibbs interviews Rachel and shows her the gun he'd found beneath her backyard fort.  She confesses to her whole scheme: that she had injured herself repeatedly so that her father would come home. While he would come home sometimes, he never stayed long enough for her liking. She figured he would come home to stay if her mother was gone, which is why she killed her.  While at the sleepover at her neighbor's house, she snuck out long enough to kill her mother and then got back before anyone knew she'd been gone.

Show:
NCIS
Season:
Episode Number:
6
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NCIS Season 12 Episode 6 Quotes

Abby: I know you, Tony. The real you. And the fake happy front you put up you.
Tony: Oh come on. I am a happy dude. I mean I like, radiate happiness. That song "Happy"?
Abby: That's baloney. This whole random act of dating schtick? Nobody's buying it, okay? We know you're lonely, and we no why. Ziva. Say it. Ziva.
Tony: Come on. I can say it. I know her name. Ziva.
Abby: Okay then let's stop dancing around this whole thing, okay - we all miss her. I love Ziva but she left us. She's gone. And it hurts, and it sucks but that's reality. We have to face it.
Tony: I have faced it, many many times. She said no, she didn't want to come back. That's that. I have moved on from it.
Abby: But you haven't moved on from her. And you can't keep putting your life on hold waiting for her to show up, because she probably never will.
Tony: I know. Doesn't make it any easier. The truth is: I miss my friend.
Abby: You have friends here too, Tony, don't forget.
Tony: I know. Thanks Abby.

Rachel: What's wrong Agent Gibbs?
Gibbs: You haven't been honest with me.
Rachel: What do you mean?
Gibbs: (shows her the gun) I went back by your house. I did a little digging under your fort.
Rachel: I didn't have time to bury it deeper. I needed to get back before Mr. Curtis realized I snuck out.
Gibbs: Then what happened?
Rachel: Don't look at me like that.
Gibbs: I want to help you. I can't help you if you don't let me.
Rachel: That's exactly what my mother said. That she wanted to help me. She was going to send me to a special hospital in Montana for treatment. I don't need help. I hate that word. And I hated her.
Gibbs: Yeah but you don't hate your dad though do you?
Rachel: No. Dad didn't see what she did. Things were always better when he was around.
Gibbs: That's why you injured yourself? So he'd come back?
Rachel: Sometimes it worked. But he'd never stay as long as I wanted.
Gibbs: Unless your mom was gone. Then he couldn't leave you.
Rachel: It's her own fault. All she ever did was make me feel broken. Getting rid of her was the best solution. Daddy didn't understand either when I told him what I did. He'll come around eventually. I'm a sweet little girl. Can I have another juice?