The NCIS team gets a very unwanted blast from the past in the latest episode. But that’s not the only familiar name: McGee (Sean Murray), thanks to Kasie (Diona Reasonover), gets help from some friends with his twins’ school fundraiser.
The team investigates the murder of a lieutenant who intervened after a man held up a nurse in a mobile blood bank; though he destroyed all the blood bags there, they discover he stole one, and the remains of the donor, Lauren, are then found being dissolved in acid. (It’s as gross as it sounds.) Furthermore, her house has been completely wiped clean — fingerprints, hair, anything with her DNA. A neighbor saw her arguing with a man just before her time of death.
Lauren just started a new job at a health startup, Life Sequence, which studies how a person’s DNA affects nutritional needs. As Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) points out, Gibbs’ rule 39: There’s no such thing as coincidences. The company uses sequencers (bands around wrists) to track clients’ movements and vitals and create a health plan tailored to an individual’s DNA. Right now, they’re in beta testing , with the CEO making an announcement in a few weeks to launch it. And the CEO? Well, he’s a visionary billionaire who sacrificed his dream of going to the moon to start the company. Unfortunately, McGee and Parker (Gary Cole) are right when they realize it’s Fletcher Voss (TJ Thyne, previously seen in the franchise’s 1,000th episode).
How is he not in prison for his role in Vance (Rocky Carroll) almost being killed? He never meant for him to be shot, Voss insists. He did hard time, and his three months in prison changed his life. He had to lose everything — emotionally (he made millions selling Bandium) — to realize what’s important, he claims. It’s all thanks to NCIS, he says. But he also claims not to know Lauren … only for them to discover that she was pregnant and he was the father. He’d have to pay his ex-wife millions in their divorce settlement if she found out, so there’s a motive. Vance, more than anyone, doesn’t want to risk him getting away with murder. Then, thanks to some hacking while Torres is undercover as a “perfect specimen,” they’re able to place Voss at Lauren’s when she was killed.
However, once they bring in Voss for questioning, he reveals that he and Lauren were dating and he didn’t know about the pregnancy. His reaction is genuine … and then he collapse after drinking the smoothie he has six times a day. He survives, but someone’s been slowing poisoning him (with warfarin), and Lauren was killed because the same blood thinner was in her system from drinking some of the smoothies; the killer needed to cover that up. Holly made the smoothies and seems to have motive, having created Life Sequence and sold it to Voss. However, Holly reveals that the algorithm and sequencers are all actually lies and don’t work. Voss was still going to go live in two weeks, and that would have brought down the company. So who had motive? Well, his doctor, whose name was on all the (fake) studies, so he’d be seen as a fraud once Voss went live with the program.
Then Voss needs a blood transfusion (after the blood bank was hit), and so McGee, as a universal donor, donates. He then goes to see Voss in the hospital and makes him feel even worse by telling him that it was Vance’s idea. After talking to McGee about being a good dad, Voss then wonders if he’s a good person, too, like the agent, because he’s inside him. McGee, of course, doesn’t want to hear him say that ever again, but Voss keeps going about how they’re connected by blood and blood brothers.
