Continuing this week is the fourth series of the hit
drama following a team of special agents who

investigate Navy and Marine Corps-related
crimes. In this episode, McGee finds himself
under pressure while investigating a double
murder apparently inspired by his latest novel. His
feelings of guilt are compounded when one of his
colleagues is targeted by the killer.
Gibbs and the team are called to the house of
Petty Officer Darren Cove, who has gone missing.
A blood stain on the floor suggests he has met
with a brutal end, while a card left by the culprit
declares: “One down, two to go.” The petty
officer’s truck is found abandoned by a highway
with a bloodied blanket in the back, and McGee is
troubled by a strange sense of déjà vu.
McGee’s misgivings prove to be well founded
when Abby analyses an unusual cocktail at
Cove’s house and McGee recognises it as one of
his own creations. He goes on to shock the team
with another startling revelation: “Our missing
petty officer is a character in my next book.”
For some time, McGee has enjoyed a parallel
career as the successful author of a military thriller.
Lately, he has being trying to overcome writer’s
block in order to finish his follow-up. He says that
he used Petty Officer Cove as the model for one of
his new characters after seeing him at his local
coffee shop. “My writing isn’t entirely fiction,” he
admits. “Sometimes I base my characters on
people I see.” It is an uncomfortable admission for
McGee, as he has continually denied his
colleagues’ accusations that he used them as the
basis for the other characters in his book.
The various clues in the disappearance of Petty
Officer Cove match plot details in McGee’s new,
unpublished and unfinished opus. Only someone
with access to the manuscript could have used it
as the inspiration for the crime, so Gibbs and Tony
go to question the one person other than McGee
who has seen the book – his publisher, Lyndi
Crawshaw. She suggests that the most obsessive
fans always find a way to read material before it is
published, and reveals that the publishers had
recently received a number of bizarre, threatening
letters. Ducky studies three of the letters and
declares that they are the work of the same writer,
who displays some highly delusional behaviour.
“The writer believes that Timothy’s fiction is very
much real,” he tells Gibbs.
The team’s only other lead is McGee’s
manuscript itself, so they pay a visit to the locations
mentioned in the novel. At one site, they discover
Cove’s body lying on the ground, alongside that of
another man who also served as an inspiration for
one of McGee’s characters. Both victims were
stabbed with a javelin – the murder weapon that
was used in the novel. With two bodies uncovered,
it would seem the killer is only one victim away from
completing his tally. When Gibbs asks McGee how
many more of his characters are based on real
people, a miserable McGee is forced to confess
what his NCIS colleagues already know – that they
are part of his fiction too. “That means we’re all
targets,” Gibbs says.
With two dead bodies weighing on his
conscience, McGee suffers a browbeating from
Gibbs, who angrily challenges him to solve the
case. “This guy’s inside your head – you get
inside his!” he says. A breakthrough from Abby
proves that Lyndi Crawshaw faked the
threatening letters in a bid to drum up publicity for
McGee’s new book, but with nothing else to
connect her to the case, the team rules out the
possibility that the killer acquired the manuscript
from her. That leaves only one possibility – the
culprit got a copy of the book from McGee.
The hapless agent realises the killer must have
copied the novel directly from his discarded
typewriter ribbons. It would seem the suspect is a
delusional fan who is trying to protect McGee’s
fictional alter ego, Agent McGregor – and his third
target may be someone close to McGee’s heart...