In tonight’s episode, the team hunts a saboteur who causes a robotic vehicle to kill a Navy lieutenant. Meanwhile, Ziva is concerned to notice that Tony keeps visiting the hospital. Gibbs and the team have a bizarre case on their hands this week when a Navy lieutenant is found dead, apparently killed by carbon monoxide poisoning. Roni Seabrook had been working on ‘Otto’, a $22million automatic car that was being developed for the Department of Defence. The car was being prepared for a crucial ‘concept race’, and Roni had come into work that morning to run some tests.

The dead lieutenant’s colleague, Torsten Engler, thinks that the obvious explanation for her death is that she killed herself: Otto’s doors were locked and the engine was running, filling the cabin with carbon monoxide. Roni could have turned everything off by hitting the ‘kill’ switch on the dashboard. “Obviously she couldn’t face her failures and missed deadlines,” Torsten says snidely. “So she took the coward’s way out.” Project leader Dr Russell Pike does not agree: “Roni was not the type to kill herself,” he insists. “What type was she?” asks Gibbs. “Driven,” replies Pike.

The most likely explanation for what happened is that Otto’s work was sabotaged – a theory that seems more probable when it emerges that the company who designed the car would go bankrupt if they lost the concept race. Who would want to see them go down? Another possible explanation comes to the fore when security footage surfaces showing Roni being sexually assaulted by a mechanic, later identified as Jamie Jones (Kevin Alejandro, ‘Ugly Betty’). Perhaps Jones sabotaged the car to hurt her?

Meanwhile, Abby and McGee are working on Otto, trying to find out how the saboteur could have programmed it to kill Roni Seabrook. McGee uses headphones to listen to voice notes that Roni had made on her laptop, while Abby climbs inside Otto to try and figure out the sequence of events which led to Roni’s death. As she puts on the seatbelt, the strap cinches tightly to trap her in the passenger seat, the doors lock and the cabin starts to fill with fumes. Unable to reach the kill switch, Abby screams for McGee to help her –but he cannot hear her cries. Gibbs arrives in the nick of time to rescue her – and later angrily accuses Jamie Jones of both killing Seabrook and endangering Abby’s life.

Jamie Jones denies sabotaging the car and also reveals that he and Roni were dating – the apparent assault was actually an example of the couple’s fondness for ‘roleplaying’. He seems to be telling the truth and is shocked at the news that Roni is dead. He later helps Abby and McGee put Otto back together after they dismantle it in search of the memory card bearing the ‘killer code’ that turned the car into a murderous machine. But who put it there in the first place?

Also this week, Tony continues to see Jeanne, the nurse he has been dating of late. However, his frequent trips to the hospital have Ziva worried – and she starts to wonder if Tony is hiding something from her.

Friday 15 February / 9:00pm