Meanwhile Forensics Specialist Abby Sciuto (Pauley Perrette) is analyzing the voice data from the phone call received by Cassidy before the explosion. She discovers McGee grieving in her lab and she comforts him. Gibbs enters and Abby identifies the dead suicide bomber as Yahzeed Fahad and further reveals that he was in the US Navy, discharged in 2004. Ducky chirps in to bring Gibbs and Cassidy to the morgue to let them know that Fahad had been dead 24 hours (based on deterioration of the brain) before the explosion and therefore could not have made the phone call credited to him. This establishes either Abby or Ducky as being wrong, providing the necessary internal conflict for the episode.

Breaking to the next scene, Ziva details the search of Fahad’s apartment which revealed no evidence that the dead man would have been a suicide bomber. Cassidy reveals an intense dislike for Ziva evidenced with impatience. DiNozzo attempts levity to lighten the mood, Gibbs pops the back of his head and sends Cassidy and DiNozzo back to the crime scene to investigate if there was another way out of this building that appeared to have only one exit. At the crime scene, Cassidy and DiNozzo reveal their previous personal history and discuss DiNozzo’s floundering love life. Cassidy councils DiNozzo that life is too short not to tell those you love that you love them.

Meanwhile, Abby determines that all of the suspect telephone contact came from the same disposable phone and that the first call could be traced to a company, Kertek Computing, where Fahad worked. This company was responsible for developing software for the disabled. McGee reasons that NCIS can obtain vocal samples from all employees to identify the caller. Gibbs, Ziva, and McGee head for Kertek where they meet Azid Abu Selom (Shaun Duke) and learn that Fahad was an instructor. Abby compares the voice samples with the suspect sample with negative results. Abby was given a Fahad training video to which she compared the suspect sample and got a positive match. Who is right… Ducky or Abby?

Back at the crime scene, DiNozzo, searching for a secret passage, employs a clever method involving cigar smoke being pulled through cracks in the wall and the two locate a secret passage into an office where they discover pieces of sunglasses like those worn by the bomber. Ziva and Gibbs go to see Ducky who has determined Fahad’s cause of death, which was from suffocation due to having a silicone substance poured in his mouth and nose. Ducky insists that his opinion on the time of death is correct.

Gibbs and Mann meet at Gibbs’ house for dinner in the basement and Mann reveals to Gibbs that she plans to retire and pursue her private life, ostensibly with Gibbs. Meanwhile, Abby lifts a print from the sunglasses that leads the team back to Kertek, where the team has to fight it out with the operative, who is ultimately shot and killed by Cassidy and the rest. From a recovered flyer, the team learns of a conference of Islamic clerics to address the Shiite-Sunni rift. McGee’s evaluation of the dead man’s laptop reveals experimental vocal simulation software for use by the disabled who can no longer talk. The team determines that the silicone poured in Fahad’s oral and nasal cavities was to make a mold to develop the software to mimic Fahad’s voice. So both Ducky and Abby were right (as if it were to be any other way).