"Flags of Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. What type of store was this?"

Ziva and I snap pictures of the devastating crime scene, where two of NCIS' very own agents were caught in the explosion.

"McGee's working on it."

Ducky shines a lot over the bodies of the two N.C.I.S. agents we lost. "Their deaths were almost immediate, if that's any consolation, Jethro."

"No." Gibbs looks up. "It's not, Ducky."

"It never is, no." The M.E. clicks his tongue. "All of our agents' wounds appear to have been caused by shrapnel. Specifically. . ." He bends down to grab a piece. "Ball bearings and nails: the hallmark of a homemade device."

"All emanating from this central point of the floor." Ziva gestures.

"This man appears to literally have been at the heart of the explosion."

"He was sitting on the bomb?"

"No. No, he was the bomb. A suicide bomber."

"Why blow yourself up in an empty room?"

"It wasn't empty, DiNozzo!"

Special Agent Paula Cassidy stands outside of where the door used to be. Her gaze falls on the two agents she lost, and she clutches her forehead.

McGee walks over to the group. "She insisted on being part of the investigation." He clears his throat. "I talked to the landlord. He said he'd just rented this place to a nonprofit group. Calling them and pulling the paperwork now."

"It's my fault. It's my fault! I killed my team! " She cries out painfully.

"You didn't know, Paula."

"You weren't there, Eva."

Gibbs leads her out the door and into the agency's truck, leaving us with the task to find the missing head of the bomber.

"What happened here?"

Two unfamiliar men approach the building and try to push past the two police officers in charge of securing the area.

"Hey! Calm down!" Gibbs charges towards them. "Who are you?"

"We work here." One of the states.

"For the Muslim Coalition For Peace." The other adds.

The boss motions for them to enter.

"Yazeed. Was he. . .was he in here?"

"We were supposed to help him paint this afternoon."

Ziva, who had been standing on the ladder in search of the hand, yells something muffled before a decapitated head falls from the exposed ceiling.

The first man mutters something in Arabic while the second drops to his knees.

"Do you recognize him?"

"Yazeed Fahad. Our chapter president."

After we finish assessing the crime scene, the team takes the two men back to headquarters to interrogate them.

Calmer than before, Paul joins me in the backroom. "Whatever happened to Gibbs' rule about not putting two suspects in the same room?"

"It's more of just a guideline." I shrug my shoulders.

One of the two, Jamal, admits to having lunch with Abdul at the Grace Street Diner during the time of the bombing. Gibbs looks towards the one-way mirror.

"I'm going with you."

"No, you're not." I strap my holster under my blazer. "Gibbs wants you to stay here."

"Why?"

"You should ask him."

The next morning, Tony, Ziva, Paula, and I congregate in the bullpen to share our findings on our suicide bomber Yazeed Fahad.

"Swabbed his apartment. Not a trace of explosives."

Ziva displays the dead man's driver's license.

"He was a former sailor and the president of the Muslim Society of Promoting Peace, as mentioned by his friends."

"Tony checked out his friends. Their alibis hold up. They were at a restaurant when —"

"Alright, are you going to make a point soon?" Paula impatiently interrupts her.

The Mossad liaison projects another image. "Yes. Who did you see entering the building, Cassidy?"

"I'm not convinced that it wasn't this guy." She motions to the screen. "I mean, how do we know that Ducky didn't make a mistake?"

"Simple: he doesn't make mistakes." My hands slip down to my waist.

"Which means that what you saw yesterday was — by definition — a mistake."

"Look, even if he did die the day before, it doesn't mean he wasn't involved, right?"

"She does have a valid point, Ziva."

"We don't even know what his cause of death is." Paula continues. "For all we know, he could have committed suicide."

Ziva lets out a loud, sarcastic laugh. "A suicide bomber who commits suicide before his bombing? That doesn't make any sense!"

Gibbs returns from the director's office and sends me and Paula back to the crime scene to reexamine it.

I snap on a pair of gloves. "You take the right, I'll take the left."

"Okay." She exhales through her nose deeply.

"You okay?"

"It's just. . .it's so dusty in here."

"We both know that I do, Eva."

The two of us work in a plain space of silence, searching for any hidden areas the unknown man could have slipped out.

"Usually, you'd be talking my ears off." Paula teases lightly. "What's wrong?"

I shine a flashlight over the wall. "I should be the one asking you that."

"You broke up with DiNozzo, didn't you?" Her brows furrow.

"A few months ago, yeah." I nod my head once.

"But you still love him?"

"I. . .I don't know."

Her hand falls on my shoulder.

"Life is too short not to tell someone you love them if you. And you do."

We break for lunch and coffee after reaching no success with finding an escape route. Paula sits on the ground with her back against the wall when I walk in.

"There's a secret passageway, and I know it."

"How are you going to find it?"

A dry chuckle leaves my lips when an idea pops into my head. "Looks like I'm going to be tapping into my inner DiNozzo."

"What? Is that supposed to be dirty?" Her brows scrunch in the middle.

"Movie knowledge, Paula." I slip my hand into the brown paper bag and pull out a cigar. "You don't smoke, do you?"

"Never in my life. You?"

I shake my head.

"But there's a first time for everything."

From the back wall to the one Paula's sitting against, I breathe in a puff and let the smoke out through my mouth.

"Well, would you look at that?"

Paula stands up just as the wall absorbs the smoke, something Tony had mentioned to me during a stakeout.

"I'll go get a pry bar."

"And water. I wasn't made to be a smoker."

A painful cough rattles my throat while I press the end of the cigar into the bottle of water, extinguishing the smoke and flame.

Paula, however, enters from the other side of the secret passageway and opens it. I walk through the door, and it closes behind me rather quickly.

"Congratulations, you were telling the truth. And you're not crazy."

"Not yet, at least."

Late into the night, we finally return to the building to report our discovery of the passageway to the rest of the team.

"So, Paula tells me you tapped your inner DiNozzo, huh?"

"It's just a figure of speech, Tony."

"Hey. I'm honored to have been mentioned at all."

The morning after, Abby finds a fingerprint from the broken lens from the crime scene, which leads us to a computer programmer from Kertek Computing. Ziva, McGee, Paula, and Gibbs try to bring him in but instead shoot him down.

During the afternoon, we dress in more formal clothes for a memorial being held in honor of Yazeed, James Nelson, and Rick Hall.

At the crime scene.

Tony and I walk into the building itself while the others wait for the arrival of the peace group.

"Gibbs said we were supposed to be on the hotline this weekend. Not Paula and her team." He breaks the silence. "That could have been us."

I exhale deeply through the nose. "But it wasn't, Tony."

"No." His gaze shifts to meet mine. "Not this time."

At the last minute, when the members of Yazeed's group are setting up the room for the memorial and celebration, Gibbs receives a call.

"Hands on top of your head!" He grabs Abdul by the hands.

Tony looks back at him. "Boss?"

"It's one of them, DiNozzo." He lets us know. "The prints found on Umar's laptop match the painting gear."

"What laptop?"

"Where's Jamal? Where's Jamal Malik?"

"He was here a minute ago!"

The secret passageway swings open, revealing Jamal standing in the other room with a bomb strapped to his chest.

Before anyone can move, Paula runs to him and knocks him onto his back, the door shutting behind her.

The room next door explodes, creating a ripple effect in this room. Pieces of concrete and dust fall over our heads, but the damage is done.

Paula risked her life, yet again. . .to save ours.

"Go home, Eva."

I refuse to move from my desk, continuing to stare at Special Agent Paula Cassidy's badge. I've polished it nearly three times already, but nothing's enough.

"Do you have anywhere to be?"

A chill runs down my spine the second Tony's palms make contact with my shoulders.

"No."

"Come home with me." He whispers in a low tone. "We can order takeout, watch a movie. . .and grieve together."

". . .okay."