The team races to find the children of a Judge Advocate General (JAG) prosecutor after they are kidnapped from a park carousel in season 1, episode 3 of NCIS: New York.
The episode opens with JAG prosecutor and special U.S. attorney, Captain Margaret Shaw, at the park with her family. While their kids ride the park carousel, Margaret and her husband, Tim, argue about her busy schedule. To cool things down, Margaret leaves to check her phone and bumps into a woman with a hot dog. The woman apologizes and tries to wipe her shirt off, but Margaret brushes her off.
Eventually, she cleans herself off, grabs a couple of hot dogs for her family, and rejoins her husband at the carousel. But when the ride finishes, the couple notices their children are nowhere to be found. They shout their names, Gus & Gwen, while they search, but they come up empty.
Meanwhile, Nick agrees to meet Sam for breakfast. But when Sam gets to the restaurant, he finds out that his new partner tricked him into a breakfast date with a woman named Cassie. Sam is caught off guard but goes along with the date. He and Cassie make awkward small talk until Nick calls and apologizes for not showing up. Of course, Sam doesn't believe a word he says.
Nick is also served with papers for a mysterious reason while ordering coffee at a cafe.
It's time to buzz the tower
Afterwards, Robyn calls the team in to brief them on their new case. Wyatt and Addy will go undercover as a couple to stake out the Shaws' hotel and make contact, while Sam and Nick go to the crime scene. Once there, Sam and Nick exchange theories on how Gwen and Gus were kidnapped without anyone seeing anything. Sam thinks the kids got off the ride while looking for their dad, and someone snatched them.
Wyatt and Addy overhear the Shaws arguing in their hotel room over who is to blame for their children being kidnapped. Things escalate when Margaret slaps Tim, so the agents decide to intervene. While interviewing the couple, they learn the family created a code for their kids to know when someone is safe. The phrase "It's time to buzz the tower" is from the 1986 film Top Gun.
The interview goes sideways when Margaret asks Tim to leave the room since he doesn't have clearance to hear about her work cases. The two start arguing, and Wyatt and Addy are caught in the middle.
Simultaneously, Sam and Nick track a suspicious man to an abandoned brownstone in the city. He's been using teenagers to steal for him as part of some underground theft ring. However, the teens recorded videos at the park that contain important information, so Sam sends the footage to Sean. Unfortunately, he and Robyn don't find anything useful in it, so they decide to comb through footage from other park patrons.
Back at the hotel, Margaret receives a phone call from one of the kidnappers, sending her to an address in the city. Sean can only partially trace the call, so Robyn sends Sam and Nick to shadow Margaret.
Later, Sean sends Wyatt and Addy videos of Tim texting a mysterious woman. They confront him, and he confesses that he was texting his former nanny and ex-mistress. He says he ended things, and Margaret doesn't know, but Wyatt and Addy remain suspicious. They press Tim for the nanny's contact information, but he's hesitant, so they show him the park footage.
To make matters worse, Addy suspects the nanny knows the family's code phrase.
The Shaws are running out of time
Back at the gaming center, Sam and Nick suspect the kidnappers may have already killed the kids, so Sam tells Margaret to ask for proof of life. The kidnappers send her a video of the kids alive, but Margaret notes that Gwen is having an allergic reaction. She now has to work faster to satisfy the kidnappers' needs so she can save her daughter's life.
Meanwhile, Wyatt and Addy interrogate the Shaws' former nanny, Chloe. She admits she followed the family to New York to talk to Tim but says she had nothing to do with the kidnapping. However, the interrogation isn't a complete bust.
Wyatt and Addy show Chloe some photos of Margaret's defendants to see if she recognizes someone. Thankfully, she points out a man named Jason. She says he lives near the Shaws and asked her out after Tim broke things off with her. He told her he worked for the State Department, but the team discovers he's actually on trial for embezzlement. His name isn't even Jason; it's Devon Lancaster.
Lancaster kidnapped Gwen and Gus to force Margaret to hand over her protected witness list. He's trying to locate and kill a witness in Connecticut who can testify against him at trial. So, Robyn decides to contact the local police to alert them to the situation and protect the witness.
Right then, Sean bursts in and tells the team that he has the suspect's location but needs help narrowing it down to a specific unit. Time is of the essence, so Robyn sends Wyatt and Abby to the apartment building to begin canvassing.
Meanwhile, Margaret panics when she can't remember her account password. Sam tries to calm her down, but Lancaster grows suspicious that she called the cops. He tells her she has 30 seconds to access her files, or her kids are dead. Fortunately, Wyatt and Addy arrive at the apartment just in time to capture him. The only problem is he doesn't have the kids with him.
The team applies pressure, and Lancaster gives up his accomplice, Lola Dambrock, aka the woman who ran into Margaret in the park earlier. Robyn discovers Lola has a lengthy criminal record of mostly financial crimes. It's likely Devon promised her a big payday if she helped him.
But Gwen doesn't have time for everyone to sit around, so the team springs into action. Sean uses Gwen's allergies as a guide to track the location where she and her brother are being kept. This leads the team to a recently closed Indian restaurant near the East 34th St. docks.
Sam faces a ghost from his past as Nick gets a surprise of his own
When they arrive, Nick and Addy apprehend Lola, while Sam and Wyatt locate the kids. They find them in the basement, and Wyatt administers an EpiPen to counteract Gwen's allergic reaction. Soon, the kids are reunited with their parents, and the team goes home happy.
Back at the office, Wyatt makes Addy a proposition (no, not that kind). Get your mind out of the gutter.) He wants to ask her a series of questions to get to know her better. Addy agrees to ten questions, rather than the proposed twenty, and Wyatt says he'll think up some good ones. However, Addy throws him a freebie. The person she was talking to on the phone this morning? A friend Addy met while stationed in New Delhi. Her husband has been hitting her, and Addy is concerned for her safety.
At the same time, Nick tells Robyn that he got subpoenaed by the feds. They're investigating his former partner on corruption charges. Robyn says she can get Nick a lawyer, but he's okay for now.
Meanwhile, Sam shows up to a jazz club dressed to the nines. He approaches a lady at the bar he seems to have history with, and the two engage in some flirty (?) banter. However, it quickly becomes clear there's bad blood between them when the woman, Tamara, throws a martini in Sam's face.
Welcome back to New York, Sam!
NCIS: New York airs every Tuesday at 9/8c on CBS.
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