NCIS: New York season 1, episode 2, opens with a young couple in a jewelry store after hours. It turns out the young man is Ben Gellman, the store owner's son. To impress his girlfriend, he enters the vault, pulls out the first piece of jewelry his grandfather ever made, and places it around her neck.
Unfortunately, the romantic vibe is ruined when an explosion knocks Ben unconscious and sends his girlfriend, Corrine, into shock.
Four masked men emerge from the hole created by the explosion, with one man pointing a gun in Corinne's face. Thankfully, she's able to get away, but Ben remains unconscious on the ground.
Cut to the New York station office, where Sam and Nick are working out in the gym. They bust each other's chops for a while and then move on to more personal matters. Sam hasn't decided where he'll live yet, so Nick offers to set him up with a good real estate agent. He also asks if Sam has any ex-girlfriends in the area that he wants to reconnect with.
Sam says it's best to live the past in the past.
Meanwhile, Wyatt tries and fails to sell his engagement ring, while Addy agonizes over her terrible blind date. They are in the middle of talking about how dumb men can be when Nick says that they've caught a case.
In the wrong place, at the wrong time
According to Robyn, the NYPD has been tracking the four-man crew who broke into the Gellman family jewelry store. The group uses military-grade explosives, which makes them more dangerous than your typical heist crew.
The crime lab tracked the explosives to Naval Weapons Station Earl using their coded microplastics. Now, the team has to figure out how the explosives were stolen. Robyn sends Wyatt and Addy to the weapons stations to investigate the theft, while Sam and Nick talk to Corrine at the hospital.
She doesn't remember much about the masked men, except that they were wearing what looked like hockey masks. Unfortunately, Ben's parents interrupt the conversation when they call for a doctor for their son.
Meanwhile, Wyatt and Addy are arriving at the weapons stations when Nick calls with bad news: Ben Gellman has passed away. The duo laments the loss of the 22-year-old, saying he was "in the wrong place at the wrong time."
Back in New York, Nick and Sam visit the crime scene. Based on the physical evidence, Sam thinks the crew is trained. They review security footage and confirm Sam's theory but also find images of a car with "Wallshill Commercial Cleaning" on the side. They get Sean to track it down.
At the same time, Wyatt and Addy check the inventory at the Naval Weapons Station but find a discrepancy. The C4 listed on the inventory log is accounted for, meaning someone inside the station falsified the paperwork. All the evidence points to Joaquin, the soldier who mans the front desk at the weapons station. But by the time Wyatt and Addy get back to his desk, he's gone.
Sam and Nick go to Joaquin's house to track him down. But they meet his brother, Matteo, instead. He seems cooperative and even tells Sam about Joaquin's troubled past. But Sam notes something is off.
When Nick searched Joaquin's room, he found a photo from the soldier's football days. His coach? The jewelry store's security manager, Alex Villante.
Matteo is not his brother's keeper
Wyatt and Addy track the robbery crew's van to an alley on Long Island and find a handful of cigarette butts they can use to get DNA. Inside, they find the bodies of the real cleaning crew from Wallshill Commercial Cleaning, Carlos and Vilma. They are tied up and disheveled, but alive.
Sam thinks the heist went sideways when Ben died, so why leave the couple alive when they're witnesses?
The crime lab gets a hit off the prints from the cigarette butts: Roderick Gaines and Michael Norton. But Nick recognizes them. They're both former players from Villante's team. Gaines and Norton are the muscle. Joaquin is the demolition expert. And Villante is the brain. That makes four.
However, Sam thinks there's one more: Joaquin's brother, Matteo.
The team decides to hit the crew all at once to catch them off guard. Sam and Nick will take Villante, while Wyatt and Addy handle the others. Unfortunately, when the team arrives at the suspects' locations, they find that everyone has already fled. Everyone, except for Matteo, that is.
During the interrogation, Matteo cracks under the pressure and confesses that he has a gambling problem. He got banned from a couple of gambling apps, but Villante helped him get his "fix." As a result, he accrued an $80,000 debt that he couldn't pay. But Villante didn't want his money anyway. He wanted Joaquin. Or rather, his expertise.
Meanwhile, Sean finds Villante's next target: a weed dispensary. That way, he can grab a large amount of cash at once and leave town.
Cut back to the interrogation where Matteo claims he was in distress when he gave Joaquin up to Villante. Sam admonishes him for being weak and presses Matteo for information on his brother's whereabouts. Matteo says he doesn't know and that Joaquin only owes Villante one more job before he's free. But Sam says that Joaquin isn't free because Matteo ruined his life.
Joaquin hits rock bottom
Nick finds the dispensary the heist crew plans to hit for one last score, but the team is still five minutes out. Sam tells Nick to wait, but he engages anyway. Thankfully, the team arrives just in time to take out one of the suspects before he can shoot Nick.
Villante tries to speed off in his car, but Nick crashes into him before he can get far. While Wyatt puts cuffs on him, Sam goes after Joaquin. He tries to convince the soldier to turn himself in, but Joaquin panics. He knows he's in a lot of trouble.
Sam tells Joaquin he's a good soldier and will help him tell his story. Joaquin is hesitant at first, but lets Sam put cuffs on him. The two walk to the police car, where Sam assures Joaquin the judge will have context on how he got involved with the heist crew in the first place.
Afterwards, Sam checks on Nick, who might have a concussion but is in good spirits. The two bust each other's chops a little more, and the episode ends with a dramatic walk-off in peak NCIS style.
NCIS: New York airs every Tuesday at 9/8c on CBS.
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