Tony was just about to put his foot down on the porch when his senses caught up with his brain. The shiny metallic disks, spaced regularly across the floor, the gentle puff of some liquid misting out from nozzles along the house and the unmistakable feeling of one hell of a lot of electrical current nearby. Jerking himself backward to keep from making contact with the deck, he grabbed the railing and uttered a heartfelt, Holy shit! at the same time.

Tony? You okay? Christie's voice was shaky. She was sitting on the kitchen floor, looking at a puddle of needle sharp darts.

Oh, yeah, fine, thank you very much. First you scare me half to death and then I try to do it to myself. What happened to you?

Everything was great until I got to the mat by the door. He must have lined it with something that blocked the scanner, because it read clean. I put just enough weight on it to trigger a trap and received a shower of nasty-looking sharp darts. Christie was slowly getting her composure back. She took out several evidence bags to preserve a few of the darts, layering the bags to prevent the tips from poking through. Your turn. What earned the latest DiNozzo curse?

Forget that! You didn't get hit by any of those darts did you? They're probably poisoned.

Really, you think? I got out of the way just in time, thankfully. I was just moving forward when I felt the trigger beneath my foot click. If I hadn't been going slow I'd've been toast. The closest dart landed about an inch away from my foot. Now, what happened out there? Christie was carefully curling the mat underneath the darts and attempting to clear them away from the door.

Death trap on the porch. No biggie. Say Harrison, thanks for the warning. What tipped you off?

Heard the hum, got damp from the mist, said Harrison Listen there's something...

Get out of that shirt immediately, and wash off anywhere the mist touched you. Tony cut him off. Not from the hot tub! That's poisoned! Go grab a bottle of water from the truck. And save the shirt as evidence, just in case. As he watched the disgruntled agent head for the front of the house, Tony shook his head and muttered, Great, just what I need, another one to land in the hospital.

Christie reclaimed his attention. You wanna clarify that death trap comment?

Sure. Erickson's electrified the back porch. And then for an added degree of difficulty, he has a mist of some sort spraying from nozzles set in to the back wall of the house.

Electrified? You're joking. Electrified it how? Shouldn't that be impossible?

Look for yourself, if you can get close enough to the door. Once Tony saw her face appear in the window of the door, he gestured to the now glowing spots covering the last remaining access to the house.

So what are you going to do? She looked up at him.

Well, in theory, any rubber should insulate me. What worries me is what's spraying from those nozzles. If it's just water, it simply ups the electrical stakes. If it's anything else, then we might have other problems. Tony sighed deeply. Weariness ran bone deep, and he was heartily sick of everything Erickson had thrown at him. More than anything Tony just wanted to quit, but he knew that he owed it to Gibbs and Kate, not to mention the sickened Marines, to carry on.

Okay, I'll agree with you there. But what else would it be? And wouldn't he run out of an alternate fluid faster? Water is a slightly more reliable supply. Christie was willing to help reason it through, but she didn't like where it was going any better than he did. Didn't there just have to be an end to how far one person could go? Come on, Tony, she pleaded, isn't it just too much to think it's anything but water?

Tony, from his position on the stairs, let out a mirthless chuckle. I might have agreed with you before. But not now. Arthur Erickson III seems to be very serious when it comes to doing bodily injury to other human beings. He sagged against the house, wondering if there was indeed any way to beat this latest trap.

Owens looked up as Harrison headed toward him, frantically unbuttoning his shirt. Pete, what the hell are you doing out here? I told you to stay back there a keep an eye on DiNozzo and his circus for me. Christ! He threw up his hands in disgust.

What are you listening to Dave, NPR? You're supposed to be monitoring communications in case of emergency! That little maggot rigged the back porch with some electrical whosits and water or something. Pete Harrison had an awful time communicating with his superiors when he became flustered, which was probably why he never got ahead.

What? All right, spit it out, let's hear the whole thing. Owens sat back and gave the junior agent an irritated glare. Not that he'd admit it, but he had been listening to NPR. He assumed Harrison would come running if there was a problem; if he had to be stranded out here, he'd at least try to make the best of it.

Pete swallowed hard. DiNozzo was worried that this might have been more than water. He said I should grab a water bottle and rinse off. I'm doing that first. He was shaking after he said that. He'd never stood up to Dave before. Then again, he'd never seen some of the things he'd seen today either. Maybe DiNozzo was a skirt-chaser, but he was on Gibbs' team. It was no secret that Gibbs was never assigned agents -- he was always allowed to choose them himself. And by now, it was obvious to him why anyone on Gibbs team really was worthy of respect. Pete knew if it had been up to him, he could never have stepped in and taken over for Dave in a spot like this. Not like DiNozzo had for Gibbs. Maybe it was time to stop letting other agents' attitudes make up his mind for him.

He looked over at his boss. How could Owens have missed all this? Pulling on the last haz-mat suit, he said, Trust me, Dave, the nutball that set all this up really knew what he was doing. I swear I don't know how Shales and DiNozzo have made it this far. There's been some really weird shit in that house. Shales must have over a dozen captures of specifically set traps that Erickson can't deny knowledge of, at least ten more he can claim he didn't know about. She has samples of what we assume to be poisoned darts, and DiNozzo's back there trying to see if there's a safe way across an electrified deck.

Owens sat in silence for a moment. And here he thought DiNozzo was just being overly dramatic after his partners were poisoned. Owens knew the mission was serious, but he was pretty pissed to have been put in a junior position to some self-important pretty boy with a case of booby-trap paranoia. Perhaps he had been a little unfair in that initial assessment. It seemed nearly all of Tony's fears had been justified, and he and Shales had apparently worked together to keep each other alive. Owens made a decision he probably should have made a few hours ago. He radioed for an ambulance to be dispatched to the scene. Just in case. Then he did what he should have been doing all along, he switched the radio to monitor Shales and DiNozzo.

Tony looked at the glowing disks with complete revulsion. Then he bent down until his eyes were level with the decking material. It looked like the wood had been coated with something rubberized. Okay,' he thought, that explains why the deck isn't burning. Now does that mean I can get across as well?' He briefly considered just walking across the damned thing, if only because he was sick of letting some demented perp call the shots from a holding cell in DC. Then he did the sensible thing, asking Harrison for one of the extra haz-mat suits from Bourne's truck.

As Harrison rounded the corner carrying the suit, he decided to show the hotshot young agent who the smart one was. Hey, genius! Ever think of just calling the electric company and getting them to cut the power?

Christie, watching silently from inside, waited for Tony's answer. She'd wondered about this too, but then she considered what they'd learned of Erickson.

Tony looked over at Harrison and sighed. Do you really think anyone as twisted as our weasel would leave something this sophisticated to the flip of a switch from Virginia Power? If there's anything I've learned today, it's that if you think you've defeated one trap you've just walked into three more. My best guess is that if we kill the power, either he's wired into another source we don't know about, or he has a back-up generator. Or, in true evil genius style, he has a bomb rigged to detect a loss of power, taking out our evidence and us, and probably most of the property to be on the safe side. Still want to cut the power?

Harrison paled as Tony went through his little speech. He hadn't considered any of this. It wasn't as if he hadn't been paying attention today. He just didn't think it could keep going like this; No one could be that evil.

Christie just nodded to herself as she listened to Tony. She'd guessed right. She knew good old jerk-boy would have backup power... but a bomb? Christ, now that was something she hadn't thought of and she hoped Tony was wrong about that.

Okay, let's see if a standard issue NCIS haz-mat suit can hold up to one back porch death trap. Tony moved as close as he dared and then held the suit just under the arms and lowered it until it touched the deadly surface. At first nothing seemed to happen, then he began to feel a low buzz move through his body. He shifted, and in doing so, shifted the suit. The heat from the disks was starting to melt the rubber on the soles of the feet -- troubling, but if he moved quickly, not fatal, he hoped. What was more disturbing was that his movement had triggered a third sensor. Yet another set of jets sprayed an unknown liquid onto the deck, crossways to the first. Tony leapt backward on the stairs, flinging the suit onto the deck and grabbing for the railing to keep from falling.

That's it! he exploded. I've had it. This isn't real anymore, it's insane! Forget the damned evidence, I'm just going to go shoot the smarmy bastard. Several dozen times! Tony slammed his fist into the railing in frustration.

Christie watched and listened as the calm, competent man she'd been working with sank onto the stairs in a pool of rage and frustration. She ached with wanting to rescue him from his feelings of defeat, but the words wouldn't come. She forced herself to try anyway.

Well, we must be on the right track. I mean, if it's this difficult to get in, Erickson must actually have something worth protecting in here. Right?

Tony swiveled his head around to look in her direction and snorted. Then he spied the haz-mat suit on the porch. It had begun to come apart in shreds. What the hell?

What, what the... Christie looked where Tony's gaze had been drawn. Is that the suit? What's wrong with it? Is that from the electrodes?

I don't know. I don't know if I want to know! What I do know is that I'm hungry, tired, pissed beyond belief and I have finally discovered that I can indeed hate one human being more than I ever thought possible. He let out an angry and frustrated sigh. Ah, hell. All right. There has got to be a way to get inside, right? I just must be overlooking the obvious.

Christie thought about that, and began running the whole sequence of events over in her head. Tony was right, they had to be missing something.

Harrison decided, however, that he'd had about enough. He, too, was tired and hungry, never mind that he'd been there only half as long as the other man. Listen, DiNozzo, this is ridiculous! We're chasing our tails out here. It's late, you've been at this all day... Let's just find a way to get Christie out of there safe, and call it a day... His voice trailed off as he saw the fury building in the younger agent's eyes.

Tony shot with venom. My partners, my family, are in the goddamned hospital because of this pig. Everything that can put him away is in this house. If I have to die seeing to it that Erickson never again walks free, then so be it. He knew exactly what he was doing when he gave us this place, and when. I don't know that we can afford the time we're taking, much less an extra six or eight hours. You want to go? Fine, go. I'm staying. As sick to death as I am of this entire pile of psychotic logic, I will not let my team and those Marines down. He turned away from the other agent, not caring in the least what the man did at that moment.