The daughter of an Navy Commander is kidnapped from her home in the Angeles National Forest and buried alive. This case visibly strikes a cord with Sam.

He, too, was once buried and left for dead, in Bosnia, as we learn in flashbacks. Even though this is now an FBI case, he insists that Hetty allow him to stay on it.

The team tracks a car seen leaving the forest to the brother of convicted serial killer, Timon Maragos; whose M.O was burying young girls alive.

Alex Maragos acts suspicious and during questioning, Sam catches him lying about his whereabouts the night of the kidnapping.

Meanwhile, Deeks talks to Timon in prison where tries to implicate his brother in the previous murders and Ashley's kidnapping.

The team doesn't know who to believe and with time running out Callen comes up with a plan to set a trap for both brothers and see which one of them takes the bait and leads them to Ashley.

The plan works but when Callen and Sam tackle the suspects they discover that it is not Alex or Timon but Alex's teenage sons. Apparently, they admired their uncle and wanted to see if killing someone felt as good as Timon described.