Tonight on CBS NCIS returns with an all-new Monday, January 16, 2023, season 20 episode 11 called, “Bridges,” and we have your weekly NCIS recap below. In tonight’s NCIS season 20 episode 11, “Bridges” as per the CBS synopsis, “Parker discovers he’s a victim of identity theft while investigating the unusual murder of a Navy ensign. Also, Knight and Jimmy face hurdles in their relationship as their connection heightens.”
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In tonight’s NCIS episode, Navy Ensign Ashley Watts was found dead in a motel room. She lived not that far from the motel. McGee wondered why she wouldn’t go to such a place when she lives nearby and Parker told him that there was only one reason why a motel would be needed.
The victim was meeting up with a lover. Someone she couldn’t bring home. Someone she probably couldn’t be seen with. Parker assumed this person might be married and that his wife found out about Ashley. It could explain why she was murdered in a motel room.
Only McGee looked into who booked the room. The name that popped up was Parker’s. It was Parker’s name and his credit card that was used to book the room and no one knew why. Parker had never met Ashley before. Luckily, Parker has an alibi on the night of the murder.
He also realized, thanks to this, that someone stole his identity. He had to contact his accountant. He had to freeze all of his accounts. He also had to give Kasie permission to go digging through his digital life and find out who was committing identity theft.
Ashely might even have known about this identity theft. She was an accountant herself for the Navy. She was universally liked and respected at the job. Ashley was a foster kid for a while until she got adopted as a teenager. She was her parents’ whole world.
She was their only child and they were so proud of her. When the parents were asked about Ashley’s private life, they told NCIS that she was seeing someone. His name was Travis Jacobs. He lived in Virginia. Ashley had roommates. They could have been meeting up at the motel trying to get some measure of privacy.
Except Travis didn’t come forward after Ashley died. The team also looked into him and there was no Travis Jacobs. They were able to get a picture of him and with the help of facial rec, they identified him as Ryan Aaronson. He was the son of Joy Aaronson who was also known as Joy Sullivan.
She was Parker’s, first love. They were briefly together when they were kids and Parker hasn’t seen her in years. She might have told her son about him because someone must have known him well enough to get around his security questions on all of his accounts.
His identity was just stolen. Someone used his information to log into the Department of Defense’s mainframe. They accessed information on several Navy servicemen and women. Ashley’s information was one of them. NCIS assumed that Ashley was Ryan’s mark. He was trying to steal her identity. So, they went looking for Ryan. They checked his mom’s place. Joy punched Parker the second she saw him and that’s when the truth came out. Joy’s parents made the whole family move out of Philly because they wanted to get Joy away from the young Parker.
He was a troublemaker back in the day. Joy was so angry with him that she refused to write back to him or to return any of the letters he sent until he eventually gave up on writing her. But she kept the letters. She put them in a box and once she learned her son was in trouble – she went looking for that box. It later proved to be empty. Her son had stolen the letters to get information on Parker and to steal Parker’s identity. Joy said that her ex-husband’s crime partner might be involved as well. Joy’s ex-husband was in prison for pulling off several petty cons. And Ryan was following in his footsteps.
Ryan started to work with a man named Todd. They targeted the Navy. They pretended to be CIA recruiters to get Ashley to add their account to the official system and they get a check from the Navy. According to Todd, something went wrong. Ashley was keeping secrets. Ryan also made the mistake of falling in love with her. Ryan wanted to back out of the con the moment he fell for Ashley. He came clean to her. She forgave him. They were even trying to undo the system hack. They wanted to start over together.
Once Ryan was later found hiding at his mother’s place, Parker was able to arrest him and bring him in for questioning. Ryan came clean by trying to con Ashley. He also said he fell in love with her and that she was more important than the con. He told them about trying to undo what they did. He even mentioned that Ashley started to hide things from him. Which he didn’t understand until he found her dead in the motel room. Ryan thought he would get blamed for her death and so he ran. Only Todd was telling the truth. Ashley was keeping secrets.
They tracked Ashley in her final hours back to a storage unit. There was a hidden compartment inside where Ashley was hiding guns, money, and several passports under different names. Ashley wasn’t some poor foster kid that landed a good home. She was a foreign spy. Someone was sent to infiltrate the Navy and she must have thought she got lucky when Ryan pretended to be the CIA. But then she fell in love with him. Like actually fell in love. He fell in love with her too. They were both willing to turn their backs on everything else to be together and Ashley was killed because of that.
Parker negotiated a deal with Ryan in which they used Ryan to lure out Ashley’s killer. He gets to escape the prison that way and so he agreed to deal and he helped NCIS figure out that Ashley’s adoptive parents were actually her Russian handlers. And so those two got arrested for murder as well as espionage.
And the whole thing finally gave Parker the chance to make his move on Joy. She was the one that got away and he still carries a torch for her.
THE END!
