The case on NCIS: Sydney episode 5, "Doggiecino Day Afternoon," involved one of the team members: Dr. Roy Penrose (William McInnes). He and his dog were visiting a local dog café when they became hostages. Here’s what went down.
A morning pick-me-up
Dr. Penrose was in a dog café when a young woman (Josie Rawson) entered with blood coming through the arm of her sweatshirt. He tried to help her when she got spooked by the sound of police sirens and opened her sweatshirt to reveal a bomb vest. She doesn't let anyone leave as police arrive on the scene. Dr. Penrose discreetly calls his team at NCIS so they could hear what was going on. The hostage-taker starts streaming live on her phone and threatens if anyone comes through the doors or messes with her live feed, "We all go bang." Cooper (Tuuli Narkler) uncovered her identity: Louie Hall, who robbed a bank earlier that morning where a police officer was shot dead (but it was unclear if she was the shooter).
A crowd was gathered outside of the café when Mackey (Olivia Swann) and Dempsey (Todd Lasance) arrived on the scene. The police already there don't want NCIS involvement, but Dempsey has a (past? current?) thing going on with the lead officer, Detective Sergeant Cath Welsh (Eleanor Stankiewicz), and she let him join the case as long they followed her orders. Mackey spotted a suspicious-looking guy in the crowd and tried to follow him, but lost him quickly.
The hostage-taker's partner
Back at headquarters, the team looked at security footage showing Hall leaving the bank. At the same time, a police officer pulled up to talk to the person in her getaway car. Hall raised her arm and the officer fell to the ground. However, the angle made it unclear if she was the shooter.
Blue (Mavournee Hazel) got into Hall's phone as she was getting an incoming call from a location only five minutes from the headquarters. Jackson (Sean Sagar) and Cooper raced to catch the caller. Hall and the mystery voice talked about something being stashed behind the coffee shop's counter. The mystery voice belongs to that suspicious-looking guy Mackey spotted in the crowd. He told Hall to ask the police for a chopper to get out of there, saying he'd be watching. Jackson and Cooper just missed him at the phone booth.
At the café, the police left a phone outside of the door, allowing Gleeson to get a video stream inside the coffee shop beyond Hall's livestream. Dempsey called Hall, who asked for the chopper, to speak with the health minister and for painkillers.
A robbery to save a life
The team arrived at Hall's mother's house, who already knew what was going on and said her 15-year-old daughter wouldn't answer her calls. She pulled down her sleeves to hide her arms. Mackey insisted on talking privately to fill her in on the situation. Meanwhile, Jackson stayed with Casey, Hall's sister who revealed she heard Hall talking on a payphone with a guy named Stone at the 7-Eleven two days prior.
Hall finally let Penrose help her, revealing a gunshot wound on her arm. Dempsey then came to the door with the painkillers. The hostage team had a clear shot to take Hall down, but Dempsey stopped it, against Welsh's orders.
Gleeson found out Hall's sister Casey had an aggressive form of leukemia, which was why she asked to speak to the health minister. The team also found a man named Stone Matthews, who has a history of drug-related charges. Police barged into his home but he wasn't there.
Dempsey got in contact with Penrose and told him they needed to get K9s into the café. Hall, having connected with Penrose, revealed her sister's illness to him. Just then, she texted her sister asking, "Have you found it?" Casey texted back saying the police were still there, indicating she knew more than she let on.
When the police dog was let in, Hall revealed her vest was fake. However, the K9 signaled that it's real, so this 15-year-old girl thought she was wearing a fake explosive vest, but it's very real.
A last-ditch kidnapping
Bodycam footage from the police officer outside the bank showed Stone was the driver in the getaway car and he killed the officer. Hall was freaked out and ran off, and Stone shot her in the arm.
Hall texted her sister again to see where she was, but Casey said she wasn't going to make it. Just then, Stone video called Hall, demanding he see the money from the bank robbery, threatening he can set the vest off at any time. Hall didn't believe him though, because then he'd never get the money. After she hung up, Penrose encouraged her to let the hostages go. But Hall, spiraling, whipped out a gun, demanding they all shut up. Outside, Welsh gave her team the green light to take a shot at Hall if the opportunity presented itself.
Dempsey asked his team to bring Casey to the café. When they arrived at her home, the mom was crying and Casey was gone. Mackey, Jackson and Cooper brought the mom in, saying they found her fingerprints all over Stone's apartment, including on the sewing machine. They accused her of making the bomb vest and Stone was her dealer. She revealed she was supposed to rob the bank with the vest, but Hall went ahead with it because she knew her mom was getting cold feet. The money was for her daughter's cancer treatments. But she didn't know the explosives were real, she just made the vest.
Stone called Hall, revealing he has Casey and demanded the money. Hall sent him the location of where it's hidden, which the team can't see because she used disappearing messages. Dempsey feared that as soon as Stone had the money, he'd set off the bomb.
Since Gleeson had access to Hall's phone, she saw a video where Casey was wearing a tracking tag on her fanny pack, which holds her medicine. Casey's phone was left when Stone took her, so the team used it to track her. They caught up to Stone, who was digging for the money in a dumpster. Jackson grabbed Casey to safety but Stone whipped out his phone, threatening to detonate the bomb. Meanwhile, Dempsey and Welsh were working to block the activation, which they managed to do in the nick of time. When they told Stone, he reached for his gun to aim at the officers, but Mackey shot him first.
Police entered the café and all of the hostages were released. When Hall unbuckled her vest it set off a two-minute timer. Frightened, Hall asked Penrose not to leave her. The bomb squad worked to deactivate the explosives. With mere seconds left, they cut a wire to kill the bomb. It was all over. Hall fainted and Penrose found that the gun wasn’t even loaded.
New episodes of NCIS: Sydney air live on Tuesdays on CBS and stream on Paramount Plus.
