Take Two – Death Becomes Him

By: Gladys Luna

A man is walking nervously through the aisles of a motel. When he finally reaches for his room door, distant noises startle him yet he manages to enter safely. Once inside his room, a car alarm starts to beep and the man walks outside his room to see what happened. When he leans on the railing, the structure falls off taking the man with it.

Sam (Rachel Bilson) and Eddie (Eddie Cibrian) are called in the middle of the night by somebody, asking them to meet him at an underdog garage. Sam comes with the possible reasons for it, but Eddie tells her that he only knows that nothing good happens after 3 am and that it is never what they think it is.

When they finally arrive to the garage, they are met with Hugh Garlin (Niall Matter) who asks them for an ID. Once he makes sure they are the ones he was supposed to meet with, he opens the trunk of his car and the man that we saw collapsing with the railing earlier at the motel comes out of the trunk and introduces himself as Todd Garlin (Seamus Dever). He explains that he called them since he knows that he’s been followed by someone who wants to murder him. Why is he so sure of it? Because he was the one who hired a hitman to do it. It turns out that Todd was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer, so he decided to hire someone to kill him and make it look like an accident so that his life insurance could be effective. Later, he realized that he was misdiagnosed and since the way he hired the hitman was so secretive he has no idea how to undo the deal he made. The only clue he has is that the hitman refers to himself as “Azrael.” Falling from the second floor of the motel was one of his attempts to kill him but he luckily had landed over a convertible which was what saved him.

Sam and Eddie make sure to take Todd to their office where they are confident he will be safe and then they go to the motel looking for any trace of the hitman. Eddie examines the railing and it indeed seems that the collapse was caused to a structural defect. Eddie believes that Todd was tracked so when he examines his car, he finds the device that had been attached to the car electrical system. Eddie calls Berto (Xavier de Guzman) and asks him to present Todd with a different number of alarms so he can identify which one was set off the prior night and identify the car that it might belong to.

After a while, Berto calls Eddie and gives him a possible car model to which the alarm may belong to, something that makes Sam’s realize of the car standing next to Todd’s car. She kicks the tire and the alarm sets off again and Todd hears it from the other side of the line, so he identifies it as the one he heard last night. A man (Jag Bal) comes out of his room and asks them if they are the people that keep setting off his alarm and explains them what he saw. He confesses that when the railing collapsed a man in a Black Silverado ran away.

Back at the office, Sam updates Todd in his case status and he says that he can help her with the tracker. It turns out that he works for a tech company and his job is to pull the pieces apart in order to figure out what is wrong with them and make it right. Or as Sam’s calls him, a “reverse engineer.” He also lets the girl know a bit about his life and how this “misdiagnosis” was a wakeup call for him. When he is done with his work, he confirms that, unfortunately, the device can’t be tracked but Sam says that maybe the skills are so she goes to Eddie and asks him to find and electrical engineer that may own a Black Silverado.

Sam and Eddie show up at a place looking for a man named Avery Rush (Sandy Robson). Sam finds the wielding machine and when they get into the place they see pictures of the railing and the way it was planned to be collapsed. Eddie tells Sam that they should go since he realized that the “hitman” is not one you can negotiate with. When they are about to take off, some electrified bars fall from the ceiling, letting them both caged in it. Eddie’s gun has fallen out of the cage, leaving them both defenseless. Avery shows up and they let him know the reason why they are there. He says that he will cancel the contract he made with Todd, but he can´t let them go and then walks away. Eddie figures that Avery will search his van, find out who they are and come back to kill them, but Sam comes with a plan. She takes off her jacket and throws it away. She then she pulls Eddie towards her and takes off his belt. She removes her bra and clasps it to the belt. Eddie remains confused until he understands what Sam is doing. As fabric and leather are non – conductive, they are able to throw the belt through the bars and reach for the gun. After a few failed attempts they finally manage to reach for it and when they are dragging the gun towards the cage Avery shows up and steps on it. He takes the gun and Eddie (who is still holding the other end of the belt) pulls from it, making the man to collapse against the electrified cage.

After a while, Detective Rollins (Aliyah O’Brien) shows up and is advised on what happened. Eddie and Sam return to the office and let Todd know that he is finally free. The man seems to be happy and eager to go home and start his new life. A few minutes after he leaves he calls them as the sudden realization of what “starting over” means had finally caught up with him. As he is speaking to Sam, the communication seems to be breaking and Eddie figures out that the line has been interfered with so he asks Todd to step out of the car immediately. Suddenly, a blast is heard and they run to the window to see Todd’s car in flames. Fortunately, Todd survived once again and he only had a few scratches. Eddie informs him that the bomb was plant while Avery was already in custody, so it is not possible that it was him. After trying to figure out who may have been after Todd, he and Sam agree to fake his death. Eddie seems to be reluctant of the idea at first, but he ends up agreeing to it.

Eddie talks to Detective Rollins and asks her to help them to fake Todd’s death. She agrees but before everything starts Todd asks Sam to talk to his wife and tell her the truth. Sam meets Lisa (Christine Chatelaine) and tells her everything that’s been happening lately with Todd. She is completely surprised at the sudden direction her life has taken but agrees to see her husband. The couple meet up and Todd promises his wife that after this he will be the husband and father that she always wanted him to be. The plan is executed, and everything seems to be going as expected until Lisa’s friends plan a funeral for Todd. The man insists on attending so with Sam’s help they do. Sam does his makeup and they show up watching the whole “fake funeral” unravel before them. As they are walking by the attendees, Todd hears some conversations about him from colleagues and former classmates.

He speaks to Sam and a woman turns shocked at him calling him by his real name but then she realizes is “someone else” instead since Todd is disguised as an older man. The woman introduces herself as Cheryl Axelrod (Francoise Yip), the CEO of MegaTech – the company to what Todd works for. She shares a small conversation with them before Sam takes Todd away trying to stop him from saying something that may discover the façade. Todd is surprised that Cheryl had shown up to his funeral given that they barely talk. Todd had seen Lisa talking to someone so he approaches her and asks her about it. Lisa tells him that someone from his company had asked for his laptop and files that he had in the house.

In the meantime, Eddie, Berto and Detective Rollins are going through some files trying to figure out from which cell phone the bomb was triggered as they had found out already that the bomb was remotely activated. Eddie finds out that the call was made from inside MegaTech so he calls Sam to tell her about it. The girl tells him where she is currently at and also informs him that she may have found out who had tried to murder Todd.

Todd, Sam and Eddie meet at the office. He is asked to enter to his laptop files and he realizes that some of the reports he had written are missing. He confesses that the content of those reports explained a flaw he had found on the MegaTech Smart Detectors. If they enable the WIFI they could be hacked and turned into a listening device. Apparently, he had advised the company about it and they said they could fix it but if the clients would find out about it, it will represent a major hit for the company. Sam and Eddie pay a visit to the CEO Cheryl and let them know about the flaw in their products and suggest that they know that they may have “murdered” Todd. When the woman is confirmed about the time and day the bomb was triggered from a phone that was inside their building, she assures them that she wasn’t there at a time. She is requested to deliver the camera footage of that day, but she says that they only use body scanners and that is how they find out that Todd’s brother, Hugh, was at the building at the time the bomb was detonated.

Sam and Eddie call Todd but he won’t answer so they go to see him at the place where he was hiding and find him lying on the floor. They take him to the hospital and tell him about his brother. He gets confused and refuses to believe that his brother tried to murder him so he asks to be left alone.

Sometime after Hugh arrives at Todd’s place and calls for Lisa, but he meets Todd instead. Todd faces him and Hugh confesses that his death would mean a second chance for him since he is the only one who had always been there for Todd’s family. He admits that he, in fact, tried to murder him and that is when Sam and Eddie show up to tell him that his confession has been sent live to LA Police station. Detective Rollins shows up as well and handcuffs him.

Back at the office Todd thanks Sam and Eddie and tells them about his plans and Sam is sure that he will be ok. The next day, Eddie is about to leave when Sam intercepts him and asks him to go to his office as she has something to show him. Earlier in the episode Eddie had confessed Sam about how he stopped surfing after he nearly drowns and she had managed to recover his old surf board. He is surprised to see the gift standing in the middle of the office as he approaches and touches it carefully, still amazed by it. The girl is afraid that she might have stepped out of some boundaries, but he assures her that he is fine and promises that he would use it one of these days. Sam asks him to invite her as he may have a chance to see her in a bikini and then walks away, leaving an “all smiles” Eddie behind.

There goes another adventure and of course, another case solved! Please make sure to return next Thursday for more at 10/9c on ABC. ¡Hasta la próxima!