Take Two – Smoking Gun

By: Gladys Luna

Episode two opens with a woman’s voice over telling in deep detail a scene unraveling in front of her. Soon we learn that said voice belongs to Sam (Rachel Bilson) who, along with Eddie (Eddie Cibrian), has been hired to spy on one of her client´s husband. The man, whose name is Bradley Marsh (Jonathan Silverman), is having an affair with one of his film students Daria Passmore (Ashleigh Stewart). The couple is sharing a very intimate moment while Eddie takes some pictures of it. The lights are turned off and suddenly a gunshot is heard. Both Sam and Eddie run towards the beach house and find Brad holding a gun while his lover is lying on the bed all covered in blood. Next thing we know is that the police have arrived and are now investigating the crime scene. Eddie meets with Detective Rollins (Aliyah O’Brien) and he explains to her the reason they were at the crime scene. When the woman asks about Sam, he lets her know that the girl will soon be bored with the whole investigation thing and then he would finally get rid of her. Right at that moment Sam can be seen interrogating Brad who claims to be innocent even when he had seemed to be caught “red-handed.” Eddie approaches the girl and takes her away from him, but Sam is pretty sure that Brad was not Daria´s killer and she lets Eddie know that he just hired them to help him solve the case. As usual, Eddie refuses to do it.

Later that day, Eddie and Sam go over to see Brad’s wife Cindy (Farrah Aviva) who had initially hired them to spy on her husband. Eddie hands her the usb drive that contains the pictures he took of Brad while he was kissing Daria and also shows her another one he has on his phone. Sam is trying her best to understand what happened, so she begins to question Cindy about her whereabouts and the woman explains that she had an early meeting with her therapist. Sam tries to dig further into that but is immediately stopped by Eddie when he finds out what she is trying to do. He takes her away and asks her to stop meddling, but Sam assures him that the woman must be having an affair with her “said therapist.” Cindy eavesdrop the conversation and asks them about what happened, so they are forced to tell her that apparently her husband has killed his lover. The woman instantaneously understands that Sam was accusing her of Daria’s murder.

Sam insists on taking Brad’s case and he ultimately agrees. After all, they have nothing else to lose. Both of them go to talk to Brad and he explains what happened. Afterwards, they pay a visit to Mick (Jordan Gavaris) who is currently working on the girl’s autopsy. The guy assures them there is nothing unusual on the body aside from the holes in her chest caused by the bullets. Sam asks him to show her Daria’s report and that is the moment they find out that the girl’s fingerprints are a match to another girl named Tina Flores who has been dead for eight years. Apparently, Daria Passmore wasn´t who she said she was.

Berto (Xavier de Guzman) has done some research on Daria and found out that she had supposedly died in a fire in Oakland. The girl had committed some petty thefts but nothing that could actually get her killed. Still, Sam believes she was running away from something and is willing to find out. All of a sudden, there is an electricity buzzing and Berto finds out that someone is on the kitchen; Sam introduces the girl as Monica (Alice Lee), her new assistant. The former actress explains that Monica is getting her Psych PhD and will be helping her in exchange for living in her guest house. The three of them walk towards the girl who is skillfully taking the groceries out and letting Sam know of her future appointments as well as the research she has done on Brad and his past.  Berto seems to be more drawn at her when she explains that she has implants in her hands that may affect electromagnetic fields. The girl finally goes, leaving the three of them dumbfounded behind her.

Sam and Eddie visit Brad and let him know about their recent findings on Daria. He seems to be disappointed as well as surprised at confirming that he didn’t know anything about the girl. All he says is that the girl was persistent on asking him to leave his wife and talked about their future. Apparently, there’s not a single lead that may help until the man remembers that some days ago Daria had ordered a Lyft from his account so that could help them to find her address. And that is how Sam and Eddie find themselves at an isolated apartment filled with burner phones, a lot of makeup, driver licenses from different cities and wigs. There is a locked door that Eddie opens only to find a briefcase with a lot of money in it. Before they know, a man appears behind Sam and locks them both inside the closet leaving them in a very uncomfortable position. Sam manages to call Monica and she is the one able to unlock the door and set them free. Both of them scan the room and realized that the phones and the licenses are no longer there.

The couple try to find something that may help them move any further into the investigation, so they figure out that the best way to do it is to check on the pictures that Eddie has taken of the girl when he was following her to see if they could find something unusual in them. And just as they have thought, they see a car that seem to appear on different photos taken at different days. Eddie immediately recognizes who the car belongs to and decides to pay a visit to the owner. It seems the car belongs to Max Duchemin (Ben Wilkinson), a former friend and work partner of Eddie with whom he didn’t have ended things so well. They share a brief argument with the sarcastic man who reveals nothing but the fact that he was actually following Daria. Now is the turn for Eddie and Sam to figure out, who was Max’s client that requested him to do that.

Eddie and Sam meet with Zeus (Lamont Thompson), Eddie’s old friend from the force. Zeus works at a high-end security consulting firm and he is the one that could help them make their next move; to enter Max’s office and steal Daria’s file. Zeus explains in detail how he’s planning to break them in, but still there’s one thing he will not be able to do and that is to entertain the night guard. Sam confidently tells them that she will take care of that and she does. She shows up at the building’s door knocking insistently. The guard named Peters (Kwesi Ameyaw) asks her to go away, but when Sam sees that he won’t give in so she fake faints. Peters feels compelled to go and help her.

He lays her down on one of the benches nearby and Eddie takes advantage of the situation and walk into the place and straight to the elevators. After some failed attempts of putting the elevator on the move, he finally does it and with the help of Zeus he manages to break into Max’s office and accomplish his goal. In the meantime, Sam is still putting quite of a show trying to distract Peters. The elevator opens and the guard sees Eddie coming out of it but before he do something about it, Sam “maces” him with her hair spray and they run away.

When they go through the file they find out that a man named Jace Buckner (Oliver Rice) had requested Max to follow her. Sam recognizes Jace as the man that locked them at Daria’s apartment. So, as it is expected, they go to visit him. Jace lets them know that he had an affair with the dead girl that back then identified herself as “Vickie.” After a while she started to blackmail him. When he couldn’t keep up with the payments, he hired Max in order to figure out where the girl lived so he could go and get rid of any evidence that may put him in danger. That is how he ended up stealing the burner phones and her laptop and found out that there were so many other people that she was blackmailing as well. What doesn’t make much sense is the fact that some days ago she called him to apologize for what she did to him promising that she would burn all the evidence. Then, the girl was murdered and he panicked believing that maybe the police will find her place and see all the photos.

Sam is going through Daria’s pictures still surprised of the life she had lived. She wonders which of all those girls was truly her. Eddie informs her that all of her other blackmail victims confirmed the same story as Jace. In that moment, Berto walks in and lets them know of the information he found. He checked her emails and realized that there was an anonymous account sending her emails saying that they have hacked her laptop and found all of her “clients” photos. If she didn’t do as requested, all of that will go to light.

Apparently, she was asked to infiltrate into Brad Marsh’s life in order to give them information about someone they refer to as “C.D.” So, as far as they are concerned, that might be the reason behind her murder. While they were debating on the possible options, Sam’s gets a call from Monica reminding her of her probation hearing that the girl ends up getting really late. Sam attempts to apologize to the judge Judge Payne (Veena Sood), but she’s taking none of it. She shows Sam some pictures of her that were taken when she was leaving a bar after meeting with Zeus so said action is taken as a violation of the terms to her parole. Judge Payne decides that Sam should spend the rest of her sentence in prison. Eddie, who has been watching everything from the audience, dares to step up and face the judge saying how much he has seen Sam trying so hard to turn her life around. Judge Payne has known Eddie since he was rookie cop and she knows that if he is willing to stand up for someone then, that person must be worthy of another chance. Hence, instead of sending Sam to prison, she decides to sentence her to remain as an employee to Eddie for the rest of her probation.

Later that day, Eddie and Sam meet with Brad again to update him in their recent findings on the case. They ask him if he can provide any information about a “D.C.” person but he confirms he knows no one that could go by that “name” until something clicks and he believes that the person they may refer to is Carolina Del Río the Godfather of the Guadalajara drug cartel ex-girlfriend that testified against him and helped to put him into jail. She was then put on a witness protection program. Brad had helped her buy the rights for a movie and they were seeing each other secretly so, Daria was being used to get to Carolina through him. Daria had regretted to help them so she decided to help Carolina know they were after her and tried to save her life but unfortunately, she lost hers while trying.

Sam and Eddie realized that Carolina may be in danger so they go in search of her and find out that she is out of town and her flight back to LA is going to arrive in less than 20 minutes. They try to get to her but they won´t make it. Carolina has landed and a man recognized as Juan Benero (Fraser Aitcheson), a member of the drug cartel, has the mission to kill her but before he can get to her Detective Rollins apprehends him. When the fuss has subsided, Sam manages to make Eddie admit that she was right from the very first moment about the case and he does. Then, she walks towards Carolina and tries to comfort her while Eddie watches showing a certain something in his eyes. Afterwards, they meet with Brad again in order to close the case and when he is visibly disappointed that Daria never loved him. Sam grants him enough proof to make him understand that Daria was, in fact, very much in love with him. Once again, Eddie stares at her with such tenderness. Before they wrap for the day, Eddie takes Sam to another room filled with boxes and lets her know that if she cleans it up, that could be her new office.

After some minor twists and turns, it seems like Eddie is finally getting accustomed to his new work partner. If you want more of these fantastic duo, make sure to watch “Take Two” next Thursday at 10/9c on ABC. ¡Hasta la próxima!