Admit it. You have a perfect nemesis. 

That coworker you love to hate. The in-law who always one-ups you. Your oldest, most cherished frenemy.

For Nick Torres, that perfect nemesis is Special Agent Dale Sawyer, and this week on NCIS, our lucky lad gets to be the boss of his belligerent bro. Let’s recap!

Season 22, episode 15, titled “Moonlit,” opens with Torres (Wilmer Valderrama) trying to wrap his mind around how a night shift, non-A teamer like Sawyer (Zane Holtz) can afford his ostentatious pick-up truck.

Sawyer points out that he’d never waste his money on a motorcycle like Torres’ “scooter,” which has Nick ordering a black coffee instead of a macchiato at the coffee cart. At this rate, he’ll be a truck owner in a short 20 or 30 years!

Parker (Gary Cole), meanwhile, has enlisted burgeoning sketch artist Palmer (Brian Dietzen) to draw his boat ghost girl (Kensie Mills), whom he describes as innocent, full of hope, and a bit of an old soul. Palmer proves himself to be the Michelangelo of the morgue by turning out a gorgeously rendered drawing of Lily, pigtails, cardigan, and all. Although he’s intrigued to hear that the mystery girl isn’t part of a case, he doesn’t press the issue.

Speaking of cases, Naval intelligence officer Robert Mozey is found dead in an alley with cocaine in his back pocket, a henna QR code on his wrist, and an alligator bite on his leg. Seems pretty sus! (The kids are still saying “sus,” right?)

The code leads them to ExcessFest, a rave that took place the night before in a warehouse outside of Georgetown. The annoyed worker (Markice Moore) cleaning up after the spoiled rich kids confirms that the event featured an alligator that managed to bite one of the attendees.

That alligator better be okay, is all I’m saying.

Searching hashtags of the event shows videos of a woman trapezing over the alligator tank — and Mozey taking the cocaine from one Dale Sawyer. Torres is delighted at evidence of drug dealing to provide his nefarious truck funds despite office gossip pointing to an inheritance from a recently deceased grandmother and me wondering out loud if Sawyer isn’t, ya know, working undercover like he was the last time he and Torres bumped into each other.

Turns out we’re all wrong! In questioning, Sawyer admits that he doesn’t have any recently deceased grandmas, he’s not on an undercover op, and he hasn’t been peddling powder. He was actually moonlighting as private security for rich girl Shayna Reynolds (Stevie Lynn Jones). The previous night, he intercepted the cocaine and handed it off to his partner-in-side-hustles Mozey, who took Shayna home after she freed the alligator and he got bitten.

Sawyer’s expecting a slap on the wrist for violating NCIS’s no-moonlighting policy, but Vance (Rocky Carroll) reads him the riot act and busts him down to probie status as he helps the day shift solve Mozey’s murder.

As you can imagine, Torres is thrilled his perfect nemesis probie joins him and McGee (Sean Murray) when they visit Shayna’s mother, Kate (Isabella Hofmann).

Mama Reynolds is peeved to learn that her chief of security, Pete Braden (Reggie Austin), has been outsourcing bodyguarding duty to dudes he barely knows — and that’s confirmed for us all when Braden doesn’t know Sawyer’s name —and she’s irritated that her daughter’s causing trouble yet again. 

Then again, with one of Shayna’s bodyguards dead and the woman herself not answering her phone, kidnapping is a possibility, so the team heads out to track her down. Braden demands that they coordinate efforts, but that seems unlikely.

Thanks to Kasie (Diona Reasonover) finding mountain chorus frog feces on Mozey’s boots, the team heads to the only place locally where the endangered amphibian is found: a lakeside cabin on the Reynolds family’s private land reserve.

When they arrive, Shayna crumples when she learns that “Bobby” is dead, then she shocks everyone by claiming it was likely her family who did it, and they’ll be after her next.

She invites Torres, McGee, and Sawyer into the cabin, and not to sound bougie AF (which I believe is the correct sociological term), but a white refrigerator? In the words of NeNe Leakes, “Girl, please put your shoes on, let’s go find you a home, honey.”

Anyway, Shayna says she and Mozey were involved, which probie Sawyer, chafing at being ordered around by his perfect nemesis, loudly insists that he always suspected that. After Mozey got a text message, he raced out of there and later called to tell her to turn off her phone and not answer the door until he got back.

Shayna says it’s because she’s trying to protect the mountain chorus frog by stopping her family from selling the land to a condo development company. Mozey agreed to run her motion-sensor video of the frogs up the Naval chain of command to help.

Back to Kate they go, and although Shayna described her mom as a manipulative, malignant narcissist, Kate explains that the land deal doesn’t involve the cabin or the pond, and she hopes someday Shayna will stop rebelling and realize that love and family are forever. 

It’s a good reminder for Parker, who’s been arguing with his father. Earlier in the episode, he hopped on a video call with Roman (Francis Xavier McCarthy) during his seniors’ trip to Vegas, but Roman didn’t recognize the sketch of Lily and flatly refused to discuss Parker’s mother.

The next morning, however, Roman turns up at Parker’s plant daddy paradise, having cut his trip short. (Not a huge sacrifice; Papa Parker turned out to be a fan of the buffets but not so much the gambling.)

Roman confesses that he kept the truth about their mother’s death from Parker and his sister. She didn’t die of a stroke a few years after she ran out of them. Instead, she and Roman fought after she drove home drunk with little Aldie in her car. He ordered her to leave, and shortly afterward, she wrapped her car around a tree and died instantly.

He now regrets keeping the news from Alden, who’s understandably rocked by this reveal. Then Parker gets called into work, and Roman heads home to nap. Honestly, retirement goals (minus the reveal of a decades-old, foundation-shaking lie, obviously).

Roman calling Parker “Aldie” is so darn adorable. But Roman lying about how Aldie’s mother really died is… less so. At least Parker’s quick absolution seemed genuine.

Anyway, Knight (Katrina Law) summoned Parker because Shayna’s frog video caught someone dumping a body into the pond. Torres realizes they need to check it out ASAP, and since the scientific term for the condition of the water is, I believe, “gross,” he declares it a job for his probie.

Sawyer grudgingly wades into the murky pond and immediately trips over a chain-wrapped, plastic-covered body right next to the dock. Dang, dump that farther out in the pond, murderer!

The two agents drag the body into the cabin, dump it on the kitchen table, and peel back the tarp in front of Shayna. In terms of preserving evidence, that seems, well, bad and dumb. That’s the correct legal term, right? Anyway, they send a picture of the dead woman to NCIS HQ, and as Parker and Knight wait for facial recognition to pop back in Kasie’s lab, she grills him about his conversation with his dad. He’s not forthcoming. 

The woman turns out to be Clara Braden, who was married to Kate Reynolds’ head of security. Looks like we’ve got a suspect!

More than a suspect, actually. When Torres and Sawyer move Clara’s body into Palmer’s van (better late than never to involve the ME, I guess), the group finds themselves facing down a gun-wielding Braden.

Braden offers to triple Sawyer’s pay if he turns on Torres, Palmer, and Shayna, and for some reason, he trusts Sawyer’s quick agreement. But Sawyer shoots a little wink at Torres, who takes the hint and socks him in the jaw. Their scuffle lets Palmer and Shayna run for cover, leaving the agents to exchange gunfire with what has to be the worst-trained mercenary-turned-head of security in history.

In the end, Sawyer’s willing to use his beloved truck as cover, and she takes several hits as Torres drops to the ground and shoots Braden in the foot so they can bring in their man. RIP, fancy truck!

The Reynolds women have a happy reunion that hints at a better relationship moving forward, although who knows? Both women were kinda thinly drawn, and this 180-turnaround happened fast. Then Kate tries to recruit Torres and Sawyer to join her company as the new head of security.

Although Sawyer had previously mentioned looking for a higher calling, he’s quick to rip up Kate’s card. Torres, meanwhile, tucks it into his pocket. Question for the class: is this a funny little throwaway character moment, or is it a hint of things to come?

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At home that night, Palmer searches news reports until he comes across the one he’s after. The article describes a violent crash with no skid marks to indicate that his mother tried to hit the brakes before she died. He pulls up the newspaper photo of his mother’s destroyed car, and who’s that looking distraught in the background?

Yep, it’s Lily, pigtails, cardigan, and all.

Stray shots

• Okay, let’s break this down. Parker and Roman don’t recognize Lily as a relative or childhood friend. When Parker took Dr. Grace’s advice to encourage Lily to communicate with him, the little ghost left him a note reading, “You can’t tell anyone.” And now she’s in a newspaper photo looking upset at the scene of his mother’s long-ago car accident. If you’re doing the math here, what does it all add up to?
• Speaking of math, paying $6.50 for a black coffee and a hot chocolate in D.C. seems shockingly reasonable, no? 
• A moment of silence of Parker, whose “This was no boating accident” yields crickets from his team. Sure, Palmer gets the reference ages later, but wherefore art thou, DiNozzo?
• We received no final word on the alligator. Let’s just assume Shayna had him relocated to her pond, where he’ll live in bliss alongside the frogs for the rest of their slimy, scaly, green lives.