While in town for a book convention, Jessica stumbles onto a case of international intrigue when she accidentally becomes the deathbed confessor for a professional assassin. Determined to get to the bottom of the case, Jessica tracks the man the assassin murdered to a secret government safehouse guarding a rebel leader.
This episode includes examples of the following tropes:
- Agents Dating: Adams and "Mrs. Cosgrove" had been carrying on a romance and even planning to get married. Understandably, she does not take news of his death well at all.
- Bluff the Imposter: Suspecting that the "priest" is a fake, Jessica gives him a quote from Thomas Aquinas, which he agrees with. He admits she got him in a later meeting; the quote from from Thoreau.
- Brick Joke: Sgt. Cooper spends the entire episode trying to find his wife, who ran away after an argument. At the end, she calls him when he's talking about the case with Jessica, and he absentmindedly tells her he can't talk right now. Jessica has to point out to whom he was speaking before he realizes what he just did.
- Call-Back: Jackson admires Jessica's deductive skills by saying she had once fooled a KGB agent and helped two ballet dancers defect to the US.
- Collective Identity: "Carl Cosgrove" is a fake name that the male agents in the safehouse use.
- Deathbed Confession: As he's suffering a heart attack, the hitman asks Jessica to find him a priest. She does call one over, but the man dies before he can get across the street and only Jessica winds up hearing the guy's confession; namely, he shot a man named Carl Cosgrove from Farmington in the head and heart.
- I Never Said It Was Poison: Jessica realizes that Van Buren must have put the hit out on Adams, because he said that Jackson should have talked Adams out of meeting a stranger in a parking lot at night, when Adams hadn't even told his girlfriend what he had planned out of fear that the alleged traitor would find out.
- Spanner in the Works: Defied. Jessica hears the dying words of a professional hitman, which leads her to accidentally butt in on a DSS witness protection operation. Realizing she's not going to let it go, the government lets her in on what's going on specifically to prevent her accidentally messing up their operation.
- Undying Loyalty: Sanchez does everything for Delgado and insists he's a good man. When Jessica asks about the rumors that Delgado was embezzling money intended for the rebellion, two men have to hold him back.
