Plot

While Michael's new handler asks him to locate a Tunisian counterfeiter, Sam asks him to help a woman who says she is being stalked by a drug dealer, and his mother asks him to join her in seeing a therapist.

Michael finally meets his mysterious burn-nemesis Carla, who blackmails him to play Tunesian forger Nefzi. Sam takes on stalking victim Sophia as client. Michael soon realizes both have fake identities: she's a DEA cop after Colombian drug cartel killer Raul. Ma's emotional blackmail drags Michal to therapy, which ironically proves harder on her.—KGF Vissers

We opened on Michael completing the crossword that Carla, his new handler, handed him in the second season premiere. The puzzle included a secret coded message that said for him to meet at Marwa Mall at noon. Fiona wondered whether his new handler was just flirting by passing the coded message.

"These people burned me, blacklisted me and threatened my family," Michael said. "I think we're a little past flirting."

Michael wanted to find out who his new handler was working for without her knowing that's what he was after. Sam wanted to get going to a Pilates class with Veronica. Michael just wanted to make sure Sam got a picture of Carla before he left. Sam hid out on a balcony to snap photos.

Carla handed him a security badge that was "damn near impossible to duplicate." She said there is one counterfeiter in Miami who can forge it. She wanted the duplicate and the original back in two days. Michael asked if he'd be done with the burn notice and she said it's not that simple. She handed him a bag of cash and said he could keep whatever he didn't give to the counterfeiter. Michael then glanced up to the balcony where Sam had been, but Sam wasn't there. A guy walked over and handed Carla Sam's camera, she pulled the memory card out and dropped the camera on the floor. The guy also handed Michael the keys to the car that Fiona had been waiting in and Michael asked, "What did you do?" Carla said Sam and Fiona were fine, but added, "Next time, the kids stay home."

Michael wanted a fresh face to track down the counterfeiter, and eventually convinced Fiona to do it. "But I can't promise that I won't kill him," she said. On an unrelated note, Sam asked Michael to help a woman named Sophia get rid of a stalker. It turned out Sam met Sophia in a cooking class. The stalker, Raul, carried an automatic rifle when he went to meet Sophia at church.

Fiona tortured a money launderer named Barry to track down Nefzi, the Tunisian counterfeiter who can duplicate the security badge. Michael went and helped his mom fix her 1960s-era coffee maker, but he decided to throw it out. She asked Michael to come to counseling with her. He begrudgingly agreed and she said their first appointment was the next day.

Sam and Michael went to Raul's work, where he was shipping lidocaine and coffee beans as part of a drug importing operation. Michael then found Sophia and got her to confess she was a cop who'd been building a case against Raul for two years.

Michael started working on washing checks that he would use to lure the Tunisian counterfeiter. He offered Nefzi some of the blank checks in exchange for duplicating the security badge, but Nefzi would take only cash, $10,000. Nefzi said he could have the card copied the next day for a basic job, but it would be longer for better work. Michael told him to take his time. Meanwhile, Michael missed the counseling appointment.

Michael tried to get close to Raul by pretending to be someone who can help him run his shipping operation for efficiently. Raul agreed to hear him out. Back at his mom's house, a new coffee maker showed up and another crossword puzzle was waiting for him. Carla told him she got it for his mother. Carla warned him about missing a deadline, then threatened his mom, saying, "Don't test me again, or the next time I leave a gift at your mom's house, it's not going to be a coffee maker."

Michael sent Fiona to the docks to stage some kind of security breach. She placed a neon plastic tube into a crate. Michael asked Raul for his shipping codes, but Raul refused. Michael told Raul he had a source in the DEA's office, suggesting that the DEA was spying on Raul. Raul later asked MIchael to meet him at the restaurant, where he had Sophia hostage after figuring out that Michael and Sophia had been talking. After some drama, Raul was convinced that Michael and Sophia didn't have an affair. Raul wanted Michael to meet his boss.

Michael was trying to make Raul look like a traitor to his boss, and it included Fiona sitting on a roof with a sniper rifle. During the meeting with the boss, Michael had Fiona fire on him and set off an explosion on the dock. Michael convinced the boss that Raul had set him up. Raul was arrested and Sophia revealed herself as a cop. Raul was arrested, took a plea deal, and gave up enough on his boss to put him away, as well.

Michael went to pick up the duplicate security badge from Nefzi and offered an extra $5,000 if Nefzi could tell him what the badge was for. Nefzi agreed, but when Michael walked out of Nefzi's place, he figured out he was being followed. He raced back into get Nefzi out of trouble, but it was too late. Nefzi had been suffocated by nitrogen gas that was intentionally leaked. Michael scoured Nefzi's office before leaving with an extra version of the security badge -- one of Nefzi's previous attempts before the final version he gave Michael.

Michael brought the duplicate card and the bag of money to Carla. He wouldn't keep the money, telling her that he doesn't work for her that way. As she left, he said goodbye in Arabic, and discovered that she spoke it with a Kurdish accent. He told Sam to ask around and see if she was stationed in that area. Sam said it wasn't much to go on.

"I know, Sam," Michael said. "But it's more than we had."