Nosy Tarsee heard a very public dare land on the airwaves this week, and the target wasn’t just a politician but his bloodline.

A congressman who brandishes a famous last name found himself challenged, on air, by the chief of a national investigating body to go after the chief’s own wife. The allegation on the table: Her involvement, alongside a detained construction couple now facing charges, in flood control projects the government wants scrutinized.

The chief didn’t blink. He told the congressman, in essence, to put up or shut up — file it with the public works agency doing its parallel probe, or bring it to the Ombudsman, or even to the House ethics committee.

Anywhere but his agency, he said, because anything his shop finds will be dismissed as biased. Fair point, Nosy Tarsee supposes, though it does raise the question of who else is supposed to investigate.

The chief wasn’t done. He turned the allegation back on the congressman, noting whispers that a favored contractor, one that allegedly scooped up billions in projects in the congressman’s home turf, got there because of a friendship with the congressman himself. Perhaps, the chief suggested, some explaining is in order on that front, too.

What had Nosy Tarsee’s ears perk up, though, was less the policy back-and-forth than the position it puts everyone in. The chief is investigating flood control projects tied to contractors in the congressman’s bailiwick.

The congressman’s critics want the chief’s wife investigated for the same kind of projects, with the same detained contractor couple. And the chief — instead of recusing quietly — went on radio and turned the dare into a live-fire exchange.

Nosy Tarsee doesn’t traffic in predicting outcomes, but does know a triangle when he sees one: two officials, a scandal that keeps sprouting new branches, and a spouse now sitting squarely in the blast radius.

Whether this heats up into something messier between the two principals may depend on who blinks first — and how thick that congressman’s skin turns out to be when it’s family, not just politics, on the line.