A/N - Tag to the Finale.

Title inspired by the Everclear song of the same name, which I have more than a few personal feelings about. I have some experience at being ditched by your dad while you're in middle school and spending most of your adult life just wondering what the hell happened. This may get a little deep, folks.

Standard disclaimers apply.

0-0-0-0-0

Mac walked carefully down the empty hallway, taking in the damage that had been done to the ostentatious residence.

I know what you're thinking. And you're wrong.

I've never just trashed a place. What kind of tradecraft is that? I take out my phone, take pictures … I try to put things back where I've found them. Unless I want my subject to know I've been there…

So when I walk into a place that's been ransacked like this, I have to think whoever left it like that wanted whoever followed him to know something. Usually that something is a casual disregard for basic human niceties… wait…what's that noise?

Mac paused for a moment, wondering just exactly what Matty had sent him into. The idea of an administrator out on a mission should have tripped what Jack always called his 'Spidey senses', but he'd been too focused on his objective.

He almost smiled to himself thinking about the look on Matty's face when he'd known who she was meeting with and been able to call it off so he could confront her. He hoped she hadn't assumed that Riley was involved, because he wouldn't ever do that, wouldn't jeopardize Riley's career by involving her in his personal issues.

He'd done it himself. Granted, he was better at tech than he used to be purely through watching her work, but that was all it ever took to learn something new for him anyway. When he's taken out that thumb drive and told Matty what it was, she looked afraid. Why? There wasn't anything on it that she should be afraid of. At least, Mac didn't think so. And she certainly wasn't afraid of him, nor should she have any reason to be. Looking back on it, he realized she was afraid for him.

That bothered him, increased his tension. All he was trying to do was quit. If anything, if she cared about him as she claimed to, him leaving a job that had him nearly killed practically every day should be a relief.

He should have told at least Jack what he planned to do, but he'd been too angry. He didn't want to even be around the people he cared about as angry as he was. Then again, he hadn't really planned to quit necessarily. If Matty had come back at his questions with something honest instead of the much beloved by the CIA Glomar Response, he wouldn't have done it. But she had. And he couldn't take any more runarounds about his father, his past, or any more denial of exactly what the people he had to trust with his life knew about it that he didn't.

Bozer had known something was up this morning, but he hadn't said anything. For as long as they'd known each other, Mac figured Boze knew his I'm about to explode and you damned well don't want to be in the blast radius face. It all could have been defused if Matty had just been honest. He didn't care about clearances at this point. This was his goddamned life they were talking about.

"That weak floorboard is actually a pressure plate attached to an IED."

Mac's head snapped up.

I know that voice. Don't I?

"You're lying."

"Maybe," the familiar, but also foreign, voice said with disinterest. "Take another step and we'll see."

Mac swallowed. He knew how to disarm an S-mine, or Bouncing Betty as they were more colloquially known, and a pressure plate wasn't even all that difficult to disconnect from an explosive device with someone standing on top of it. An improvised explosive device though? One he was standing on top of himself? That would be risky as hell. And he thought the guy was bluffing, but did he really want to take that chance? That son of a bitch…

"What do you want?" the man asked with mild annoyance in his tone.

Okay, fine. Whether he was standing on a bomb or not suddenly mattered very little to Mac. The last two years had been filled with so much tension, danger, betrayal, he just didn't care about anything other than putting a stop to it. "Director Webber sent me here to speak with Oversight."

The the man turned, and Mac realized why the voice had been familiar. His stomach dropped and he went cold all over.

"Dad?"

Damn it! I never meant to say that out loud. I always meant to call him Jimmy if I ever saw him again. That's what Gramps called him when he was mad and it always irked him. I could tell.

Mac tried schooling his features into a neutral expression but knew he was failing miserably. An instant later, everything went sideways and his father shouted, "Duck!"

Then things got a depressing familiar feel; gunfire, being hauled roughly to his feet, and sprinting like his life depended on it, because it did. Yeah, he'd never wanted to quit more than he did right then. But, his feelings would have to wait. Whatever had been in that safe had been important to the guy with the heavy weaponry because he was already in hot pursuit.

Mac keyed his Jeep to life and gunned it out of the driveway while Oversight was still climbing in on the passenger side. Several more shots rang out and Mac saw one ricochet off the pavement near his front driver's side tire. Never had he wished for Jack Dalton in the passenger seat instead of who was currently occupying it more than he he did right then.

0-0-0

Mac didn't know it, but at that moment Jack was sure as hell wishing he was wherever Mac was, too. Jill had been the one to tell them. Well, she asked Bozer what was going on with Mac and when Mac's roommate looked both concerned and confused, she'd revealed that the rumor was Mac had quit.

Bozer had immediately called Jack, who was at the range doing his monthly qualifier, and then Riley, who'd been taking a relaxing personal day with Billy, up to the point where Bozer had practically shouted into the phone asking if she knew what was going on with their friend.

Now that he knew what happened, Bozer was as close to freaking out for Mac as he ever got. There was more going on here than Mac making a snap decision to quit a job that Bozer knew meant the world to him. "You're the Director of the Phoenix Foundation. If you don't have the authority, who does?"

Jack was the only one to pick up the slight flicker of something like pity in Matty's face when she said, "Oversight. And that's exactly who I sent Mac to see."

Jack's expression morphed from being purely furious at whatever had gone down between Mac and Matty that would have made him quit without talking it over with the rest of his team, to being flat out scared for his partner. Matty looked … worried. Really worried. And Matilda Webber wasn't one to worry about something that was already over. Whatever was going on, Mac needed his partner right now, Jack was sure of it.

"Then where the Hell is Oversight?"