It seemed like things were going great, until the plan started falling apart with the identification of the new security protocols and the woman in charge of them. As the rest of the team were talking about how the plan was falling apart, Mac was already three steps into figuring out how to pull it back together.
He didn't know what had made him lift Jack's phone; okay, he did. Jack was always bitching about Mac taking his stuff to save their asses and had been doing a fair amount of extra over-playing it now that he had somebody new to tell tales to. He'd just been going to pretend to need it, maybe to poke Jack a little, and to see what Cage did. She'd been playing him for reactions since they met and frankly he thought maybe it was time to show her that turnabout was fair play. Instead, the phone happened to be just what he needed to get this rapidly crashing train of a plan back on the rails. Or at least begin to.
Jack's reaction had been exactly what he'd been hoping for when he'd just picked his pocket as a prank. At the moment, however, it was a distraction. Mac did glance up and see Cage's reaction. Simple amusement, nothing more, and something that looked almost like affection for Jack. Well, that was new, that was good.
And Matty seemed to be treating them as a complete team, not as a project she was trying to decide which part of to toss this time out, so hey, if he could figure out the iris thing and they could get this done, this mission might be good for both the world, and them personally for a change.
When Bozer was the one to come up with the solution to the iris scanner, Mac couldn't suppress a smile. For a guy who'd said he never wanted to leave the lab again after the siege at Phoenix, he was slipping back into field work almost seamlessly. But he still had no idea how to get close to Kasakova. Although he was warming up to Cage as a team member, he couldn't help almost daring her to join the spirit of improvisation she'd been a little derisive of so far. "I'm sure you'll come up with something."
She gave a little smile at the clear challenge, but she didn't have a chance to respond, when Jack stepped in. Mac just smiled and shook his head. The rest of the team, including Matty, might think Jack was the goofball big brother type he usually presented himself as, but Mac knew better.
Not only had Mac seen Jack in action, in the field, on leave, in the bar down the street from his house, it seemed like half the missions they went on wound up with Jack running into some woman he'd met under cover who'd fallen head over heels in love with him. If there was such a thing as having game in the romance department, Jack had it.
When he tipped a confident wink at the rest of the team and Mac saw their collective reactions, he was satisfied that they'd maybe just gotten a peek at that, too. Now, he just hoped Jack could pull it off.