Mac was quiet on the ride home. Jack glanced over his shoulder to find Mac out cold, face pressed against the window like a kid.

Jack frowned into the oncoming white lights moving almost as slowly as the reddish ones in front of them.

"Take it easy, Papa Bear," Elliot said easily.

"I didn't say nothin'."

"I've told you before, Dalton, you think louder than anyone I've ever met."

Jack chuckled, but softly so as not to wake his sleeping partner. "Yeah, well, pretty hard not to when the kid doesn't even hesitate to schedule the surgery and just yessirs the doc like he thinks we're back in the Sandbox."

"Be honest. Was Mac ever that agreeable with a CO?"

Jack snorted. "He sure as shit never was with me." Then Jack shook his head. "I'd put money on him feelin' a lot worse than he'll own up to with us, the way he just toed up to that line."

"Maybe," Elliot shrugged, weaving effortlessly through the evening traffic at speeds that were starting to make Jack a little nervous. "Or maybe he just wants to be sure his old man stays out of it."

"Huh," Jack grunted.

"That surprises you?"

"No. But your tone does."

"I have a tone, do I?" Elliot grinned.

"You don't like Oversight. And it's enough that your poker face slipped. That ain't like you."

Elliot took his eyes off the road to take in Jack's expression for a split second. "He's a hell of a spy," Elliot said noncommittally, focusing his attention back on the tight traffic.

"But?"

Elliot sniffed a slight laugh. "But I've seen him in action."

"And you care about Mac."

"That, too. Though, unlike yourself, I don't think I've ever been accused of having much of a protective streak for anybody."

"I think Eggs would beg to differ," Mac said softly, stretching as much as the seat belt would allow, and pushing himself up all the way to sitting. "But if you drive him around this fast when you guys are in the field, I might call bullshit the next time he complains to me about it."

"Right?" Jack exclaimed. "For a doctor, you sure seem less than concerned with that whole preserving life do no harm stuff."

"Elliot was a surgeon before … Well , before he started using coroner as a cover back in his G job days."

Elliot laughed out loud. "And how the hell do you know that?"

"Surgeons all drive this way, I swear. Even Steve who's got like ten kids. And Steve's not even a spy." Mac flashed a grin the other men caught in the rear view mirror.

"Maybe I just want you home and full of NyQuil before you change your mind," Elliot said lightly.

"If I could have talked the doc into yeeting these damn things tonight, I would have. But early next week is the soonest he can do it. I've got to be on antibiotics all weekend before he'll even touch them," Mac grumbled. "If five year old me had heard how much worse this is supposedly gonna be for thirty year old me, I bet he would've spit out his tonsils without even needing surgery."

Jack laughed. "But five year old you didn't have your ole buddy Jack to look out for him after surgery."

Mac snorted. "Poor kid," he said sarcastically. "He might have gotten through this without being suffocated."

"Hey, now," Jack began to defend his caregiving skills.

"Hey, Elliot," Mac interrupted softly. "Check your six."

Elliot glanced at Mac in the mirror. "Did something give you the impression that I haven't?"

"We have a tail. Three cars back. In this light all I can tell you is it's big and dark, but it's keeping pace with all your lane changes. Definitely a tail based on how you're driving."

Elliot frowned. "We don't have a tail, Mac."

"Yes, we do. I don't know for how long, cause I just woke up. But we definitely do."

Mac shifted so he could turn in his seat. He squinted into the sea of lights. Yup. Big dark van. Just like the one he'd noticed in the parking lot of the office building the ENT doctor was on the ground floor of. He was about to say so, but the van pulled out and hit the gas to pass them.

As the van pulled up beside them, Mac flinched, involuntarily bracing for … something. A hail of bullets … being rammed … something. But nothing happened.

As the vehicle passed them, Mac saw the driver's long wavy hair, caught a glimpse of bright red lipstick.

He'd just made a big deal of some soccer mom running late to pick up her kids. He sunk back into the seat with a defeated sort of sigh. "Huh. My mistake," he admitted.

"An easy one to make when you feel like Hell, Mac," Elliot said. "And in our line of work, it's better to be safe than sorry."

"Yeah," he sighed again. He let Elliot and Jack go back and forth about setting up some security for the surgeon's hospital and when the conversation turned to the surgery and recovery itself, Mac just tuned them out.

When they got back to his place and Riley more or less met him at the door with sweats and a bathrobe warm from the dryer, and a plan to feed him soup, and for her, Jack, and Boze to keep him distracted all weekend, he just went and changed gratefully.

He curled up on the couch next to the burliest of their humidifiers, and dozed off, full of hot and sour soup, lulled by the familiarity of Die Hard on the tv and his friends' gentle chatter.

He'd more or less forgotten about the van.

And no one saw any indication that there was anything amiss on any of the security cameras.

But only because the now forgotten black van parked just out of their range.