Mac watched a bead of condensation form on his water bottle. It grew until it dripped down the side and joined the small puddle spreading out over his coaster. He knew he'd been staring for a while. It's not like anyone would give him crap for getting into his own head. Jack and Ri were sleeping on the couches behind him.

The Phoenix jet for their vacation had been a side effect of the notoriety of their last op, which felt weird, honestly. But Matty had insisted. And … It was nice to have the space to zone out. The debrief had been smooth, Jack had finally ditched the sling and stopped milking his injury, and they hadn't needed to hang around LA for more than a couple of days. But something didn't feel right.

Through the bathroom door, he heard the sink running. It was only another hour or so until they landed and he didn't much feel like talking, so Mac sank down into his seat and closed his eyes, slowing his breath and letting himself go limp.

A snort of laughter by his elbow a moment later almost startled him into stirring.

"You've gotten a lot better at fakin' the whole sleep thing, but you ain't near as good at it as you think you are."

Mac sighed, but opened his eyes and pushed himself back up to smirk at Jack. "Maybe I wasn't faking. Maybe I was actually trying to go to sleep but I was disturbed by a big loud Texan."

"Yeah, right." Jack sat down in the chair opposite Mac. "You been squirrelly since we showed up for the debrief at Phoenix. What's eatin' you, kid?"

Mac shook his head. "Nothing. You're just doing that thing you've been doing since you got back."

Mac knew he'd derailed Jack's desire to hover a little by the defensive frown that flashed across the older man's face. "What thing?"

"Butting into every aspect of mine and Ri's lives because you feel like you let us down by doing a job you got assigned." Mac gave him an easy grin. "You know I'm glad you're back, man, but I'd gotten used to you loosening the reins on your whole Overwatch thing a little."

"Well now," Jack said, settling back into his former inquisitive tone. "I might think that was true, 'cept you just glanced at your watch when you said it. Ole Jack don't think this has a damn thing to do with being your Overwatch. Ole Jack thinks maybe this has somethin' to do with your old man."

Mac rolled his eyes. "And Ole Jack is talking about himself in the third person again, which we've discussed. Repeatedly."

Jack just grinned. "Nice try, hoss."

Mac shook his head in combination of irritation and resignation, but, if he was honest, both were mostly affectionate. "You don't think it was weird that Oversight wasn't at the debrief?"

Jack thought about it for a minute, then shrugged. "He's at less than half of them, kid."

Riley mumbled something from the couch.

Mac leaned toward Jack and lowered his voice. "But this mission involved the Royals. And one seriously pleased head of state. He not only declined the invitation to the State dinner at the palace, but then he ghosted the debrief."

"Well, you did say he cancelled lunch a couple times lately because the chemo was kickin' his ass."

Mac frowned. "So he said."

"You don't believe him? About his cancer treatment?"

Mac sighed. "I don't know … But he looked fine when I saw him at the office right before we headed to the UK. So I don't think it's that."

Jack's forehead lined thoughtfully. "Well, what do you think it is?"

Mac hated repeating himself, but didn't have anything else to say. "I don't know." He chewed the inside of his cheek for a minute. "But I think Matty does."

"What makes you say that?"

Mac gestured at their surroundings. "Insisting we take the jet for one."

"I thought it was damned nice of her," Jack observed. "You know how much I hate flyin' commercial. Never know who they let at the wheel."

Mac grinned. He was more than half surprised that Jack had never made a play to fly the Phoenix jet. Then again, knowing planes like he did, Jack probably knew exactly how much it cost and didn't want to be responsible for handling something it would take that many zeroes to replace. "Yeah, it was nice. And her reasoning even made sense after our faces wound up all over the news in London. But it felt … I don't know … rushed."

"Whaddaya mean, kid?"

"Like she wanted us out of there."

Jack nodded. "Well, now that you mention it, it did feel like we kinda left in a hurry. I hadn't even turned in alla my report yet."

"Between my dad being invisible and Matty practically chasing us out of Phoenix. Not to mention offering this time off to begin with … Something's up. And not to get the movie quotes going already, but I've got a bad feeling about this."

The kid had a point, Jack supposed, but couldn't imagine what it could be. Seemed to Jack like maybe it was just a bunch of coincidences piling up to stress Mac out while he was still short on sleep from the mission. And he said so, starting with, "You know I'm more than an average amount of inclined to listen when you start using the Force, but…"

Mac wasn't having it. "You know that according to the Law of Large Numbers coincidences don't exist."

"I thought you said that law thingy made them inevitable."

"Same difference. There's something going on with Oversight … with Matty … with Phoenix. And we're being left out of the loop."

"What do you think it could be?"

"I don't know," Mac shrugged. "But I sure as Hell don't like it."

Jack nodded. Matty and ole Daddy Mac keeping secrets again had to be twisting the kid up pretty good. "Well then, all that leaves your Overwatch here to ask is, what're we gonna do about it since we're landing in Paris pretty soon and we're supposed to be on vacation?"

Mac glanced over his shoulder at Ri, thinking maybe they should get her up and read her in on the situation. He started to rise to go shake her away and said, "Well, we could-"

The aircraft jerked and, off-balance in a partially standing position, Mac went sprawling. Jack was thrown half out of his seat, Riley pitched off the couch with a startled shout, and various unsecured items crashed to the floor.

Mac hadn't even started picking himself up when the pilot's voice came over the speakers full of apology. "We just lost about 5000 feet. Everybody okay back there?"

The jet pitched like a boat caught in a hurricane, but Mac got to his feet and made his way over to the console after helping Ri into one of the seats and making sure both of them seatbelted themselves in. He braced against the fuselage and keyed the button. "We're okay. What the Hell is happening, Danny?"

"We've hit an unexpected storm outta nowhere. Never saw it coming on any of the instruments. Now that we're in it, it's showing up all over the place."

Mac could hear various alerts going off in the cockpit over the mic.

"Want me to have a look at the instruments?" Mac offered.

"What I want you to do is buckle up. We're gonna go around. It'll delay landing by about a half hour, but everything seems to be working."

"Copy that." Mac didn't like it. If the instruments hadn't been functioning and then suddenly started, that seemed like something maybe the resident engineer ought to get an eyeball on, but Danny and his co-pilot Katie had been with Phoenix a long time. They knew what they were doing.

Jack and Riley were talking and both were looking at him, but he couldn't concentrate on anything other than keeping himself on his feet. He edged himself along, holding on to what he could to get himself safely back into a seat while the plane heaved underneath him. Once he secured his seat belt, he was able to focus on what Jack and Riley were saying.

"...And throw in a freak storm for good measure." Riley gave Mac a sympathetic look, so clearly Jack had brought her up to speed.

Jack wasn't phased by the weather in the slightest, and Riley hated storms when they flew so it made sense that Jack would have pulled her into the mystery in front of them already as a distraction.

"You really do need this vacation, huh, Mac?" she asked gently, letting him know that maybe she thought he was jumping at shadows.

Riley was a rational person, just like he usually was. That probably meant she was right. Maybe he was just being touchy because he was worn out after way too much excitement followed by way too much forced socialization in England's high society. He managed a smile, despite the bucking of the aircraft. "You might be right. " He looked out the window, hoping for a glimpse of the City of Lights soon. "And maybe we can break my streak of bad luck in Paris while we're at it."

"That's the spirit," she grinned. She punched Jack lightly on the arm. "You see, Old Man. You've been spending too much time together since you got back. He's starting to catch your crazy assed conspiracy theory bug."

"Hey now!" Jack began.

Mac laughed as the two started a playful argument back and forth. A vacation did sound good. And maybe once they made the hotel he'd just do what normal people did and give his dad a call and let him know that his absence had gotten in Mac's head and he wanted to clear the air before their relationship suffered again. After a little while the weather cleared, the flight smoothed out,and Mac began to relax and prepare for their landing.

As Paris came into view out the small window next to him, Mac half smiled. The City of Lights, indeed. It sparkled like a jewel in the dark. Mac opened his mouth to draw Jack and Riley's attention to the view, but thunder crashed and lightning struck at the same time, practically on the wing just beside him, and rain began to pelt the shell again.

Jack and Riley hardly looked up from Riley's laptop where she was showing him inside the Louvre with the museum's security cameras so they didn't have to wait until tomorrow, so Mac watched the storm out the window as they circled the city, waiting for clearance to land.

Lightning flashed again and the jet shook.

To Mac, who had more than half convinced himself he'd been borrowing trouble, it felt like a harbinger of things to come.