[rises like that little cartoon dragon in mulan] I'M ALIVE! now i could go on about school and work and life and how i'm studying for the biggest test of my life but something tells me y'all are way more interested in the chapter than in my excuses for why i fell off the face of the earth for half a month.

so! onward! also i know nothing about amsterdam! sorry to the netherlands!


Despite what she'd been warned when they'd been talking about it in her field training, Riley had always thought surveillance sounded kind of cool. And it is. She's excited to finally get to try it for herself, and can't see at all what Jack had been talking about when he said it was boring as dirt. It feels kind of thrilling, even after everything else she's done on this job. Riley still can't hardly believe she's not in prison, and beyond that, that she's here. On stakeout. She can't understand what Jack can find boring about this.

Then thirty-two hours pass, and Riley finds herself revising her opinion. It's her turn to keep watch again, the three of them rotating in shifts, a couple of hours spent in the hot seat before they're relieved by the next person up. Large, noise-cancelling headphones sit over her ears, blocking out the rest of what's going on in the apartment they're holed up in, receiving dish pointed at their target apartment across the street to pick up conversations taking place inside. They got lucky in that the window they're focused on has no curtains - a dumb move for criminals, if you ask Riley - but it's not a direct look into the room from their angle either. It's a lot of focus, and very little else.

So far, nothing has happened. People have come and go through the apartment, had the kind of menial conversations that apparently even international criminals known for harboring fugitives need to have, about groceries and the guy coming to fix the heating. They're here to document their fugitive, suspected of aiding and abetting a war criminal, entering the apartment and interacting with the occupants, indicating they plan to harbor her. They do that, they get their fugitive and the people who are assisting her and countless others who come through the Netherlands on their flight away from whatever jurisdiction it is they're wanted in.

Too bad they don't have a precise date on when, exactly, that's going to be. It reminds Riley of Minnesota, of their several day window surrounding the date of the bio-weapon's transit across the border and the waiting game they'd played until it happened. At least that time, she'd had somebody to talk to while they wait. This time, at least while on duty at the window, thanks to the headphones and how quiet their sound is, there's no real way to hold any kind of conversation.

At least they'd gotten the equipment at all. It had taken Matty catching them on the way out of the building to realize they weren't set up with everything they needed for the op. Matty had realized they were missing a form from the equipment department, something that Director MacGyver, as he put himself in charge of their op, should have filed days ago. She'd drawn one up herself and fast-tracked what they needed into duffel bags loaded onto the plane, alerting them to the near miss when she caught up to them. It made Riley's skin crawl, and she'd seen the look exchanged between Matty and Jack before they parted ways.

Adjusting her grip on the sound dish, Riley gives what she hopes is a muted sigh - she can't tell through the headphones. This assignment is starting to drag so bad she's begun to take notes in a spiral-bound she's pulled out of her computer bag, jotting down what she's seeing. She counts the hair colors of the pedestrians on the sidewalk - mostly blond and light brown, the number of kids coming in and out of the ice cream shop at the end of the street - dozens. How many of the kids drop their ice cream - three. Riley notes a flashy woman with an outfit in a truly atrocious combination of green and orange clashing horribly with her red hair, and a man that gives her an odd, bad feeling, tall and thin, black hair and wearing a dark coat.

Her focus, of course, is primarily on their target apartment, but there's only so much to pay attention to when of the usual occupants, one is out and one is probably taking a nap. In between jotting down notes about the human element of Amsterdam flowing past her down on the street, Riley watches the apartment, the curtainless window and the empty room inside. As the minutes drag on and the end of her shift keeping watch approaches, her focus drifts more and more down to the street, but not because of her bored little game with the notebook.

It's the man. The one she'd seen right after the red headed woman with the bad sense of color combination, the one that sent a cold prickle down her spine. Tall and thin. Black hair. Dark coat. She sees him that first time, and then again maybe ten minutes later, on the opposite street corner. If it had just been twice, maybe she'd have let it go. Maybe she would've forgotten all about him. But then the curtain at the window of the apartment just next to their target apartment twitches, too fast for Riley to make out the face that appears for just a moment, and not even two minutes later, she sees him again.

This time, he looks up at her. He's too far away to make out details of his face, and he turns away too quickly, but now Riley's bad feeling has grown into something impossible to ignore. Her shift is up, and she pulls one side of the headphones off her ear. Sound slams back into her left ear and she says, loudly enough to catch the attention of Mac and Jack where they sit on the cramped living room's couch, "Have either of you ever seen Rear Window?"

They look at her with twin expressions of mystification, and if things had been different, Riley might have found it funny.

"The Hitchcock movie?" Mac asks. "With the guy spying on his neighbors?"

"Yeah," she says, nodding and glancing back. She half expects to see the man standing in their target apartment's window, but he isn't there. He's not on the street either.

"Didn't one of the neighbors like, kill a guy or something?" Jack's voice is dubious, drawl thickened, slowing and cluttering his words. One eyebrow is raised, and he seems to find the reference almost funny. "Do I even want to know why you're bringing that up right now?"

"Because I'm seeing things out this window that I can't put together and it's freaking me out. Either I'm going nuts, or there's somebody watching us," Riley tells him, turning back to the window, eyes sweeping the street for the man. "I've seen the same weird dude at least three times, and the curtain on the apartment next to our target has moved a couple times. The most recent time, he showed up on the street right after. I swear he looked right up at me."

Now, Jack doesn't look at all amused or confused, he's frowning in deep apprehension. He gets up off the couch and walks over, crouches next to where she's sitting, squinting down at the street.

"What did this man look like?" he asks, as Mac walks up and joins them, all three of them peering out the same pane of glass.

"White guy. Tall, thin, black hair, black coat. I wish I could tell you more, but I only saw him a couple times, and he was too far away to really get a good look. I don't know, guys, I just got a really, really bad feeling when I saw him."

"Alright, well," Jack says, voice taking on that tone she's still not used to hearing out of him, authoritative and serious. Completely calm and in charge. "Looks like he's gone now, but I'll keep an eye out, for the guy and on that unit you mentioned, which one was it? Right?"

"To the left," corrects Riley, and Jack nods.

"Alright, to the left. It's my shift now anyway, why don't you go ahead and hand it over, I got it from here."

Jack takes over on watch and Riley goes back to the couch with Mac. He's got a deck of cars that he's pulled out from somewhere, shuffling and bridging intricately over and over in deft fingers. It's fascinating to watch him do things like this, casually and without much thought, small acts of incredible skill like he's been practicing all his life. The cards twist over his fingers, soft rustling sounds filling the air as they slide past one another. Riley shakes her head and looks away, only to be met by the silent back of Jack's head.

"You gonna deal those cards out, or just keep shuffling?" she asks, and he glances at her, surprised.

"Oh, you want to- sure. Yeah."

The game they end up playing is one Bozer's dad taught Mac, on some camping trip he'd gone on with his roommate's family when they were maybe twelve years old. He tells the story with a faint, fond smile of nostalgia on his face, talking about Robert Bozer and a week where he hadn't had to worry about anything besides catching frogs and burning marshmallows on a fire. In thinking about all the stories she's heard about his childhood - though there haven't really been all that many - Riley can't think of a single happy one that hadn't involved Bozer or his family in some capacity.

"You guys have known each other a really long time, huh," she comments, picking up the two new cards he's dealt for her. There's a small pang of jealousy under the words - Riley has no idea what that's like, to have a friend who's known you that long. Someone not related to you who's grown up with you, seen you at your best and worst and most average moments. The thought of that relationship quickly turns to something else, and Riley winces. "Lying to him about all this, that's gotta be tough."

One of Mac's shoulder goes up and down, a slow, half-hearted shrug. His eyes are trained down at the cards in his hand, and he studies them for a long moment, then rearranges two of them into a different spot. When he answers her, he says it so casually that it takes Riley several seconds to process what he's said. The tone doesn't match the words at all.

"It is tough, but I don't have another choice. The day I tell him what I really do is the day I put a gun to his head and pull the trigger. Metaphorically, y'know."

Unable to help herself, Riley stares openly. It's obvious to her right away that those words, shocking and nausea inducing, aren't Mac's. Those are someone else's words coming out of his mouth. He notices when he glances up from his cards, and his face morphs into a cringe.

"Sorry, it's uh- It's something my dad said, in the beginning, just trying to get me to understand what kind of danger I'd put him in if I ever told him about all this."

"That's…" Riley's lost her focus on their card game entirely now, her hand set face-down on the table while she looks directly at Mac. "That's really messed up, that he'd say something like that to you about Bozer. You don't need that image in your head."

Another shrug, the same shoulder as the first one, a slow rise and fall. Riley takes a chance and rather than letting it drop, she pushes.

"There's a lot of stuff he does that's really messed up, actually, Mac," she says, trying to keep her voice light and calm. There's a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth, and his eyes fix back on his cards. "The way he talks to you, treats you, it's…" It's abusive, she wants to say, but she knows if that word leaves her mouth that's the end of anything she could hope to accomplish with this conversation. And besides, it's not just about Mac and James's personal relationship, abusive though she sincerely does think it is, despite not knowing the exact nature and extent of the mistreatment. "There's stuff on missions, too."

Now he looks up, cards going down to join hers on the table. There's a suspicious look on Mac's face, a frown creasing his forehead.

"You know we had to stop on the way out for our equipment, on this one," she says, and he nods shortly. "This would've all been a lot harder and a lot more risky if Matty hadn't caught that we didn't have any requisitioned. She never should've had to. Way I see it, I think he just counted on you figuring something out."

With his jaw set, mouth pressed in a stiff line, Mac is uncomfortably quiet. His eyes dart, once, over to Jack, sitting not thirty feet away from them at the window.

"Look at your past missions, the way he's been running things. He expects you to just figure it out a lot," Riley says, taking it a step farther. "It's not right. And one day it's gonna-"

Abruptly, Mac gets to his feet. He walks away from the table, their game forgotten completely, and Riley falls silent. She watches his back and feels her fear and empathy for him like a physical pain in her chest. Riley knows what it's like to walk away from things too heavy to carry in your current state. What she doesn't know is if he's going be ready when the day comes that they don't have a choice, and one way or another, it's dropped on him.

When Mac's turn for a watch shift arrives, and he slips the industrial grade headphones over his ears, Riley feels guiltily relieved. Since she'd pushed the conversation about James enough that Mac had physically gotten up and walked away from it, she's had a lot of time to sit on the couch in their borrowed apartment and think about what went wrong there. Aside from the obvious - this was probably not the time or place but hey, you don't get to be choosy when opportunity aligns itself - there's another thing that she can't escape, nagging at the back of her mind. He's been shooting her weird looks, suspicious glances, and in the time in between them, he's got an expression on his face like he's doing math.

It's become glaringly obvious to Riley that she's likely just tipped their hand, and she can't entirely say it was an accident. Though she understands why they'd needed to keep Mac in the dark about their investigation, she's got her doubts about it going on this long. He deserves to know, and at this point, she thinks they have enough evidence that there's no possible explanation for what's been going on except that James is - somehow, for some reason, that much they don't know - incurably corrupt. And if they're to get at that how, at that why, they're going to need Mac. He is, after all, right at the epicenter of all of it.

So yeah. It's a relief to get his focus off her, and onto the apartment across the street, if only for the next couple hours. Riley watches the back of his blond head, the movement of his hands at the windowsill as he twists open a paperclip, pulling the small strip of metal out into a straight line ready to be molded into something else. Jack had handed him a box of the things, no words exchanged between them about it, just a bewildered but grateful look from Mac and an easy smile from Jack. Riley found the whole business far more endearing than she enjoys admitting to, and is now focused back on the cards Mac left behind.

Jack comes over and sits down next to her, nudging her with an elbow.

"What's the face for?"

She doesn't even bother trying to pretend nothing is going on, telling him point blank, "I did something I probably shouldn't have."

"Whatever it is, we can figure it out. I'm sure it's not as bad as you think, you're way too hard on yourself, both you kids are. It's never as bad as you think, I promise." There isn't a moment's hesitation when he says it. Jack sounds completely sure of himself, and of her, and it makes that spot of fondness that's been growing deeper and deeper ache sharply.

"No, listen," Riley says, though it would be tempting to take the out, to make something up about her training or something, avoid telling him what she's maybe accidentally-on-purpose just done. "Mac knows something is up. We were talking, and he brought up some absolute garbage the Director said to him, and I said some things about the Director's conduct, and past missions, and I think he's onto us. It's gonna be a matter of time, weeks if we're lucky, before he's completely figured it out." She doesn't say she's sorry. She can't quite bring herself to, mostly because, truthfully, she isn't.

And Jack… Isn't mad about it. His expression of determined resolve doesn't shift instantly to one of disapproving thunder, doesn't say her name in that disapproving drawl she remembers from when she was a kid and did something blatantly dangerous or against the rules.

"We need to tell him soon anyway," is what he says, rather than 'you shouldn't have done that,' rather than 'what were you thinking.' Before Riley can ask for a reason to this unexpected response, Jack provides one. "Matty's about to take the investigation to Oversight."

"Holy shit," she says reflexively, unable to keep the shock out of her voice. "Is she really?"

Nodding, Jack glances over his shoulder at Mac, the headphones sealed over his ears keeping him from overhearing the conversation. "She caught me on the way out when she was telling us about the equipment req forms. All that's left to do is find some kind of motive and she's taking the whole thing to them, at least to alert them to her investigation. She thinks we've got enough proof, and wanted me to ask you to help compile a dossier for them, so it's laid out chronologically all in one place. Anyway, I feel like whatever his motivation is, we're not gonna be able to find it without Mac. There's a piece missing, and he's the one who's got it."

The cards in Riley's hands make a soft whispering noise as she shuffles them. She can't imitate any of the fancy tricks Mac had been doing earlier but something about moving them around in her hands is marginally comforting, at the very least giving her something to focus on aside from the reality of the new stage they've moved into. It's an odd kind of limbo, an in-between place she doesn't like. Riley has never done well with things being neither here nor there, neither one thing or another.

When she'd been maybe eight or nine, she'd heard the story of Schrodinger's cat, and then proceeded to have nightmares about it for a week. Something should be either dead or alive and the idea that it could somehow be both at once was more than she could handle. Not much has changed since then.

There is one source of solace she can take from the whole thing. Soon, the lying will be over. Mac will know what they've been doing, and she can stop going behind the back of someone whose heart has made itself a home as a brother next to hers. Though even that contains a more frightening prospect behind it, one she sees too in the shadows of Jack's face.

What will Mac think of them when he finds out? Will this be the end of the tentative, shaky, maybe-family they're building with him, will the end result leave him betrayed and alone? At the moment, she has no answers. All Riley has are what-ifs and fears. Schrodinger's bomb. As long as the fuse is burning, hasn't reached the ignition point, it both has and hasn't destroyed them all.

Over the course of a day and a half of surveillance, they gain everything they need in terms of their war criminal accomplice making her debut and incriminating herself and everyone in the room, and nobody again sees the strange man Riley had noticed earlier. She can't help but watch for him as she sits for her shifts at the window, eyes darting every so often down to the street, scanning the faces in the crowd , the window in the next apartment over. By the time they take their leave of their hideout, Riley is half convinced she'd imagined him. A prickling feeling lingers on the back of her neck, even as she drives away, on the major road leaving the heart of the city.

Thanks to Jack having taking the bulk of the overnight shifts the night before and Mac having lost their game of rock-paper-scissors, Riley is behind the wheel as they leave Amsterdam. The slow trickle of cars has grown into a river as the bike-dominated city falls away behind them and they move out towards the rest of the country, and as such, it would've been easy for her not to notice it. In fact, the only reason she does notice it is likely the paranoia sparked by the man in the dark coat, still lingering in tense knots in her shoulders.

"Guys," she says evenly, when it finally becomes unmistakable, what's going on. "We're being followed."

"What?" Jack asks, at the same time Mac chimes in with, "Are you sure?"

"There's a blue sedan three cars back and to the left, I can't quite get a look at the guy driving, but I think it's following us and I think it's the man I saw in the window, the one I told you about. I think we're being tailed." It takes all of Riley's nerve not to give in to the temptation of talking herself out of it, dismissing the concern and logicking herself in circles until even she doesn't think it's true. But it is true, and she is sure. Just to prove a point, to herself and to her team, she abruptly changes lanes, takes an unplanned turn down the wrong fork in the road.

The blue car follows them. She catches a sideways glimpse of the person driving, the black hair and the high-collared jacket she'd seen over and over down on the sidewalk.

"It's definitely him."

Hands flexing around the steering wheel, Riley speeds up just a fraction. Jack, next to her in the passenger's seat, makes eye contact with Mac in the rearview mirror, and then puts a hand on her shoulder, squeezing firmly.

"Do you have this?"

Gritting her teeth, Riley doesn't even allow herself to contemplate the question. "Yes. I have this. Now shut up so I can drive."

Jack shuts up, and Riley drives. Her eyesight has gone sharp and there's a rushing sound in her ears as she guides the car around, taking a possibly illegal u-turn through a gap in the median to the other side of traffic. Her body feels cold, her knuckles stinging at how tight she grips the steering wheel, and because Riley absolutely cannot panic right now, Riley does not panic. She keeps control of the car and of her composure, telling herself this is no different than trying to shake Mac in downtown Los Angeles over a bet of a bubble tea tab. She's been trained for this, they've made sure of it.

By the time they make it out of the city entirely, they've lost the tail, changed cars, and Riley feels simultaneously like she's high on endorphins and has lost ten years off her lifespan. Her heart is beating so loud in her chest she wonders if Mac and Jack can hear it. She wonders if they can tell how scared she is, a fear that hasn't set in until right now, when she's ceded control of their new vehicle for Jack and is sitting in the back seat with Mac.

Their hands sit on the seat between them, fingers laced together so tightly she can feel her joints ache. It's the pulse of Mac's wrist, under the press of her fingers, that finally allows Riley to calm down. All the way to exfil, she counts it, focuses until her world shrinks down into the steady, strong thump of Mac's life under her touch.

Thud. Thud. Everything is okay. Thud. Thud. She got them out. Thud. Thud. Jack looked at her like she'd hung the moon and Mac told her she'd been perfect. Thud. Thud. Their tail is gone and everything is okay.

Despite this, despite knowing that they're in the clear, Riley can't get rid of an odd feeling she's had since she finally lost sight of him. She'd done well, she knows enough about this to say that for certain, it had been a good shake, and she can't quite explain it, the sense that maybe she hadn't shaken him at all.

Maybe the man had just… let them go.

They're all the way back home, literally walking through DXS to meet with Matty and debrief, and she still feels it. It's enough of a near-physical sensation that she pulls her jacket up higher, lets her hair out of its ponytail to cover the back of her neck. She tries to ignore it, tell herself that everything is fine, and focus on getting through this debrief and then going home.

The universe, it would appear, has different plans.

Mac has stopped dead in his tracks. Riley only notices when she's walked several feet past where he froze. She looks back at him, unease prickling back with a vengeance at the back of her neck, and then follows his gaze to where he's staring, looking for whatever it is that's shocked him into stillness. There's a man in DXS, standing inside the open door of a conference room with glass walls they can see easily into. He's a handsome man with brown skin and close cropped hair, posture reading like military. The front of his black t-shirt has a few words printed in neat white font up and to the right, just barely large enough for Riley to read it.

FBI Bomb Analytics.

As she reads the shirt, the man turns towards them, his face becoming fully visible, and prompting one word out of Mac. It's a name, surprised and confused.

"Charlie?"