this chapter's title is from jaymes young's 'i'll be good'. hope everybody is staying safe, and that this helps pass the time.
warnings: large focus on the death of the 20 year old civilian mentioned the last chapter, and how badly mac is taking that. also features a panic attack.
For now, it's a waiting game. Matty sits at her desk in her office, having just gotten off the phone with Director MacGyver notifying him of what's taken place, and waits. He's on his way back from wherever it was he'd taken off to, and Mac and Jack are headed in as well, but until either party arrives, there's not much Matty can do any more. The silence of the room is broken only by the sound of footsteps and the occasional hum of distant conversation outside in the hall, and the click of Riley's laptop keys.
Matty knows there are things she could do to occupy herself, reports she could review, slow-burn distance operations she could check in on with IT, exfil evaluation reports submitted for the bi-annual review of the department, but she can't bring herself to do any of it. All she can do is sit at her desk and watch the door, waiting. Every so often, her attention is drawn to Riley, giving the girl on her couch a once-over to be sure she's still coping.
She'd been devastated when she found out. Matty had called her in and closed the door and explained, as calmly and plainly as she could, what had happened to Zachary Wright. Riley's face had crumpled before her eyes, knees going out as she dropped onto the couch hard and final as a stone through the glass surface of a still lake, and hasn't moved since. She got her computer out at some point, though Matty doesn't know what she could be doing. Every so often a glimpse of the screen is visible, and it's just a blue background and white text, strings of numbers and letters that likely wouldn't make a lick of sense to anyone aside from the person writing them.
In all honesty, Matty is glad she'd had the chance to tell Riley first, alone and before the rest of her team. It was something of a trial run for the likely much harder version of this conversation, the one where she'll have to tell two of her field agents that, on the mission they were supposed to be on, a civilian had been shot dead and, in all likelihood, it seems the motivation was the substitution of teams. Though Riley had taken it hard, understandably so, she wasn't the one targeted by the note, the one implied to be the reason Zachary Wright lost his life. If telling Riley was hard, Matty can only begin to imagine what her conversation with Mac is going to look like.
On the phone, she hadn't provided any details. She'd only told them there was an update about the mission, because they'd asked her to keep them informed of what's going on, but she didn't tell them what that update was. Nothing was said about the discovery of the international kidnapping ring Excelsior's involvement, the rescue mission that followed, or the subsequent death. That kind of information, Matty has long since determined, is not the kind that should be delivered over the phone, if there is any way to avoid doing so.
A soft buzzing sound alerts her to a message that's just come through on her phone. Matty picks it up and reads it over quickly, the puts the device back down without answering. It's a status update from exfil team Victor Bravo, updating her on what time they should arrive with agents Paiz and Luther. This does actually provide Matty with the realization that there is something she needs to do now, and she picks the phone back up. She needs to have resources in place for their debrief upon return, including making sure that they have psych on staff. This mission has concluded more brutally than most, even those where a life is lost, and Matty can remember with all too sharp a clarity exactly how Luther had sounded telling her what had happened.
It feels like she's hardly gotten all of this sorted when her assistant is knocking on the door, alerting her to the arrival of Mac and Jack. The Director is still en route, as are Paiz and Luther, so she can put those pieces of the massive juggling act that is this job aside for the moment, in order to focus on delivering this message in a straightforward way that is as kind as it's possible to be.
"Guys, you're going to want to sit down for this," she tells them, and the tone of her voice cuts off any joke Jack might have been about to make about the cliche she's just dropped.
Matty keeps herself calm and measured, with a soft edge to her words, while she tells them that the mission was overall a success.
"We discovered, before Agents Paiz and Luther got too far in, that the kidnapping ring Excelsior was involved with Halilovic and in the area." She can tell from the look on Jack's face that he at least recognizes the organization, likely having encountered them in his work before DXS. "Upon learning this, we identified that they had a victim in captivity at the time, an American college student named Zachary Wright."
Riley's hands have gone still on her keyboard, the empty space left behind where the fast, rhythmic clicking had been loud and wide. Judging now by their expressions, Mac and Jack haven't heard the news. They're not saying anything or asking any questions, and Matty thinks they've put it together, given context clues, but she still knows she has to say it. A friend of hers who went to medical school recounted once how they were taught that in order to understand it, people need to hear the words. Euphemisms and meaningful silences in which to put it together for yourself don't work. The words need to come out, honest and open.
"The victim," Matty says, hoping that small amount of cold distancing will help her somewhat to be able to continue without her own voice cracking, without betraying how affected she is herself by this last minute, incomprehensible tragedy, "was rescued by Paiz and Luther. He was then delivered to the United States Embassy in Sarajevo where he was handed off to what was believed to be an embassy employee." Mac's forehead twitches, and she knows he caught it, the specificity of her language. "We were notified the next day by our agents, right as it broke in the news cycle, that Zachary Wright had been killed, and his body found just outside city limits."
Mac makes a sound like he's been stabbed. It's a gutted, wet huff of air, empty, and Jack is the one who asks.
"What happened? What the hell happened, Matty, if he was already at the Embassy, I-"
"The man who took custody of Wright at the Embassy had credentials that identified him as Elias Dermott," Matty says, an ache in her chest when she says the name, knowing what is coming next. "Elias Dermott was found dead shortly before the discovery of Wright's body, and the running theory between Agents Paiz, Luther, and myself is that the man who met with them was not the real Embassy employee, but rather someone who had killed him to assume his identity and intercept the handoff. We don't know who it was, just that it was unlikely this man was associated with Excelsior. It's not their handiwork, they don't operate with that kind of risk."
"Why then?" Jack is shaking her head as he asks it, and Mac is still silent, staring past Matty's head at some nondescript spot on the office wall. "If they weren't Excelsior, and they weren't working with Simon Halilovic either-" He pauses for confirmation, and she nods. "Then why murder some random American kid? It doesn't make sense."
Above all others, this is the moment of this conversation that Matty has been dreading the most. "There's something else," she says, parroting what Luther had told her. Riley looks up for the first time in a long time, shooting Matty a dismayed look, but they have to know, and Matty has to be the one to tell them. Even if it was morally or practically acceptable to keep this information to herself - the message too close to a threat to keep it quiet, and she unable to stomach the idea of doing so - she knows that James wouldn't hold back. They, Mac especially, deserve to hear it from her. At least if it's her, Mac will be able to react.
"There was a note in Wright's hand when he was found, put there presumably by the person who killed him," she says, even softer than before. She wants to hesitate, to give herself and Mac both more time before this information is out and can't be taken back, but that would only prolong it and wouldn't be fair to anyone. "It was handwritten and not signed. It read 'Tell MacGyver that next time, he better show up himself.'"
Jack couldn't have possibly described what he thought Matty was going to say when she started talking about the note they found with the dead boy's body, but what actually comes out of her mouth is so far out of left field it takes his brain a second of lag to process what it is. When he manages to digest what she's said, his head whips immediately to the side, because much as he feels like he's just taken a bullet in the vest, he can't imagine how this is hitting Mac.
Not well, it would seem. Mac is staring at Matty with wide, too-bright eyes, frozen so still it's visible to Jack that he isn't breathing. Then, there's a small, hitched gasping sound as he starts to again, chest shuddering out in a deep, abrupt inhale, devolving quickly into near-hyperventilation. Before Jack can say anything to him, before Matty can get farther than saying his name, Mac is up and out of his seat, and headed for the door.
Before Jack can follow him, there's one question he needs answered. There's one worst-case scenario for where he could find Mac when he goes to track him down, and if it's a possibility, he needs to know now.
"Is he here?" Ordinarily, Jack would feel bad for the abrupt way he asks the question. Not this time. "Is James MacGyver in this building?"
"No," Matty tells him, unphased. "He's offsite, won't be back for over two hours. Go."
That's all the cue Jack needs, and he goes. He leaves the office, looking around hopefully, but he's out of luck there. Mac didn't stop when he left Matty's office, didn't sit down on a bench in the hall or wait for Jack, who he'd had to know would be right behind him. So Jack starts looking. Mac isn't anywhere to be found in any of the usual spots on the main floor, and it's a short list of places later that he decides to head down to Research.
When he reaches their lab, Bonnie Whittacker and Peter Tam are both there. They're in the middle of a conversation when he walks in, but stop dead when they see him, both looking at him with the kind of blatant, irritated stare you turn on someone who has just rudely barged into your conversation.
"Have you seen Mac?" he asks, and when they both shake their heads, he curses sharply, turning to go.
"Did something happen?" To Jack's surprise, it's Whittacker's voice that stops him. She's the quieter of the two, barely speaks when he's around. He'd started out assuming that, of the two of them, it was Tam who tolerated him to a greater degree, but after they had more cause to encounter each other and semi-bond over their mutual proximity to Mac, he'd grown to understand she was just like that. Just shy. But now she's standing up out of her chair, arms folded across her chest, frowning at him, and asking, "Is he okay?"
"We got some news," is all Jack can think of to tell her. "Some really bad news. He bolted."
Tam is looking back and forth between them, face confused and a little impressed, and Whittacker nods. She looks contemplative, hesitating for a moment, and Jack doesn't have time for this.
"If you know where he is, Bonnie," it's a risk using her first name when they aren't close, they don't really know each other like that, but Jack has to try, hoping maybe it will persuade her to see how sincere he is, how badly he needs her help, "you have to tell me. Please, I need to find him."
For just a moment longer, Whittacker stands there watching him. Behind her, for once, Tam says nothing, letting his quiet labmate take the lead. Eventually, whatever she was hesitating for must have fallen in favor of deciding he needs to know, because she tells Jack, "The roof. Try the roof."
How she knows to check there or why she wouldn't just tell him is anyone's guess, and Jack doesn't have the time to stand around trying to piece it together. Instead he hurriedly thanks them both and leaves, taking the stairs two at a time to the very top of the building. He reaches the roof access door in record time, thankful that his work badge has high enough clearance that it lets him through the door. Breathing a little heavily from having bolted up several flights of stairs, Jack slows down once he gets a good look at what's going on outside.
Mac is sitting on the ground, a ways away, back propped against some kind of large, shed-like box presumably containing control paneling and equipment. There's a light wind this high up, ruffling his shaggy blond hair, and he's got a tablet in his hands, looking at something on the screen and scrolling slowly. Jack takes a moment to just look at him, to let the sight of his partner, whole and physically unharmed, calm the racing pulse in his neck. After giving himself enough time to come down off the instant high of panic that arrived faster that it might have normally, had they not had so many scares with Mac so quickly in recent days, Jack walks over.
The only sign that Mac has any recognition that Jack has walked up to him and is now sitting carefully down beside him, is a slight flinch, his eyes closing briefly and his body seizing up. He doesn't move after that, attention not leaving the screen, and he doesn't say anything, so Jack thinks it's safe to assume he's at least identified the person now sitting down on the ground next to him. If it was someone else, he'd likely have bolted again, but he's still, except for the finger dragging across the tablet's screen.
Following Mac's lead and not saying anything either, Jack decides that, for right now, the best course of action is to let him be and give him what space is possible while not losing sight of him. From this vantage point, Jack can actually get a look at what's displayed on the device in Mac's hands, so he focuses on that. He squints down, and when he figures out what it is, Jack's heart gives a small, wrenching throb. Oh, Mac, kid…
Zachary Wright's Facebook page looks like the Facebook page of any random college kid in America. Mac has scrolled far past what Jack would assume are the recent influx of posts from friends and family regarding his sudden, shocking death, and the screen is full of University of Chicago banners, snapshots of an elderly black labrador retriever, and meme posts with a handful of names tagged. Mac's scrolling pauses, stopped on a selfie of Wright and a girl, both of them grinning and wearing Cubs hats. He breathes audibly in short, whistling pants, and then he's talking, quiet and hollow.
"His twenty-first birthday is in a couple of weeks," he says. Jack wants to tell him to stop, but can't, frozen by the wounded tone of Mac's voice, the light glinting off his wet cheeks. "He's got two sisters and he was allergic to strawberries. He was going to school for anthropology and he posted a lot of really bad pictures he took on hikes. He was a person, with a life and a family and a future, and now Mary Anne and Caleb Wright are going to get their son back in a box with two bullets in him. They lost their son and those girls lost their brother and all of these people…" He flicks down the Facebook page again, faces and names flashing past, countless pictures and posts. "They lost their friend and their coworker and their classmate, because- Because I-" And he can't finish, the word choking off as Mac looks sharply away.
It hurts in a way Jack can't describe, when he realizes that Mac is holding his breath, suffocating his own crying before it can escape him, smothering pain and guilt under heavy, still silence.
"You didn't do this," is all he can think of to say. Mac's shoulders jerk once up and down, breathing in, out, unsteady and stifled. "There's nothing you could've done if you had been there. It happened after he was handed over to the Embassy, you know what Luther and Paiz reported. They're good agents. They did their jobs and it was out of their hands, and it would have been out of your hands if it had been us on the ground in Sarajevo."
"You know what the note said," Mac shoots back, the acidity of his voice undercut by the failing strength of it. "I didn't do it, but they did it because of me. To send a message to me."
"There are two of you running around here, it could have easily meant him." Jack has to point it out, even though he knows before Mac starts pushing back on the idea how unlikely it is, given the circumstances, that the note could have meant James.
"He's not an active field agent," points out Mac, still looking away. One of his hands comes swiftly up from the tablet to push at his cheeks, sleeve clearing his face of any hint he'd been crying. It's not much use, given another tear streaks down a few seconds later. Mac ignores it, going on to say, "He wasn't assigned to the job, and the case he's chasing is… it doesn't fit. It's out of pattern for this."
It's yet another piece of information for Jack to file away to reference later, other priorities winning out just now. He can worry about the implications of whatever case the Director is chasing later, when he's not triaging his partner.
"Okay, so let's say it does mean you." The instinct to stop, to take it back and apologize, rears its head and sinks its teeth into Jack's spine, and he ignores it. He shoves it violently down, because despite the look that crashed across Mac's face just now, he has to hear this. "Let's say some- some rando decided to kill this kid to send a message to you. There's still nothing you could've done to stop them. If Wright was killed to get to you, it could've just as easily been meant for you in person. Maybe if we'd gone, he'd still have died and the message would've been worded different. We have no way of knowing. Nothing could have prevented this 'cept the bastard who killed him deciding not to, and I'm not gonna sit here and listen to you destroy yourself over it."
The Facebook page is still pulled up, held in Mac's shaking hands while he looks down at it, and he's back to not talking. There's an odd shine on the surface, and it's when Jack realizes that a tear has rolled down Mac's face, dripped from his jaw, and landed on the tablet that he makes a decision. He can't stand to watch this, not any more. Jack reaches over and takes it, grateful when Mac lets it slip out of his grasp easily and without protest.
Once he's set the tablet off to the side, Jack wraps an arm around Mac's shoulders, hand coming to rest at the side of his neck, the same place it had lain that day in the cemetery, when he'd introduced Mac to his dad. The day he'd learned the story behind the scar under his palm, the one he runs his thumb over gently now. He wonders if Mac is thinking about that alley in Sweden, how much the kid is empathizing with what Zachary Wright must have felt in the last moments of his life. Mac had been barely older than Wright when he'd been shot and left for dead in Stockholm, alone in a strange place, when he should have been safe, protected.
"There's nothing you could have done to save him," Jack says, low and close to Mac's ear, "and I'm so, so sorry."
Mac doesn't answer, either to accept or reject the absolution, but there's a slight pressure as he leans into Jack's touch, and that has to count for something.
James hasn't been at the office long before he summons Mac to his office to speak to him alone. When he walks in, James has a tablet not unlike the one Mac had been using to look at the dead boy's Facebook page set out on his desk. There's an image pulled up, a scanned and enlarged photo of the note Matty had told him about, scratched in pen on a crumpled piece of white, bloodstained paper. The Director doesn't say anything at first, studying something on his phone when Mac enters, and Mac doesn't know what he's supposed to be doing here, or if the picture on the desk is something he's supposed to react to.
Generally speaking, the worst case scenario is usually a good place to start with James, and so Mac goes there first, and says, "I'm sorry."
And now James is looking at him, phone down and eyebrow up, waiting with a question he doesn't ask out loud, forcing Mac to guess and try and answer anyway.
"If I hadn't gotten myself stuck in the hospital on that run," he says, forcing his voice to keep steady even as he very much doesn't want to think at all about that event, "then I would've been on the mission as I was supposed to be. I wasn't, and I-"
"Are you really making this about you right now?" The exasperated snap breaks through Mac's attempt to castigate himself sufficiently for what he'd assumed James was upset with him over, and Mac, startled, falls immediately silent.
Apparently, this meeting isn't about being in hot water for his hospitalization and everything that followed, though what the alternative is, he has no idea. He doesn't have to wonder for long.
"Walsh is sending me messages using murdered college kids and you're making this about you?"
It's enough to completely wipe out anything Mac had been about to say, in favor of the completely baseless assertion James has just made, and he asks, impulsive and unintentional, "Walsh?"
"Who else would target me like that?"
Mac is coming to the very rapid conclusion that James believes he knows exactly what happened in Bosnia and exactly who they have to thank for it, and the entire thing makes him deeply nervous. It's far too soon to be making any kind of conclusive judgement on who's done this, given the unsigned note and the lack of anyone coming forward to take credit, and Mac thinks he's wrong additionally about which one of them was being targeted. Not that James seems to want to hear any of this, going on quite the monologue before Mac finally finds a concrete point to bring up.
"The note was addressed wrong," he says and James looks over at him, frowning.
"What do you mean, addressed wrong?"
"I mean," Mac turns the tablet to face his father, pointing at their shared last name, the spiky M that begins it, "did he ever call you that? Did Walsh call you 'MacGyver'?" It's a moot question. Mac knows he didn't. He knows, from the bits and pieces of stories he's heard over the years, coming out in moments where James's rants about his former best friend went from angry to wounded before he shuttered completely.
The note is addressed wrong because Walsh had never called Mac's father 'MacGyver'. He'd always called the man 'Jay'.
Without waiting for any kind of response, Mac tries his luck and pushes harder. "And is this his style, his kind of message? Why now, and why the theatrics? Why leave it unsigned and make you wonder when he could take credit for it, if he knew you'd figure out it was him anyway? This doesn't sound like him, sir, you know it doesn't. We've both been chasing him long enough to know this isn't how he does things."
"People change," James says stiffly, turning away. It had been a risk to bring up any personal aspect of his and Walsh's relationship, the history they shared. Pointing out that the full last name on the note is so different than the personal nickname he'd used to refer to James when they'd known each other, while making a good point, seems to have pushed James somewhere Mac should've known better than to take him, given what he goes on to say. "People change and partners change, Angus, which is something I've tried to teach you. Unsuccessfully, evidently, and speaking of, you're starting to get way too close to Dalton."
Mac shakes his head. Something about the assertion stings in an unexpected way, makes him want to turn around and leave the room, not come back. Instead he just does his best to ignore it and focus on the problem at hand. James seems to be less keen on dropping the topic, now that he's noticed Mac's response - or lack thereof.
"I'm serious," he says, stepping around the edge of the desk to stand in front of his son, though still several feet away. "It's making you drop your guard, you're leaving yourself defenseless."
"Jack's a good person," Mac can't help but say, protesting against the implication in James's warning. (He can still feel Jack's hand on the side of his neck, warm and protective, strong without the barest hint of a threat. It had been odd that he'd showed up at all when no one had ever followed Mac up there before, when he'd been sure no one even knew he went up there at all save the time he'd offhandedly mentioned it to Whittacker, told her it was a good place to go if she ever needed to get away from the busy, keyed-up energy of the office.) "I don't need to defend myself from him, he wouldn't ever-"
He doesn't get any farther than that before James interrupts, loud and sudden, "And that's exactly what I would've said, would've ssworn up down and sideways, about Jonah, right up until I knew better." It hangs in the air between them, the rise in his voice and the name he never uses, personal and bitter and hurt, Jonah.
James stands there and stares at him with a fierce, hot look in his eyes, and then looks abruptly away and walks back around the desk. He looks at the tablet, closing the image of the note and opening a file of some kind, beginning to scroll through it.
"Just watch your distance with that man, you may think you can trust him now, but you can't ever count on that for certain."
Yes sir. The words hover on the tip of Mac's tongue, but he can't bring himself to say them. Instead, he says something else, returning to a topic that is, somehow, unbelievably, safer ground. "It was supposed to be me on the ground on this one," he says, referring to the mission in Bosnia. "If you're the one the message is meant for, why now? Why this mission, one I was supposed to be on? You weren't ever going to be there at all, even if things had been executed as planned."
"Why would anyone be targeting you, Angus? You haven't been in this industry long enough to make the kind of enemies I have, so even if they meant they wanted you there, it was me they were after ultimately. You'd have just been means to an end, me obviously being that end. Hell, maybe it's supposed to mean that you were the one he meant to kill all along, and they just picked the Wright kid because you weren't there."
There's no part of that sentence that Mac doesn't find viscerally horrifying, and he swallows past the sudden lump of fear that's ridden in his throat to say, a little hysterically, "Sir, come on, you have to- someone died, and you're not even considering that you might be wrong! You're not listening to me!"
Like some kind of incredibly put-upon elementary school teacher, James raises a hand to his face and pinches the bridge of his nose, sighing audibly before shooting a disdainful look at Mac, who is having a hard time keeping his breathing under control.
"Of course I'm not listening to," James says, a hint of condescension in his voice, like he's actually talking to an elementary schooler, slow and exasperated. "You're young and you're naive and you have all these ideas in your head about saving the world - the entire world - and yes it's terrible that young man died, but people are going to die! On this job, sometimes people are going to die and you can't let that drive you completely out of your mind. See reason, for once. This entire event is about me, it was from the start. I know exactly who's responsible, and when I track him down, he is going to get the option of a bullet or a prison sentence and about ten seconds to choose. You can either help me or get out of my way. So far, you've been making the right call. Don't let this change that."
Now, Mac's breathing is completely out of control and his head is spinning, either from what James has just said to him or from an actual lack of oxygen. He's thinking about a hundred different things at once, flashes of moments popping into his mind and out again just as quickly, chest and throat tight. The hospital, Jack's wrenching insistence that he should've- would've been there, wild horses, the bombshell of the depth and scope of his entire team's investigation into his father. The pointless, incomprehensible death of Zachary Wright, in the wrong place at the wrong time, rescued and then taken all over again, a young man who died alone and scared in Sweden-
In Bosnia.
His skin is tingling and seems to have grown too tight. Mac feels like he needs to sleep for a year, like he needs to retire though he hasn't so much as hit twenty-five, like things will always keep being like this until it overwhelms him and pulls him under completely.
James doesn't notice. He's tapping at his phone again, reaching down every so often to swipe at the tablet, enlarge or highlight something on it, muttering under his breath low enough that Mac can't make out any words over the rushing, thudding sound of his own heartbeat in his ears. His father is thoroughly lost to the world, lost to the here and now, Captain Ahab locked in a fixated death-spiral with his white whale, damn the consequences and the collateral.
As a too-strong wave of dizziness ripples over him, Mac forces himself to take a deep, slow breath. He inhales and counts along, holds it, and exhales, repeating the process until he feels like he's actually getting enough oxygen to his brain. While he does this, he watches James out of the corner of his eye, afraid of what the reaction might be if he's caught in such a state for what would likely be described as no reason at all. There really was no point, though. So completely distracted is James, and for long enough, that Mac is able to breathe through what was likely a panic attack without James ever noticing, despite less than ten feet separating them.
Eventually, Mac calms down enough to find the silence stifling. It's almost like James has forgotten he's there entirely, a feeling he is well familiar with from his childhood. It had frightened him deeply at times, left him wondering if his father remembered him at all, if something terrible had happened and Mac woke up in a world where no one could see or hear him. He's too old for that sort of childish fear now, but the feeling that always came with it is there all the same.
So he says, just for something to say, "Matty mentioned the ground team should be here tonight. We can sit down with them tomorrow and go through things with them. I'm sure Matty has some kind of a theory that might be useful to guide-"
"Webber's theories won't be necessary. She's not to be read in on this any farther."
Mac's life would probably be easier on the whole if he could learn how to stop beign surprised by moments like this one. Evidently noticing and reading his silence, James looks up and sees the expression on Mac's face, then rolls his eyes.
"Come on, be realistic, please. You're aware that this is need to know. The investigation into Walsh is restricted, and I have no plans to read Webber in. I'll be meeting with Alicia Paiz and Chanelle Luther myself. I have a sketch artist already on standby, I'll take them there to get their interviews done, and then at least we'll know whether it was Walsh himself or a proxy they met at the Embassy, the one with the credentials of, uh..."
"Elias Dermott," Mac finishes for him, and before he can be chastised for interrupting or being a smartass, which is usually how James categorizes moments when Mac provides information he doesn't think is crucial or is embarrassed to have forgotten, he goes on. "You're meeting them straight there when they land? Not tomorrow?"
Squinting in exasperated confusion, James says, "Yes, obviously."
"They're not going to get in until the middle of the night, though, and what they just went through-"
"They're agents, and 'what they just went through'," James uses the hand not holding his phone to create air quotes as he parrots Mac's words back to him, "is their job. I need them while their recall is fresh, you understand this concept. It's terrible, what they saw, but they're professionals and they can handle it. Paiz and Luther will be fine."
There isn't any point in arguing with him on a good day, and certainly not when he gets like this about anything remotely to do with Walsh, so Mac doesn't. He just stands there while James seems to come to the conclusion that this conversation is over, straightening up. The tablet is tucked into his bag, his phone back into his pocket, and then James is walking towards his office door.
"I need to start making inquiries into our intel and contacts in the region," he says as he brushes past Mac, who barely restrains the urge to take a step back when the edge of James's coat brushes his arm. "I'll let you know if I need you, but in the meantime, please do your best to conduct yourself and your business as usual. Don't let yourself get rusty, your team is back on rotation next week, and I expect you're going to keep up to the standards of field readiness, do you understand?"
"Yes sir," Mac says, mouth numb around the words.
"Oh, and." The door is open and in his hand when he stops, though before he actually says whatever it is he'd remembered he was going to say, James lets it go and it swings shut. The moments it takes for the latch to click feel like they last a lifetime. "I know I don't have to tell you that you can't breathe a word of this to anyone. The vital secrecy of anything to do with Walsh can't be compromised just because you've decided you want to star in some feel-good buddy cop film with Dalton. He doesn't have you so thoroughly snowed that you're going to disobey basic, direct orders you've been following without issue for years, does he?"
It's obvious by the empty space he lets stretch out between them, eyebrows arched expectantly, that this is one of those moments where James wants an actual answer out of him. So Mac swallows down the panic he can feel surging back up in him like a swarm of angry, agitated butterflies, and forces his still-numb lips to cooperate.
"No sir." He feels cold and distant, and James nods, the look on his face a kind of satisfaction that could almost be mistaken for pride.
"Good," he says, and then he's gone.
The office door swings shut behind him, and Mac is left alone.
