ha. haha. ha. hi guys? this is HUGE oops?

this fic lives and it WILL be done. i finally broke through the unbelievable writing rut i've been in, i hope you all haven't lost interest in the meantime!

(also, as a fun aside, i listened to 'new york minute' on a loop for an hour and forty-five minutes while editing this. it no longer sounds like a real song. that's where the title this week comes from!)

(chapter warnings: gun violence, james doing as james does. some uh. strong language.)


In the vast array of skills Mac possesses, sitting still for extended periods of time has never been particularly prominent. It's particularly absent today on the plane headed out towards the destination of the day. Mac finds himself antsy and can't really sit still, flipping through the folder the whole time. It's pretty pointless because he knows all the information contained within. But then, he's not doing it for the information, he's doing it for the feeling of the paper in his hands, the edges skimming past his fingertips, the thicker manilla paper making a slightly different sound than the thinner printer paper pages inside.

Time trickles by in an uneven, awkward stream, Mac zoning out of focus and staring through the jet's window. The folder slips at some point and a small papercut slices over the heel of his hand beneath his thumb, jolting him into full, unwelcome awareness. He hisses slightly in pain and this snags the attention of both Jack and Riley.

Jack's on him in an instant, dropping into the seat next to Mac's and reaching out to take ahold of the offending hand. It's an unnerving instinct, and it just gets worse when Jack smoothes his thumb over the wrist bone absentmindedly when Mac gives the slightest involuntary flinch. It's something Mac's still not used to, being this seen. Everything about him seems to be front page news to Jack. Jack has the training to be able to notice the most trivial of details and the interest to pay attention, and he sees everything, catches both the small noise Mac had made when the cut was sliced into his skin and the flinch he'd allowed through when he was touched. He sees everything already but he's never more attentive than he is to any indication that Mac might be in pain.

"It's fine," Mac says, an irritated snap edging its way into his voice on instinct. He feels his cheeks heat slightly and regrets it almost the second he says it, cringing. Eventually he's going to need to get over this, the automated response to any indication someone has seen and acknowledged any weakness in him, any vulnerability that could be used to hurt him further. It's a papercut, and this is Jack. He needs to get his act together because this has gone on too long already.

"You're sure?" The question is careful and casual though the look on Jack's face is anything but. It searches and calculates, trying to glean anything Mac might be keeping from him, and Mac shivers.

"It's a papercut, Jack. I'm barely even bleeding," Mac explains, pulling the mildly injured hand out of Jack's grip and pressing it down against his own thigh. The fabric of his dark pants should absorb the small beads of blood quickly without leaving too much evidence behind.

"Alright, then." It's said in a tone Mac hates, one that indicates Jack knows very well it's not 'alright' but is going to let it drop anyway. To draw attention to it would make Jack's point for him, though, so Mac remains stubbornly quiet, stinging palm still pressed to his leg.

Riley chooses that moment to walk over from where she'd been hanging back and sit down across from them. She's got a tablet in her hands that she sets on the little table between them, the screen and what she's doing on it fully visible to Mac in what is maybe the world's least subtle nonverbal topic change. There's a map pulled up on the tablet and some info boxes she's filling out like forms, inputting data from the folders they'd been handed, sorting through it and ensuring it ends up in the right categories.

"This program the analysts in IT put together is kind of incredible, look," she says, nails making a light and strangely soothing sound clicking against the screen. Riley finishes poking at the data then hits a button that pulls the main page up to fill the screen, swiveling the tablet around so that it's oriented towards Mac, right side up.

It's a map of Tallinn, the capital of Estonia and also where they're headed right now. Mac watches as little illuminated dots appear on the map, four in total. Some of them are moving, some of them are stationary, and each is tagged with a name.

"Each of the potential excelsior targets, which IT identified for us, is one of these dots, right," explains Riley with an excited note seeping into her tone, gesturing over the device's surface, "and this program aggregates all this data from around the city - security cameras, internet access, phone signals, credit card and bank activity, all that sort of stuff - to track where the potential targets are at any given moment. We don't know which one of them Excelsior is going to go after, but this means that until we manage to find that out, we can keep track of where they are. If someone's path goes suddenly real weird, or disappears entirely, we know that's who Excelsior took. It's not perfect but it's something, y'know."

"Who are our targets then?" Mac asks.

He knows that all the information is in the folders already and that Jack has read it just as surely as he has, but he also knows something else, and that's that Riley gets antsy without something to do. Asking her to explain this gives her a task. It's good, especially given that they're all even more on edge than usual already. Besides, that hint of excitement in her voice is one bright spot in this dark cloud of an airplane right now, and Mac would like to encourage it to whatever degree he can.

Riley talks through the potential targets, two American young adults, one Brit, and an Estonian who is the prime minister of Estonia's nephew. All common categories for Excelsior to target - people in their early twenties, foreign nationals and family members once or twice removed from high profile, wealthy figures. Mac picks at the edge of the folder again as she talks, using his forefinger this time rather than the thumb that still stings with the small cut he'd accidentally dealt himself with his earlier fidgeting. Riley pauses at one point, the stream of information suddenly fading out, and Mac looks up, wondering what she's stopped for.

She's looking at him expectantly and Mac doesn't get why until he glances to where Jack has remained in the seat next to him and is now holding out… a paperclip.

"Where did you get that?" Mac asks, then winces when it comes out ruder than he'd meant it to. Unfazed, Jack sticks a hand in a pocket, pulling out a handful of paperclips and hairbands. The hairbands are the same color as the one Mac can see when riley turns her head and Jack just shrugs and shuffles the whole thing back into his pocket when Mac sends him a mystified look.

Unable to find the words to explain what he's feeling right now, Mac doesn't try, just accepts the paperclip and starts twisting it around as Riley picks up again in her explanation of the data they were relying on.

It's a long flight to Estonia and by the time they land it's the next day. Mac slept some on the way over; not much but it'll be enough. By the time they arrive where Jack is picking up their car from a local contact, at the shore where Tallinn melts out into the ocean, Mac is getting twitchy about the whole situation. It strikes him just as Riley walks up next to him, that what he's looking at is the body of water separating them from Sweden. Stockholm.

"That's the Baltic sea."

Mac nods and doesn't answer Riley verbally, but he puts his hand up to the side of his neck. It's a nervous tic he's had for a while now that amps up whenever he's stressed, and especially whenever their treks around the globe take him too close to the place where the scar there was dealt.

It doesn't make sense to him, the way that Sweden has stuck with him. It's not like it's the first time Mac was ever shot. Yes, it was the closest he's ever come to death, the doctors had been pretty straightforward with him on the subject when he'd recovered enough to speak to them about it. They hadn't minced words on exactly how narrow the margin had been between Mac walking out of that hospital with a large, ugly scar knotted into the skin of his neck and Mac never leaving that alley. His fingertips dig into the scar and it aches, pulsing through the muscles of his neck and down into his shoulder. It's not totally clear how much of it is lingering damage, what the doctors had warned him about when they'd said in physical therapy that he'd probably deal with some degree of intermittent pain for the rest of his life, and how much is psychosomatic, his brain compartmentalizing things he doesn't know how to deal with into a physical sensation, localized in a mass of damaged nerves and tissue.

"You're thinking about sweden aren't you?" Riley asks, soft and gentle.

That feeling from the plane is back.

That feeling of being seen, it reminds him of when he was standing in James's office feeling like a butterfly on display, splayed out and pinned to a board under bright, bright lights. It's the same sense of scrutiny, of being unable to hide or turn away, but at the same time that it feels similar, it also couldn't be more different. This is far away from the hard, dissecting stare that had called to mind those cold white lights and long, thin pins. Jack's hand catching his wrist on the plane when he'd gotten the papercut, Riley's voice asking him if Sweden is where his mind's wandered being as it's so obviously not here on this boardwalk with her, is no more cruel than it is escapable. It's the sun when you step outside after a long bout of illness, blindingly radiant, forcing you to squint when you first leave the shadow of the house. It's the kind of light that makes you feel fragile and paper-thin and held at the same time.

When he'd woke up in Sweden, after the shooting, after the surgery that saved his life, Mac had felt like his body was made out of spun glass, new and gossamer and aching. He'd been too scared to move, laying in that hospital bed, thinking that if he so much as twitched a finger or blinked too hard, it would all be over. And then James had walked out of the room without a word, leaving him alone. The way they look at him, the way they see him even when he tries so hard not to be seen, it's like the exact polar opposite of how that had felt, and it makes Mac feel… well he doesn't know how to describe how he feels.

"Yeah," he eventually admits when he realizes he's just been standing there not answering Riley's question for long enough to be obvious. "Yeah," he says again then shakes his head. "Sorry, excuse me, I've gotta…" The sentence is over before Mac comes up with an excuse to end it with.

Luckily, Riley doesn't seem to need one, understanding the real reason he needs to step away and out of anyone's line of sight for a moment without needing to make him admit it out loud. She nods and turns to walk back over to Jack, leaving Mac a moment to himself to breathe and gain his bearings without anyone watching him.

Looking out over the water, Mac reminds himself firmly of the relative geography. From this vantage point on the coast, if he were able to see straight across the water to the land mass on the other side, it wouldn't be Sweden. At this angle, the place straight across from the shore of Tallinn is Helsinki, Finland, not Stockholm, Sweden, which is to the east of Tallinn and at something of an angle from here. Besides, he's actually in Estonia and he's here with Jack and Riley, not Karen English, and suffice it to say he's all but completely sure that, were he to end up in that kind of situation again, it would go very differently this time around.

There's a scattered patch of pebbles leading down to the beach itself and, with Jack and Riley's conversing voices a background hum, Mac kicks at them lightly. The dull rocks collide with a muted clatter against each other, the simple colors and shapes skittering in the path of his shoe a solid and safe thing to focus on for a moment. One sticks out from the others, an oval rock with unnaturally smooth edges, sanded down over time by the sea and the other rocks around it. Stooping to pick it up, Mac examines the rock in the light. A circle goes straight through at almost the exact center, the edges around the hole beveled in and making it pleasant to slide his thumb over, reminding him of a worry stone Bozer's mother always had on her when they were kids.

When he walks back to join Jack and Riley, Mac realizes he's still holding it, and on a strange impulse, he puts his hand out, pressing it into Riley's palm without a word. Mac has just enough time to register what he's done and how odd it probably seemed, embarrassment surging up in his throat, before Riley closes her hand around it and looks from the rock to his face, smiling brightly. Before Jack can notice the interaction or Riley can say anything about the move he still can't explain why he made, Mac walks briskly past both of them.

"We're stationing in the city center, yeah?" he asks as he walks towards the car they'll be using to navigate Tallinn while they're in town. Jack answers in the affirmative, which was ultimately unnecessary, given Mac already knew the answer before he'd asked the question. It was a silence filler more than anything else. From the city center they'd hopefully be in the best position to reach any point of Tallinn's high traffic areas as soon as they figure out who Excelsior's target is.

Jack is fully aware that Mac hadn't been asking because he didn't know where they were going, but he doesn't push the issue. He'd seen the strange little interaction between the other two, Mac handing Riley what looked like a rock and seeming surprised at himself for doing so, and decided not to ask any questions. He'd been close enough to overhear it when Riley had made the comment she did about Sweden and seen Mac's response. This was a hard enough day without him poking at Mac unnecessarily when he's obviously in an unsettled headspace.

Settled into their temporary mission base, they start right away getting the data uploading. Riley is clicking through things on her computer, working on something while they're mainly just monitoring the potential targets. It reminds Jack a lot of Amsterdam, when they'd been conducting that surveillance op. It leaves him a lot of time to think which can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how deep into a rabbit hole he wants to get himself worked this time.

This really doesn't seem like the sort of thing they should've been sent here so urgently on, is what it comes down to. Not that the potential for the kidnapping of a twenty-something kid wasn't urgent, but they know Excelsior's pattern. They don't kill their victims because, by and large, their victims' families pay the ransoms or comply with the demands issued, and they didn't even know who in particular was being targeted this time. It just doesn't make sense that they'd be sent out so soon after their last mission when there wasn't even an especially immediate danger.

And then there's another thing Jack can't get out of his head. What had happened back at DXS in those last moments before they'd left, the way James had stopped and turned like he'd been about to say something to Mac, then deliberately stopped himself and left without a word. Try as he might, Jack can't make heads or tails of it, and no possibility his mind throws out is anything but chilling.

By the time Jack's phone rings, he's glad for the distraction, though he doesn't stay that way for long. With a quick word to Mac and Riley, Jack steps into the other room and answers it, greeting top level analyst Amos Bright pleasantly.

"I wasn't sure what I should do, but…" Amos doesn't bother with pleasantries, launching directly into a somewhat addled-sounding ramble that has Jack's mildly improved mood plummeting straight back through the floor.

"Get to the point, please," he says, not bothering to try and sound pleasant anymore.

"Okay I just- this line should be secure, it's the phone in Matty's office, she said I could use it if I, y'know, if I ever needed to."

That's one of the things Jack likes about this kid. He's never once heard Amos call Matty 'Deputy Director Webber.' The fact that he needs a secure line, though, even more secure than the line he'd already have in his office with the IT department, that's troubling.

"There's a problem with the program, the one that is supplying your tracking data," Amos says, finally explaining what he'd needed so urgently, and Jack feels somehow even worse.

"What kind of a problem?"

"The kind where- Listen, did anyone ever tell you about the backdoor?"

Jack thinks he knows what Amos is probably talking about, but he really hopes he's wrong, and so says, "Let's just go with no, they didn't, so why don't you tell me now."

And Amos goes through the whole story in a quiet and halting voice, his characteristic self-interruption strained and nervous, explaining that yeah, it's exactly what Jack was afraid it was going to be.

Matty had told Jack about the back door when she'd first explained to him that his role here wasn't going to be the simple field agent partnership he'd been expecting when she'd recruited him. When the purge of DXS had happened, one of the things that had been discovered in its wake was a significant breach in security in the IT department. It had been an access point programmed to allow someone without clearance to mess around in DXS's databases and programs. The theory was Nikki Carpenter had been the one to create it, and after she'd been forced out, along with the rest of anyone proven or suspected to be involved in the infiltration, they'd closed the door and sealed it behind a foot of concrete. Metaphorically.

Or, at least, that's what was supposed to have happened.

"They had me working on going through all of our firewalls and failsafes," Amos explains on the phone, voice going more freaked out by the moment. "I was the first one of the analysts that were left - it was just me and Cristina and Natalie, there were just three of us, he just- just fired everyone else, I know he had Nikki arrested and Dylan too and I don't even think Dylan did anything but-"

"Amos," Jack says, cutting him off as his voice has been climbing louder and faster. There's a particular quality in the way Mac sounds when he's in one of his worst headspaces, when the frightening world inside his head is getting faster and more overwhelming until it's threatening to pull him under completely. Amos sounds just like that now.

It's having an unnerving effect on Jack too. He doesn't know Amos Bright particularly well, but every time they've ever interacted, the analyst's been generally optimistic. Whenever Jack's needed to pick something up from IT or needed an assist from Amos on an op, the young man is found with an easy smile and what look like handmade metal beads glittering at the ends of the locs he wears pulled into a topknot. No matter what kind of tricky tech-related mess he's elbow-deep in at the time, Jack has never seen Amos look so much as flustered, never mind nervous.

Right now, he sounds downright scared.

"What happened, Amos?"

"I'm the one who found it, originally. The backdoor. I found it and I told Director MacGyver immediately because we didn't even have an IT head anymore - he got fired too - and so I went straight to him and I thought he'd tell me to fix it, or wait until Cristina or Natalie could help. It was a tricky hole in our systems, you know, it was damn good work, I'll give Nikki that. But he just thanked me and told me he'd handle it. When we got the new head of IT in, we were told the issue was resolved, but either it wasn't or someone found a way to get back in, because…"

"The backdoor's been accessed again," Jack finishes. He's speaking relatively quietly, having stepped away even further during his conversation with Amos so that he'd be out of earshot of Mac and Riley unless they halted their conversation and listened very hard to his.

"Yeah," Amos confirms, half word half exhale. "It's been accessed. I saw some weird things in the data in the tracking program y'all have going out there with the assignment on excelsior - I helped get the data mining webs put together for that and I like to see how my projects end up working out, so I was poking into it. When I saw that, I started digging further, and then I found this line of code that just didn't belong, and it wasn't coming from our servers at all."

"Okay, you're gonna have to say it straight out, because I don't know much about this sort of thing but the conclusion I'm coming to here ain't pretty and it's gonna have consequences."

"Someone is accessing the backdoor and using it to mess with the program that's running the data you're tracking on this mission." Amos, to his credit, did indeed say it straight out. "I told the director about half an hour ago, but when this sort of thing happens, usually I get a follow-up from Riley in minutes. Nothing. I figured the most likely scenario was that he just, y'know. Hadn't told you. So I, uh…" He sounds a little sheepish when he picks back up, the sort of thing that lets Jack know he'd been right about Amos in the first place when he'd liked him almost immediately. "I did some digging and followed the signals leaving the building and figured out that nobody from DXS had called you at all."

"You tracked the Director's outgoing calls."

"Well. I mean, yeah, basically."

"That's…" Jack whistles. "You've got nerve, Bright. Gimme a shout if you ever decide to go into the field, huh?" There's a laugh from the other end but they both quickly sober again at the thought of the situation they're facing that made the bold move necessary in the first place.

"So what exactly are we looking at on the ground here?"

"In a nutshell, you're operating a dangerous mission on compromised data that we don't know the extent of the interference in, and you didn't know."

"Right," Jack says. Everything has started to feel sort of weird and far away. "That's pretty much exactly what I was afraid you were going to say. Thanks for the heads up, have you talked to Matty yet?"

"I wanted to tell you as soon as I put it together but I'm going straight to her after this."

"Good, you did a good job. Thank you for calling me, I'll pass it on and you and Riley can get connected to figure out whatever you gotta do with your doohickeys and whatnot to track down exactly what's going on here."

There's a faint and strained but nonetheless genuine laugh from the other end. "Sure, Jack, thanks."

The call ends and Jack is now faced with how he's supposed to explain this to Riley and Mac.

He doesn't want to. It's a ridiculous, selfish, unrealistic urge but he doesn't want to interrupt the way they are right now with more bad news on what feels like an endless stack. Mac and Riley are sitting together on the couch, Riley's computer open on her lap while Mac cranes over her shoulder to see the monitor. They're in each other's space with a casual ease Jack would never expect to see out of either of them, talking quietly and jostling each other every so often with a completely toothless annoyance Jack remembers from watching cartoons with Laurie and Debbie early on Sunday mornings.

As he watches, Mac suddenly jerks his head back, an errant coil of Riley's hair caught in his face and probably tickling something fierce. He bats at it, expression mock-offended, body relaxed in a way that cuts a sharp contrast to how he'd been earlier in the day when he'd resembled less a bright young man and more a cautious, hunted thing. Riley laughs at him, her shoulders hitching and her nose scrunched up the same way it used to when she was little. Jack remembers suddenly the way she'd looked when she'd gotten out of that car in Rio and is knocked breathless by the way the woman he sees on that couch now looks for all the world like a completely different person. They've been good for each other, his boy and his girl, a pair of wounded only children who'd filled in cracks and empty places the other probably hadn't even known they'd had until there was something there to patch it.

They seem happy. It's a small moment, the ticking of the second hand dogged as it always is by the mission at hand, only one step behind any brief period of levity they may achieve, but it's a precious moment nonetheless. Jack doesn't want to be the one to take it away from them. The mission, the Director, the investigation, Murdoc, Walsh, the back freakin' door, there are so many things hanging over their heads, anvils waiting to fall at any moment. So sue him if he wants to give them this moment first.

He doesn't get the chance to for long. As if sensing his eyes on them, Riley looks up from where she's halfway through elbowing Mac in the side, her smirk freezing on her face like someone's pointed a remote at her and hit pause. Both she and Mac sit in an odd position of frozen marionettes, limbs twisted in the middle of their brief period of schoolyard tussling, looking at Jack with tension slowly seeping back into their faces and posture. They disentangle easily, Riley pulling her elbow from Mac's side, Mac unhooking his ankle from where he'd been using it to pull at Riley's, until they no longer resemble Jack and his sisters when they'd been children but rather experienced operatives, ready for the next shoe to drop.

So Jack gathers up his nerve, shoves down the part of him that keeps wanting to act like a father in order to call forth the part that can do this job and still keep getting up in the morning, and drops it on them.

His concerns had been right. The news kills the mood immediately. Riley snaps into action, pulling up a direct communication window so she can chat with Amos while she starts analyzing the tracking information on their end, looking for anomalies that could potentially match to what he saw. There isn't much that Mac can do to help and Jack can see how antsy that makes him, sympathetic because he can feel the same restless unease in himself. This is the part of missions that he's the least comfortable with, the times when Riley's expertise takes the driver's seat and he's left with nothing to do but hold in stasis, stand watch to a soundtrack of her fingernails skittering against a keyboard.

Eventually, Jack's phone starts ringing a second time. It can't be Amos, who he knows is still currently communicating with Riley, which means the list of people who'd have this number and need to be contacting him right now is short and anxiety inducing. A look at the display tells him it's Matty, and he excuses himself to the other room, looking at them and making sure that they're engrossed in what they're doing before he starts talking. He doesn't want them overhearing this conversation, if the subject matter is going to go in the direction he suspects it will.

As soon as Jack answers the phone Matty is talking, foregoing all pleasantries. "Amos Bright left my office not too long ago, said he spoke to you first."

"Matty, what the hell is going on?" Jack asks, bypassing hello's and how-are-you's himself.

"That's what I'm trying to figure out."

"Please tell me what I think happened here isn't what actually happened here."

"Well you're gonna have to tell me what you think happened before I can do that, given I'm not a mind reader, Jack."

It's more than a little bit of a snap, and Jack can't say he doesn't deserve it. He doesn't say it, though, not right away. He can't. The moment Jack says it out loud, even just between him and Matty, it becomes real, and he's not quite ready for the possibility that's been taking shape in his mind since he got off the phone with Amos to become anything remotely real.

"Let me ask you this," he says instead, "when the director first brought you on, before you called me, what did he tell you about the breach in IT?"

"The backdoor, I think they called it?"

"Yeah, that. When I was on the phone with Amos, he said something about how he was the one who found it and then flagged it, and he was never told anything more about it, but the Director promised he'd get it taken care of or something like that. What did he tell you about that, were you involved in that process at all?"

"No. I wasn't. I wasn't even told about it until much later, it came up in passing and he seemed to regret mentioning it."

"And you followed up?" It's a dumb question, but Jack asks it anyway, and Matty confirms it's a dumb question the very next moment.

"Of course I did, who do you think I am? I checked it out myself with the new IT head, it was indeed sealed. But…"

"But what?"

"I had my suspicions about this, this backdoor ever since I was told about it. So I checked with some people I know, contacts from back in the day, and they all said the same thing. After a breach like that, the systems should've been rebuilt from the ground up. Not patched. A patch left us vulnerable to a second breach, even if it were fortified. Clumsy move, but nothing obviously corrupt."

The maybe until now hangs in the air between them, unspoken and deafening

It's now that Jack can't avoid it any longer, the conclusion he's been approaching for some time with a feeling like an avalanche. It built in a slow, steady rumble, distant and foreboding, and now it's here, tearing through forests like tissue paper and wiping out everything in its path.

"Whatever's happening, I think the director knows about it." Jack says it in a hush, though Riley and Mac are still distracted in the other room, in his line of sight. They can't hear him - he'd have seen some kind of a reaction by now if they could - but it feels far beyond dangerous to be saying it out loud in the same country, never mind just one room over, not even a solid door separating them.

"Explain," Matty says shortly, after a pause. Jack's grateful. He honestly doesn't know if he'd have kept talking if she hadn't.

"I mean that this business almost let us know about, this new breach, I think he knows about it. I don't know how much exactly he might know, but I think he's known long before we did. Before Amos did. I think he's known since this morning, before we left. There was a thing that happened, his assistant called him over and told him something, and for a moment there he looked like he was gonna say something to Mac. Had his mouth open and everything. And then he just… didn't. Didn't sit right with me, and I think maybe this was it. So he thought about telling us, telling Mac, and then didn't. And even if he didn't know then, he sure as hell does now, that's why Amos called me."

"So you think…"

"Yeah. Something's happening, it's probably somehow involving or at least possibly involving Walsh, our lives are in danger, Mac's life is in danger, and the director made the judgement call not to tell us anyway."

Matty doesn't ask him if he's sure, and somehow that's more damning evidence than anything the Director could've had to say. What she does say is, "We're going to need proof."

"I know." It's a callback to the days when they'd worked together so well, on the same page without having to consult chapters. The way forward is clear to Jack in the same way he's sure it's clear to Matty, but because with this sort of thing you can't afford to play any games, he double checks anyway. "You're going to Oversight?"

"You think you can get me what I need?"

"Oh yeah," Jack says. He feels the same calm, grim certainty now that he does when he lays down on a ridge, sniper rifle coming to life under his hands, the target already dead on the ground though it doesn't know it's coming yet. "Whatever I gotta do, I'm handing you proof and you're going to them today. The second we get home. Whatever I have to do."

"Jack."

"Yeah, Matty?"

"Whatever we have to do."

The lump in his throat is surprising and hard to swallow past. All Jack makes out is a slightly strangled, unfathomably grateful, "Yeah." And then the line goes dead as Matty's hung up, leaving it on that note.

When he re-enters the room, Jack doesn't tell Mac and Riley. He can't. Not yet. Not until he has the proof he and Matty just spoke about. There's a chance - microscopic and fading smaller and smaller every moment, but a chance nonetheless - that he could be wrong. And until that last, tiniest fraction of doubt is dispelled, he can't tell them.

There isn't too much time for Jack to sit around pondering the secret he's keeping hidden from them or how it is exactly he's going to get proof. Before another two hours have passed in full, Riley taps something on her screen and then whips her head towards Jack, calling his name. The program meticulously created by Amos Bright and the minds back at the DXS IT department to track and map the typical movements of the four potential kidnapping targets has thrown up an alert. One of the identified at-risk profiles, the one belonging to 22-year-old Devon Kahun of Boston, Massachusetts has deviated from what has been established as her standard patterns. It doesn't necessarily mean anything, but it could mean everything, and what it definitely does mean at the very least is that it's time for Mac and Jack to leave their hideout and go out into Tallinn.

While tracking Devon Kahun through the information fed to them by Riley in real time, there's something anxious nagging constantly at the back of Jack's mind. Whatever had happened with the backdoor, whatever was wrong with the data program they were now chasing around the streets of Tallinn on the authority of, they hadn't been able to figure it out before the system alerted. There's a distinct possibility they're missing something here, something vitally important, and Jack doesn't have the faintest idea what it could be. In his experience, that's an equation that ends in a casket more often than not. Not acting, however, could result in the abduction or even death of another American college student. After Zachary Wright, Jack doesn't think he could stomach it, and neither could Mac or Riley.

So here he and Mac are, approaching a bridge where a transecting road passes over the one they're driving on, the location where Devon's presence had last pinged, and then disappeared. It's the first area they've been directed to that's somewhat in the open, and thus their firstclear opportunity to get a visual on her if she's still in the area. Jack parks the car under the bridge and gets out, Mac doing the same on the other side. It makes the most sense to split up, no matter how much Jack hates the idea, each taking a different side of the overpass and doing a quick scan of the area. Every step he takes away from his partner feels like a mistake, and Jack walks faster, hoping to get this over with as soon as possible.

When Jack's phone starts to go off in his pocket, lurching to life in a string of urgent buzzes against his thigh, he's immediately struck with a jolt of nausea. He fishes it out and glances at the screen, shoes stilling to a halt on the street just out from under the overpass on the opposite side of the bridge to where he can still hear Mac walking behind him.

"Mac, hold up," he calls as soon as he registers the screen, which reads in bold letters that chill him through to his spine, RILEY. Regardless of whether it's a rational thing to think or not, Jack decides in the split second it takes him to swipe a finger across the screen and answer, that he and Mac will never, ever split up on a mission again.

"The data is fake," Riley is saying, and she's not two words in before Jack is already whirling around, yelling Mac's name and waving at him to stop. "The tracking data is fake, that's what Amos was seeing, we've been following data that isn't real, there is no Devon Ka-"

Whatever she's saying next disappears as the phone leaves Jack's earshot, shoved hastily back in his pocket without a second thought. Riley will forgive him for it, and something far more pressing than wrapping up their conversation in a polite way has just shot up Jack's to-do list. He's broken into a sprint trying to reach Mac before it happens. What it is he doesn't know, all he knows is that it's coming and he has to stop it.

As soon as Jack sees it, the truth hits him square in the torso so hard it takes every cubic inch of air from his lungs. A little red dot meanders around Mac's chest, drifts lazily across his shirt beneath his collarbones. A sniper's sight. And Jack knows, sure as he's ever known anything, that he's too late.

The shots are ringing out before he's made it to the bridge, Mac just barely having turned around before the noise began. Jack's brain, the part of it that loves and fears and hurts, shuts off, leaving alive only the part of him that trained for this. It's the part that saw EOD techs without the self-preservation sense the good Lord gave a horsefly through the desert alive. The part that conducted ops so deep under he'd nearly lost track of who he was some days but still came out the other side. It's that part of him that runs faster than he can remember running in his life, gets ahold of Mac by a fistful of fabric, and yanks him back towards the car, all the while keeping his eyes sharp and gun out for any indication of where the sniper might be sheltering.

The sound of glass shattering joins the string of gunshots and Jack's heart barely speeds up a fraction, too focused on what he's doing to care. The car is close by and his focus has narrowed to one goal. Get Mac in the car, get the hell out of here.

Jack doesn't see anything indicating where the sniper might be hiding, at least not before he's bundled Mac into the car and peeled away from the curb, speeding out from under the bridge and away towards the city. Jack doesn't see anyone following them and doesn't hear any other engines or wheels behind them, but still puts the car through its paces as they leave the bridge farther and farther behind them.

Beside him, Mac is curled up into the passenger's side door, breathing in little whooping gasps, only his back and the top of his blond head visible out of Jack's peripheral vision. Despite how much he wants to, Jack doesn't pull him away from the door or try and get a look at any potential injuries. They can't stop, not yet. All the field care in the world won't save them if they get shot in the head while trying to administer it.

They screech around for a while until reaching a covered alley next to a garage that Jack swings the car into, when they're far enough away from the overpass that gunshots have stopped ringing in his ears. He's out before the engine's hardly stopped, whipping around to Mac's side of the car. Jack yanks the door open and physically turns Mac to the side himself, beginning to frantically pat over Mac's chest to make sure he's not hit.

It takes Jack a few long, terrifying seconds to process that he can't see any blood, can't hear any gurgles in the short, harsh gasps. They're not quite out of the woods yet, though, because when he looks up, Jack sees Mac clutching the side of his neck and feels his heart lurch and stop all over again. It's difficult but Jack manages to pry his fingers enough apart to see that there's no blood, that Mac hasn't in fact been shot again in the center of that web of scar tissue left behind from the incident Jack knows has been haunting him all day.

Still feeling his pulse thunder wildly in his own neck as adrenaline surges up and down his spine and with no physical wound to tend to, blood to staunch or splintered bone to strap into place, Jack is at a loss. With nothing else to do, he puts himself even closer to Mac inside the open car door, edges around it and presses in close until he's standing inside the V made by the door and the body of the car, blocking Mac from the rest of the world. Jack puts his own now shaking hand down over the one Mac has returned to clamp hard to the side of his neck, like he's helping protect the old injury, adding his shielding grip to Mac's.

Mac tips forward, face pressing into the front of Jack's shirt, low against his torso. The hand not now pressed over Mac's at the side of his neck, twisted awkwardly because of the new angle, brushes lightly down his back then rises to settle against the curve of his head, fingers lightly weaving into blond hair. Jack doesn't say anything. He can't think of anything to say, just dips his own head down and stoops his posture, curling over Mac like he thinks he's some kind of armor, like he could wrap around Mac entirely and keep him safe that way. He's bent over so far that he'd be kissing the top of Mac's head if he dipped his chin even an inch further with any amount of intent.

Where he isn't clutching the side of his own neck, Mac's other hand is now gripping the side of Jack's shirt. He's hanging on hard, surely straining the fabric twisted in his hold, but Jack can't bring himself to care. All he cares about is that Mac is okay. He's pressed close to Jack's chest, and he's not wounded, not bleeding, not about to die in Jack's arms.

As soon as he's calmed down enough to lean away from Jack slightly, not releasing Jack's shirt or uncovering the scar, Mac looks around. The movement pushes at Jack's hand, still in its place over the top of Mac's over the old wound, not about to remove that layer of protection until he does.

"What is it?" he asks, noting the look on the kid's face.

"I should be dead."

Jack's hand flinches with the rest of him, fingers digging involuntarily into Mac's underneath them, pressing, he's sure, into the scar they're shielding together.

"Sorry," Mac says absently, and the fact that he barely reacted to the increased pressure over the part of his body he's the most reactive to other people touching is something Jack would've been bowled over by in any other situation. Right now, though, there are a dozen other things going on that take precedence over that tiny yet monumental indication of how little Mac fears him now. Like the fact that, despite apologizing for the statement that had clearly sent a jolt through Jack's nerves, he keeps talking.

"What I mean is- They had sights. They had sights right on me," the hand not still covering the scar releases Jack's shirt and goes thoughtlessly up to the center of Mac's own chest, fingertips dragging at the fabric of his shirt where not minutes ago those horrifying lights had indeed danced. "There's no way anyone should've missed that shot, and it went so…" He looks around, finally dislodging both their grip and leaving his neck bare.

It takes more restraint than Jack is excited about admitting to keep himself from reflexively lurching back towards him, pressing his palm to the side of Mac's neck again, hell, pulling Mac into his arms entirely and keeping him there until he's decided it's safe to let the world have him again. If it ever would be.

"See, look," Mac says, pointing.

It's clear to see the shot's trajectory now, and it's a grim story. The bullet had gone through the windshield of the car, fractures spiderwebbing through the grass away from the central point of impact, a small circle punched neatly into the high center. After the initial impact, the bullet had passed then through the headrest of the passenger's seat, exiting the car through the rear passenger's side window. Either because of the angle of the bullet's impact, or because it had by that point mushroomed into a much less streamlined projectile, the entire rear passenger window is blown out, chunks of safety glass glittering in the backseat like large pieces of macabre confetti. To have made a shot like that demonstrated skill - and there's no question in Jack's mind it was deliberate. The way the bullet had gone straight through the center of the headrest, the one Mac had been sitting in when they'd arrived at the bridge in the first place, is an angle such that he knows it couldn't have been an accident.

"Yeah," Jack agrees shortly, ignoring the way his stomach churns. There's something going on here, and he can't quite get his finger on what it is. It's unnerving beyond belief and the feeling Jack had before is back with a vengeance. Someone has the bigger picture. Probably more than one someone. There are people out there who know exactly what is happening and why, and they are keeping information to themselves, information that could help jack put this all together before Mac dies in the crossfire.

Mac seems like he's about to say something else when a muted buzz distracts them both. One of Mac's faintly shaking hands goes into his jacket pocket and pulls out his phone, and then immediately nearly fumbles and drops it. His face, which had just been regaining some color after the panic of being so sure he'd been shot moments earlier, has blanched again.

"What?" Jack asks, gut now lurching and jumping. He can feel his heart beat in his throat, hear its dim rush in his ears. "Who is it, what does it say?"

Without a word, either not wanting to or not able to answer verbally, Mac holds the phone out, turning it so Jack can see the screen.

The message is from a blocked caller ID, longer than most texts Jack exchanged in his time using a smartphone with its fumbly little keys.

Disappointing, it says. I thought you were going to be a tougher mark than this. I suppose it goes to show why you should never let someone else deliver your message for you. No guarantee it'll reach its mark. Have to admit, however, I did plan for this, though I hoped I might be wrong.

Now, I had a clever taunt all worked out here, I was going to ask you to count how many of your nine lives I've taken so far and how many you have left, but I've got a reputation to uphold. I don't mix my metaphors. And in this game of cat and mouse, Angus MacGyver, make no mistake. You are not the cat.

- M

"Murdoc" Mac says, taking the guess right out of Jack's mouth.

"Come on, we gotta go."

The plane home is tense and quiet. The thrum of anxious energy in the air is enough to about make the hair on Jack's arms stand up, and he can see it having a similar effect on Mac and Riley. Mac's hand keeps drifting up to the side of his own neck, fingers brushing his scar, and Riley's leg is sawing up and down, bouncing so fast it's got to be getting tired. Once they'd confirmed with Matty that she'd heard from reliable sources that Excelsior had been spooked somehow and left the area, there was nothing left to do but sit and wait to get home.

Sitting some distance away from them, needing space to reflect on what the hell just happened and what it means for what's about to happen next, Jack feels numb and distant like he's watching this all happen from somewhere very far away. He knows both that he has to say something and that he can't yet. Mac has to know, this isn't the sort of thing that could be kept from him. Even if it wouldn't eventually come out in their investigation, Jack himself can't stomach the thought of lying to him over this, not when it's him it most clearly impacts.

But at the same time it's for this reason he can't just blurt it out. If Jack is going to have to be the one to tell Mac that the kid's father had looked at this breach, known it was possible it could cause his death, and decided that was okay with him, he's damn well gonna make sure he's got his facts straight before he does so. Which means before he can talk to Mac, there's one person he has to talk to first.

The Director himself.

As they sit in their seats scattered about the plane, the atmosphere already darkened by what could've happened just that afternoon, Jack feels the whole horrible mess of what he's about to have to do rip him up inside bit by bit. The only thing harder than not telling Mac on this ride, he knows, is going to be having to tell him once they're home.

Riley and Mac both pick up on his mood, he's sure of it. They both eye him through the flight, between the small snatches of rest they each manage to get, drifting off in a mismatched harmony of dozing and waking, catching a spare twenty, forty minutes here and there. The only reason Jack is able to get any rest at all, between the combine blades shredding his insides to pieces and the not even remotely subtle glances Riley and Mac keep shooting him, is because he knows what lies ahead is going to be horrible.

Putting boots on the ground in California is ordinarily something that helps bring Jack's mission-heightened senses back down to normal, semi-healthy levels. This time, it has the opposite effect. They touch down, Jack's feet hit Los Angeles soil, and from the word go, he's beyond keyed up. It's obvious the others have noticed, too. There's a strange, suspicious looking frown creasing Riley's forehead and it seems like every time he looks over she's staring at him, trying to piece together what she sees. Mac's reacting the opposite way. He's gone twitchy, avoiding Jack's eyes altogether and keeping a careful distance between them as they walk.

It's noticing this behavior in Mac that finally brings Jack down somewhat from the heights he's worked himself up into. Guilt threads through his chest, fogging his lungs like smoke. He carefully calms his posture, relaxes his face so that the next time he does manage to catch Mac's evasive, restless attention, it's with a small smile. Jack is rewarded with a slight flash of a smile in return, and a lowering of Mac's shoulders from where they'd been steadily creeping up towards his ears.

Jack counts it as a win, and hopes it's not going to be the last one for a while.

When they get back to DXS, Jack wastes no time in leading Mac and Riley straight to the out of the way little conference room Matty had texted him the location of. Riley tries to ask a question on the way and Jack stops her with a sharp look over his shoulder and a quick shake of his head. He ushers them in, closing the door behind them as Matty stands from the table and walks around to join them in the center of the room.

"I need to go do something," Jack tells them, hating every second of this. He tries valiantly to ignore the way they both edge closer to the other, in an imitation of the way his sister Laurie's youngest, twins, had huddled together and looked at him with betrayed anxiety the first time he'd been deputized to drop them off at daycare. "And while I do it, I'm gonna need you two to stay put right here. Do not leave this room, do not talk to anyone besides Matty and me."

"Jack," Riley starts, and he holds up a hand, stopping her like he had in the hall. Next to her, Mac is silent, not even trying.

"I promise I'll tell you everything when I get back, but you have to let me do this part on my own. Okay?" It looks like Riley's getting ready to start to argue again, so Jack pulls a card he hates using this way. "Do you trust me?"

It's not a fair question. Jack knows it's not, and he can see on both their faces that Mac and Riley know it's not too. Much as he hates it, though, Jack holds steady. He keeps his eyes on them, the question hanging heavy in the air, until eventually first Riley, then Mac nods.

"Okay," Jack breathes, nodding to himself as well. "Okay. I'll be back soon, I promise." He tries not to think about and pretend he hadn't seen the way Mac's hand had darted out in the moment Jack had turned away, Riley's own reaching out to meet him and holding onto him tightly.

When Jack leaves, Matty follows him. The door clicks shut and they walk a short way down the empty, seldom used hall they've essentially hidden down, far enough that they couldn't be heard, even if Mac and Riley were standing with ears pressed to the door. Suddenly unable to find anything to say, Jack looks at Matty with his mouth slightly open, nothing coming out, and feels the full weight of the situation they're in, the culmination of everything that's happened from the moment he walked into that park to meet her, crash down on his shoulders. And, drowning in the crush of it, Jack blames it all, just for a moment, on her.

This is the cruelest thing Matty could have done to him. Brought Jack somewhere that he'd be entrusted with this person it was his job to protect, his job to guard, watched him get attached, and all the while never warned him you will never be able to do it. No matter what you do, it was written in stone the whole time, you will never be able to keep him safe.

Not from the job, not from the lurking time bomb threat of Murdoc, not from Walsh, not from his father.

It's easier to blame it on Matty, to say she should have used the omniscience she's so good at giving the air that she has to see what was coming and told Jack to brace himself. The alternative is having nothing and no one to blame this on at all, left just to sit with the helpless fear and heartache that amplifies exponentially every time the world takes Mac to his knees yet again. Jack either finds someone to blame it on, get mad at, or he'll have to look head on at a truth he has been avoiding for some time now.

The day we met, I signed on to bury him.

Jack hadn't realized he'd said it out loud until Matty pierces him with a look that's harder and sharper than any he's seen from her and quite some time and says, voice flint and almost angry, "Okay, Dalton, that's enough of that. Grow up and get over yourself, because I get it, I really do, but you do not have time to have a breakdown right now. We're all a little busy trying to keep him above ground and if we're gonna do that we all need you here, not somewhere in some hypothetical future giving his eulogy. You can freak out later. Right now, do your job and save him."

It's harsh to the point of almost being cruel and it's exactly what Jack needed to hear.

"You're right," he says. He nods hard and clears his throat, repeating again, "You're right."

"Now I'm gonna go get everything ready to go for the moment the shoe you're about to drop hits the floor, because once you get confirmation - and you will, I have no doubt - we need to be tires on the road before he's any the wiser. I need you on your A-game. The team needs you on your A-game, Mac needs you on your A-game." Matty pauses, and Jack gives her his full attention, making sure he's focused on nothing other than what she's saying to him right now. "Can you look me in the eye and tell me that the person I'm sending in there is Jack Dalton, skilled operative and one of the best agents I've ever worked with and trusted with my life, and not Jack Dalton, worried dad?"

Jack, looking Matty right in the eye, nods. His voice, when he answers, is calm and steady. "Yes, I can. See you in a few."

She nods, looking proud and satisfied. "Good man. Just one more thing." Matty produces from her blazer pocket an old fashioned recorder the likes of which journalists often use to tape interviews. It looks like the one Mac found on his table with the Johnny Cash song on it, which is a thought that sends a shiver crawling up Jack's neck just remembering it. Matty holds the device out and he takes it, clicking it into record and verifying the red light is blinking before tucking it into his own pocket. "Now go in there and get us what we need."

The Director does not look… happy to see Jack. Not that he has ever once in quite literally the entire time they've known each other, including the day they met, looked happy to see Jack. But this time the displeasure seems to have taken a new tinge to it, something pointed and personal.

"What do you want?"

As soon as the question comes out in that bored, irritated tone, the same one Jack has heard from every important man he's ever known talking to someone they look down on, his anger lurches. It was dormant until now, simmering under a heavy cloud of a hundred other things. Sadness had overshadowed it, pre-emptive grief and overwhelming fear suffocating anything else Jack could've felt. Now, though, actually faced with Mac's father, it's all gone away as something else roars up to take its place. Rage is the only thing left. That's how Jack ends up saying it, bypassing the half-baked plans he'd walked in here with, the beginning of what he'd decided to say.

"The least you could've done is checked on him," he spits. The inside of Jack's head throbs with the steady beat of his furious heart, ears rushing with a dull roar.

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me. You put his life on the line, send him into a situation where a sniper punches a hole in the car right behind his head, you oughta at least have the decency to meet him when he gets off the plane."

"I heard what happened in Estonia, so I'll forgive you this time for accusing me of… whatever the hell you're accusing me of and chalk it up to residual adrenaline." There's nothing forgiving in James's voice. Only sharp, snide distaste. "Now get out of my office before I change my mind."

Jack can feel it in his shoulders, radiating down towards his hands, the urge to rear back one of the fists clenched at his sides and break James MacGyver's jaw. It's a tantalizing thought, especially with the phantom memory of breaking Elwood Davis's nose buzzing in his knuckles. He doesn't give in to it, knows that it would make everything so much worse for everyone if he did, but it's a close thing. "I'm not going anywhere. Not until you explain why you did that. How you could do that."

It looks like James is about to say something, a slight eye roll accompanied by the twitch of a sneer on his lips, and Jack interrupts him before he can get a word out.

"No, don't you dare deny it. I saw you this morning, you were about to say something to him and changed your mind. You knew. If you didn't know exactly what it was, you knew something was coming, and you didn't warn us, you sent him right into the literal line of fire without so much as a 'watch your back' and I can't for the life of me get my head around being able to do that to anyone, never mind your son."

"None of my decisions are up for debate," James says, the veneer finally cracking. Something dangerous and infuriated flashes in the Director's eyes, and Jack knows he's got him. This is it. "The calls I make with my agents, they're mine to make, and nobody, certainly not you, is in a position to challenge me on them. You and Angus obviously did your damn jobs and he's none the worse for wear. That's all I'm going to be saying on the subject."

"You're not even denying it." The incredulousness seeps out into Jack's voice. He can't believe it's going to be that easy, that James can't even see what he'd done wrong clearly enough to cover his own ass.

"I don't owe you an explanation."

Jack snaps.

"Yes the fuck you do, because I stood next to my partner today and had to make sure he wasn't coming home with any extra holes in him, and that was thanks to you. I couldn't do my job, neither of us could, because we didn't have the information necessary. You can't send us in blind and expect us to just figure it out, that's not just ridiculous, it's impossible."

"Dalton, I'm warning you-"

"And I'm done with your shit. I'm done with the way you hurt Mac, the way you throw him away over and over again, the way your shitty choices keep almost killing him, which you knew they could today. You knew they could, and you did it anyway."

"I made a judgement call that you are in no position to-"

"You almost killed your child!"

The crash of the mesh inbox of folders on James's desk when it collides with the floor is loud and shocking, managing to draw a flinch from Jack. James stands beside the mess he's just caused with one sudden, sharp sweep of his arm and glares at Jack, shoulders heaving. The man is apoplectic and all Jack can think of is Mac.

Mac, six years old, hearing James breathe like that, anger audible in each inhale and exhale. Mac, fourteen years old, his father slamming a kitchen cupboard less than six feet from his head. Mac, twenty-four years old, sitting on Jack's couch and trembling, he's never hit me but I've always known that he wants to, sometimes.

"You're suspended." It's almost more frightening than yelling, the way James's voice is steady, barely over normal speaking volume. Almost calm. It's a direct contrast to the papers on the floor, the upended tray that had been so loud when it went flying. "Indefinitely. You wanna end your career right now for good, just keep talking, find out what kind of mood I'm in today."

Jack… doesn't care. He gives the words a long moment to sink in, staring at the Director and waiting for it to sink into his own mind, what he's just done, and finds he doesn't care. All he cares about is the recorder, sitting in his jacket pocket, now holding the proof straight from the horse's mouth of what James has done. Proof he's going to take directly to Matty, who will take it directly to Oversight, who will have no choice but to act on what it contains.

Without another word, Jack turns around and leaves, the sound of James shouting his name echoing in his wake.