Turkey Day: All the Trimmings

by Haven126

A collection of prequels/missing scenes for the Turkey Day series. Ch 1: Jack calls his annoying EOD tech 'Mac' for the first time. Ch 2: On his worst days, Mac's almost died alone. Chs 3 & 4: Cairo. Ch 5: Mac learns to trust Jack's brain, not just his aim. Ch 6: Mac learns about adapting. Ch 7: Saito meets Mac. Ch 8: Mac tells Jack about his parents. Ch 9: Jack has a dream. Ch. 10

9. Potato Chips

Standard disclaimers apply. I don't own any of these characters, please don't sue.

Content Warning: Lots of violence and language, moderate tearjerk warning, but it's got a fluffy ending, I swear.

-M-

BUDAPEST, HUNGARY

The rattling of the chain link captured his attention, and Jack Dalton rolled his head in the direction of the sound. Just his head; the rest of him felt distant and tingly, and he knew if he concentrated on any of it he'd start to hurt again. So he remained relaxed, at one with the concrete he was plastered to, as a too-familiar figure in khakis, hand restraints, and a blindfold was shoved into his line of sight.

Mac was still walking, though. Still in one piece. They'd roughed him up some, he could see bruises beneath the filthy rag tied around his head, red marks on his neck before his torn up button-up blocked the view, and Jack felt a weak burst of protective fury. He didn't have the energy to kindle those sparks into anything more, and then the blindfold was ripped off, and Mac was blinking at his surroundings.

Those searching eyes fell on him, and Mac's expression went instantly blank. And Jack knew.

He kind of knew anyway, knew he was dying. Knew he'd put up a fight, though he could no longer remember the particulars. The chain link gate crashed shut behind Mac, but he didn't pay any attention to it, he just hurried over and knelt beside him, his bound hands hovering without seeming to know where to touch.

"Hey, big guy." His voice was calm and steady, and it made tears prick Jack's eyes.

Ah, shit, bud. You don't gotta pretend for me. But he couldn't quite find the strength to open his mouth and say it. All that came out was a strangled grunt.

Mac gave him a ghost of a smile, and apparently made up his mind about the most critical injury, because he pressed the rag that had once been his blindfold to Jack's chest. He felt the pressure, in a vague kind of way, but not much pain. Swallowing was difficult, but he tried it anyway.

". . . y'okay?" It still sounded stifled to his ears, but Mac translated it, and gave him a nod.

"Yeah, Jack, we're okay. I could only buy a couple minutes, so I just gotta . . ." His eyes were everywhere, searching Jack's body, then the cell for anything he could use, and Jack risked the pain to flop his nerveless left hand against Mac's leg. It netted him one hundred percent of that intense focus, that Mac got when he was deep in problem-solving mode.

Jack shook his head lazily at his partner. You and I both know there's nothin' you can do.

Mac's lips thinned, and a muscle slid beneath the skin of his jaw. "Deeper breaths if you can . . . don't try to talk."

As if. Jack hoped he managed a grin. " . . . Riley . . .?"

Mac nodded to him again, apparently pressing harder on his rag. All Jack felt was that the pressure shifted his body a little. "Diversion worked, she got clear," Mac told him, his voice quieter, and a little husky. "She'll have the cavalry here before you know it. Just hang on for me, okay?"

Riley was safe. Riley would get them help. " . . . 'n' . . . Boze . . .?"

A breathy scoff. "He's fine. Looks like you got the worst of it, tough guy."

" . . . good . . ." That was good. That was the plan, was always the plan. He lost his partner's eyes, then, back to roving the eight by eight square of empty concrete and chain link fence for anything he could use. He knew it was killing Mac, as surely as it was killing him, and he twitched his fingers again.

Mac refocused on him, and those thin lips turned up a little in a smile. "Thank you, for always keeping us safe. We're gonna be okay."

He wasn't too sure he believed him, but it was nice to hear.

"Jack?"

Try as he might, he just couldn't get his fingers to move anymore. Couldn't get his tongue to move either.

The calm, confident façade his partner was projecting cracked; he barely felt Mac put a hand on his throat, seeking a pulse. But even after he knew his heart stopped, his eyes kept working. He saw the moment that Mac knew, watched his smile widen until it was painful, watched his eyes crinkle as he fought to keep his composure. He couldn't; in the end, a couple tears slipped through, and Mac quickly dashed them away with the back of his bloody hand.

It was his blood, not Mac's. His blood on Mac's hand.

Jack watched him, and silently wept with him as his partner struggled to keep his shit together. Mac's blood-stained hands moved to hover over Jack's face, as if to close his eyes, but even after those skinny fingers passed gently over his eyelids, Jack could still somehow see. Footsteps were approaching from outside the chain link, and Mac quickly wiped his face again. He couldn't let them see how badly they'd just hurt him. Couldn't. If they knew that was how to get him to crack, they'd start on Boze next -

It's okay, Mac. You got this. You just gotta hang on 'til Riley brings the hurt.

And if he knew his girl, she would. She would rain down hell on these men.

"Thank you, Jack," he whispered. "For everything."

Ah, Mac. Even though he knew his eyes were closed, he could feel them watering. I'm just sorry as hell I couldn't stay with ya longer, brother. This wasn't your fault.

He knew Mac couldn't hear him, but his partner swallowed, and visibly gathered himself as the gate rattled and the lock was opened. Only someone who knew him well could see how devastated he was, and the cold rage that took its place in his eyes was actually a little frightening.

Mac . . . uh . . . whatever you're thinkin', dude, don't do it . . .

The gate was finally thrown open, and Mac turned, just his head, and glared at them over his shoulder. But he didn't say a word.

The dark-haired Romanian who had entered the cell sneered. "There. You got your goodbye, American. Now give me that flash drive."

Jack looked between the two of them in confusion, that didn't abate even as Mac rose smoothly to his feet. The Romanian raised his gun, and Jack could see that Mac was just slightly too far away to get hold of it before it'd go off, and he'd get hit. And maybe Mac knew it, even through his rage, because he didn't lunge for it like Jack was afraid he would. Instead, his fisted hands twisted in their restraints, testing them again.

"It's in a red Captain America lunch pail, under some bushes outside the consulate," he finally said, his voice eerily flat.

If Jack wasn't already dead, his jaw would have dropped. That was . . . correct. The flash drive with all the intel on the gun runners was in a red Captain America lunch pail, that they'd chucked out the window as they hurtled past the consulate in that piece of shit van. Boze had been aiming to get it over the fence, but apparently it hadn't quite made it.

And Mac had just told those fuckers. These assholes had just fucking killed him, and Mac just – just rolled over?

The sneer grew wider. "Oh really. Maybe it is. Maybe I believe you. Or maybe . . . I don't." The gunshot was loud, the room was concrete after all and damn echoey, and Jack watched helplessly as Mac flinched, then brought his bound hands to his own gut. He only kept his feet another few seconds, stumbling to his knees, and the Romanian cocked his head to the side, oozing false sympathy as Mac inhaled a shaking breath.

"If it is there, I'll come back and end your pain quickly. If it's not . . . ask your friend what will happen." With that horribly cliché threat still ringing in the air, the two men stepped out of the chain link pen, securing the gate before hurrying back out of the basement door to claim their prize.

Jack couldn't give less of a shit about them. All his attention was on his partner. Mac rolled himself onto his back with a groan, pressing an already blood-soaked rag against his own stomach, and pulled up his knees. Trying to staunch the bleeding and prevent himself from going into shock. He had no belt, no socks, no shoes – nothing he could use to really put pressure on it, and his face contorted as he tried to shove the rag as far into the wound as he could.

Oh, bud. Why'd you do that? Why'd you tell 'em?

The seconds ticked by like hours, and all Jack could do was lay there, dead as a doornail, and listen to Mac trying to breathe through clenched teeth. The pain came in waves, and his long legs shifted restlessly as he fought with it. Eventually he pried open quickly glazing eyes, once again futilely searching the room for something, anything to help himself, and he locked eyes with Jack.

Jack grimaced in sympathy. I'm here, dude, I'm right here. Just hang on, Riley'll get back in time. You keep breathin', just like you're doin'.

But Mac couldn't hear him, and after staring at him a few seconds, turned his face away, with a new kind of pain written all over it.

They stayed like that, one dead, one dying, for what seemed an eternity. Mac went in and out but never managed to stay unconscious for long. The cold sweat and shivers got him next, his breaths were uneven and too fast, but he just couldn't seem to slow them down. No blood had gathered beneath him, meaning the slug was still in there, and Jack knew what that meant as surely as Mac did.

He needed a doctor, and he needed one now, or he wasn't going to make it.

The basement door was finally thrown open, but Jack didn't pay them any attention, not until they were back in the cell with them. The Romanian stalked inside and dealt Mac a vicious kick to the side, and Jack's bellow of rage almost blotted out Mac's shout of pain.

"It's encrypted!" the lowlife snarled, and kicked Mac again, hard enough to roll him towards Jack. The agony on Mac's face was unbearable, and Jack wished he'd just black out. They'd stop whaling on him if he just passed out.

Ri, baby, you gotta get here, an' I mean right now!

"You will give us the password! Do it now!"

Mac managed to get his eyes open, and his tremulous smile was vicious, even as he panted through the pain. "Not . . . until you let . . . them go."

The Romanian answered with a wordless screech of rage, winding up to kick him again, and his buddy pulled him back. "You'll kill him-"

Mac grimaced and made a concerted effort to slow down his breathing, and Jack finally processed what he'd said. Them. Let them go.

Not let him go. If it was just Bozer, it would have been him. But he said 'them.'

"I'm the only one . . . who can decrypt that drive . . . an' I think you can tell . . . by looking at me that . . . you don't have a lotta time . . . so . . . what's it gonna be?"

The arms dealer glared with undisguised hatred at Mac, but MacGyver didn't back down, even when a tremor ran along his spine from head to toe. It seemed to spur the lowlife into action; with a string of what Jack assumed were curses, he stormed back out of the pen, leaving his lieutenant scrambling to re-lock the gate.

Like Mac could stand up and walk out if his life depended on it.

The moment the basement door slammed shut Mac dropped the act, and his head, back to the concrete. His unsteady breathing got worse, and there was pain on every exhale.

Jack would have been shaking with rage if he'd been able. I'm right here, man. You're not alone. Just hang on. She's comin'.

Hell, he could practically hear her, growling threats under her breath. It wasn't until Mac tried to pick his head back up and look at the basement door that Jack realized he could hear her, too. And sure enough, that door opened and Riley tripped into the basement, her hands bound in front of her like Mac's were. There was a little blood on her mouth, like someone had hit her, but she wasn't limping, and there wasn't a trace of fear on her face. Not until she looked at the chain link cage and saw who was inside it.

"Mac . . . Jack!"

Their Romanian friend was right behind her, urging her forward using the barrel of his .45, and his goon followed up, closing the door behind him. Mac let his head fall back to the concrete again, apparently unable to hold it up any longer, and he gasped quickly, twice, and then he spoke.

"She doesn't . . . know the password . . ."

After blurting out their names, Riley couldn't seem to speak. Her mouth was half open, her eyes darting between them, and then they landed on Jack and stayed there, and he watched her figure it out, just like Mac had. Watched her eyes flood with emotions, just like Mac's had. Watched her fight to keep the tears in her eyes where they belonged, just like Mac had.

And he would have done anything to soothe that pain. Anything. Honey, I'm so sorry. Mac must have been wrong about her getting away, or they'd re-captured her -

But . . . no. Mac had said them. He'd . . . he'd known they still had Riley. He'd known they still had Riley and Bozer both.

Jack blinked, looking between Riley and Mac, and a little shred of disbelief-tinged outrage started cutting through the hurt. Had . . . had Mac freakin' lied to him? Right to his face? Lied to him on his deathbed?

Riley looked back at Mac in shock, and Jack growled, low in his throat, when she was shoved none too gently into the chain link while her captor undid the lock.

"Mac . . ." she tried again, and he grimaced, squeezing his eyes shut. His voice was still somehow steady when he replied.

"They go free . . . or you get nothing."

"He doesn't look so good, does he," the Romanian crooned into Riley's ear as his lieutenant finally got the lock opened, and the clang of the gate slamming into the fence made Riley jump a little. "If you want us to help him, you need to give us the password now, while there's still time."

Dammit, Mac, are you kidding me?! This was your plan?!

Mac wasn't. He gave Riley an apologetic look, but it didn't stop him from forging ahead with said terrible plan. "Sorry Riles . . . I changed it . . . last field analyst kinda screwed us . . . I hadda make sure . . ."

Meaning Nikki. He was telling her to use Nikki as her excuse for whatever she'd already promised them. Of course she knew she could decrypt the data, she'd been the one to encrypt it in the first place. Just like she knew Mac hadn't touched it. And she knew exactly what Mac was trying to do; buy her safety, hers and Boze both, and then be unable to deliver the goods no matter how much they tortured him.

Which wouldn't be very much, or very long. Jack wasn't actually sure, even if a bona fide ambulance pulled up right then, that Mac would pull through. And clearly he thought the same.

He thought he was going to die in this basement. Just like Jack had.

Jack moved his gaze back to Riley, who was clearly struggling with all the same realizations. That she'd lost Jack, that she was going to lose Mac. Her eyes cut to his, like she could see them, like she could see him looking at her, and her face crumpled, just a little.

It was asking a lot. Maybe too much.

The Romanian reached up a hand and tried to smooth back her hair, but she jerked her head away from his touch. Jack thought maybe she'd pay for that, but the guy didn't force it. "I promise you, we'll help him." It was soft and serious. And fucking bullshit. "We just want the guns, then you and your friend are free to take him to a doctor. But you gotta make up your mind fast, girlie. He's not going to last."

"Get your hands off me, you son of a bitch," she snarled, trying to push off the chain link, but it had too much give, and he'd planted her feet too close. He didn't let her go anywhere.

"Or you can stand here and watch him die, just like he watched his friend die. It's up to you."

"Let . . . her go," Mac growled, trying and failing to pick up his head again. "When they're . . . safe . . . when I can see them . . . safe . . . you'll . . . get your password."

Predictably, the Romanian's goon entered the cell, taking slow, deliberate steps towards where Mac was lying. Mac tracked him with his eyes, already knowing the play, already knowing how much it was going to suck. And not just for him. He looked back at Riley, with just the barest of head-shakes, before the goon tutted, and raised his foot to stomp Mac's abdomen.

"Stop! Stop," she repeated frantically, and the goon did, letting his giant-ass boot hover over Mac, who'd tried to curl protectively over his wounded stomach.

"She doesn't know," he rushed out, much less steadily. "If you . . . put in the wrong code . . . data'll be wiped . . . permanently . . ."

"Is he right?" The Romanian dug the gun a little deeper into Riley's back, making her wince. She turned it into a snarl, but Jack could still see the indecision on her face.

And he knew. Even if Mac didn't. She wasn't going to be able to leave him to die.

And there was nothing he could do about it but watch.

" . . . help him. Then I'll help you," she finally ground out, and Mac made a noise that was probably supposed to be a laugh.

"You'll never . . . guess the phrase, Ri . . . I didn't . . . lie t'you about . . . where the drive was . . . an' . . . I'm not lying now . . ."

Jack had to give it to him, Mac was pretty convincing. The Romanian exchanged a look with his lieutenant, who was still balanced on one foot, still threatening a gut stomp, and Jack knew that if Mac could have, he would have used that to his advantage. Would have knocked the man off balance, given Riley an opportunity to take out her opponent. The fact that he didn't – that he couldn't - told Jack exactly how bad off he was. And probably told Riley the same thing.

"If he did change the password, can you still get in? Without losing the data?"

Riley hesitated, then craned her neck, so that she could actually see the man behind her. "If you don't save him, I'll make sure no one can recover that data."

In answer, the man jammed the gun hard into the small of her back, pressing her further into the chain link and making Jack bare his teeth. "If you do that, sweetheart . . . there's no reason to keep any of you around."

Reminding her that Bozer, probably, would be next on the list. Mac's plan had been the best option of shit options, it might have worked to at least get Bozer and Riley out, and watching his face screw up with pain, Jack knew that he'd realized it was over. That Riley couldn't leave him, wouldn't leave him. She probably thought she could hold the data hostage, swap places with Mac, but it wasn't gonna go down like that. Any hope they'd had of getting her out alive had just evaporated.

Jack watched his brave little girl, his badass hacker, deflate just a little.

"Help him," she repeated quietly, "and I'll help you."

"Smart woman," the Romanian praised her. He even let her go and backed off, let her up off the chain link fence. Riley stared through it at Mac, the apology clear in her eyes, and Mac silently forgave her, and turned his attention to the man still in the cell with him.

So did the Romanian. "You heard the lady. Help the guy."

His goon smirked down at Mac and then very deliberately lowered his foot - without touching him. He exchanged a look with his boss, then gave him a nod, and backed out of the pen, reaching into the back of his pants as if to grab a cellphone, as if to call for help.

Jack watched Mac close his eyes and brace himself, and even though he was already dead, Jack tried to do the same.

Bud, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

When the lieutenant got to the gate, he pulled out a nine mil, instead of a phone, and emptied the magazine into Mac.

This time Jack's shout blended with Riley's. After the fifth or sixth round hit him, Mac's body stopped flinching, stopped responding at all as bullet after bullet tore through him. When all fifteen rounds were fired, the silence that followed was suffocating, broken only by brass tinkling gently on the concrete, and Riley's ragged gasp.

Blood began to pond out from beneath Mac like someone had upended a bucket. His mouth was half open but he didn't make a sound; his head rolled in agony, and then he was gone.

Jack felt something in his chest seize, even though he knew it couldn't be his heart, and he tore his eyes away from Mac to watch Riley turn on the Romanian. But she didn't have a chance. He caught her as she swung her bound hands at him, spun her around, and put her in a bear hug from behind, one she couldn't break.

"NO! Get off me! You lying son of a bitch, get off me!"

"Shhh, shhh, what's the problem? I told you we'd help him and we did -"

Riley struggled like a wild thing, she damn near took him off his feet, but didn't quite have the weight. "FUCK you! You fucking shitstain, I'm gonna kill you-"

"Hey, we saved him hours and hours of suffering. I'm sure he's very grateful." The Romanian's lieutenant swapped a fresh mag into his weapon and stepped fully out of the pen, this time not bothering with the gate or the lock. "Be a shame if we had to help your other friend the same way."

The Romanian and his goon muscled Riley back to the basement door, and Jack growled savage threats of his own as he listened to them slowly disappear up the stairs. No need to shut the basement door anymore. No one down there was gonna make a peep.

He was dead. Mac was dead. And Riley and Boze, inexperienced and with no backup –

Jack couldn't see a way out for them. For either of them.

He turned back to Mac as his partner's body settled, not making so much as a ripple in the lake of blood surrounding it, and Jack's fury burned away into sorrow in an instant. Mac's expression, even in death, told how much he'd suffered, how much of it he'd felt, and even though he knew it was impossible, and dead men couldn't cry, Jack couldn't swallow back his sobs.

I'm sorry kid . . . Ri . . . Boze . . . god, I'm so sorry-

Why? Why'd he have to watch that? What was the fucking point? Watch them all sufferin' when he couldn't lift a finger to stop it –

Mac let loose with a low groan, then slowly blinked his half-open eyes. ". . . well, that sucked . . ."

Jack stared at him in complete and total shock, and Mac groaned again, then slowly pushed himself into a sitting position.

What . . . what the hell . . . ?

Without really thinking about it, Jack did the same, and found that he could. He was able to pick up his head, and lever himself up onto his elbows. Mac didn't seem to notice; he was too distracted by the sizable lake of blood around him, and he reached out in disbelief and touched his fingertips to it.

They came back clean. And the reason for that was still lying it in. Mac was sitting up, but his body was still right where it had fallen.

Jack heaved himself into a sitting position, then closed his eyes and muttered a quick prayer. Hail Mary, full of grace, hallowed be thy name -

" . . . Jack . . .?"

Unable to find another excuse to stall, Jack winced, then cracked his right eye open just a little, unwillingly looking behind himself. All he saw was a blurry shadow, and he immediately snapped the eye shut again.

He was doing the same thing Mac was. Sitting up, and leaving his body behind him.

This cannot be happening. This is not happening. It's not, it's not, it's not -

He heard Mac suddenly scramble to his feet, clearly becoming aware that he was also – well, dead - and Jack procrastinated a few moments more before he winced harder, then forced his eyes open.

Same picture as before. Except this time Mac was on his feet, hastily backing out of the bloody pool on the floor. Apart for the panic in his eyes, he looked –

Fine. He looked like he had when they'd brought him in, sans the bruises and red marks. Same pair of khakis, same button-up shirt.

No blood.

Jack bit the bullet – which was a terrible turn of phrase, now that he'd probably actually done that – and glanced down at his own chest, which was unmarked. His maroon muscle shirt was just as clean as Mac's.

"What . . . that –" Mac ran a hand through his hair, still staring down at his own body. "This is –" But then he took a slightly deeper breath. "A hallucination," he concluded, and weirdly, he actually sounded relieved. "Random brain cells firing as hypoxia sets in."

"Yeah, all that." Jack thought he'd just thought it, but Mac's attention zeroed in on him, and Jack slowly climbed to his own feet.

He didn't feel weird. Didn't feel any different. The ground was solid under his feet. His arms and legs worked. There was no pain.

He felt totally normal.

Jack glanced back over at Mac, who was still watching him uneasily, and said the first thing that came to his mind. "You lied to me," Jack accused, tears momentarily forgotten. "Dude. Are you freakin' kidding me?!"

Mac blinked at him, completely nonplussed. "Well, clearly I wasn't expecting this . . ."

And the little shit was actually trying to defend himself!? "Doesn't matter!" Jack cut the air with his hand. "Number one, I told you the dead could hear and see us, and number two, you lied to me!"

Mac straightened in indignation. "Jack, I was hoping to make you feel better! Would you rather have died in - in worry and panic?"

"Well I guess now we'll never know!"

Jack didn't realize he was shouting until he heard the echo, and Mac gave him another incredulous look. When he spoke, though, his voice was much more calm. ". . . you know, I'd have thought you'd be happier about this."

Jack stared at him a second, completely thunderstruck. "How do you figure?"

And damned if that cocky half-smirk didn't appeared on his face. "You've threatened to kill me if I died, Jack - more than once. Now we get to see if you can."

Jack simpered but let it go, and stepped away from his body. Now that he could see it, he understood better why Mac had done what he'd done. He was a hot mess. It looked like he'd gone five rounds with a picador. There were multiple stab wounds in his chest and his abdomen, one of his legs was definitely broken, and his face was basically ground hamburger.

No wonder Mac had made the face he'd made, hadn't known what to do. He couldn't even say the wound Mac had chosen to try to staunch was the worst one. It seemed like it was right over his heart. He had no damn idea how he could have spoken at all with his jaw shattered like it was, and Jack averted his eyes.

Any righteous anger he'd still been feeling towards Mac instantly drained away. "Kid . . . I am so sorry . . ."

Mac waved him off, giving his own body one more look before he picked his way around the blood. "Well . . ." He trailed off, inspecting his hands and flexing them a few times, experimentally. ". . . here we are . . ." After a second's pause, he looked up, his eyes searching. "Can't say I saw this coming."

Jack nodded, crossing the small pen, and when he was close enough, he clasped Mac's hand and pulled him in for a chest bump. Mac felt warm and solid, like he always had. "No one I'd rather be dead with, partner."

Mac nodded. "Same." Then he glanced around them, this time at the entire room, with the air of someone who wasn't quite sure what to do with himself.

A shout of pain echoed down from the open basement stairs.

Riley.

They locked eyes a moment, then both made a beeline for the door. Jack clearly heard his bare feet slapping on the stairs as he bounded up them two at a time, right on Mac's heels. It was fairly dim at the top of the stairs, the walls dingy like the place had housed chainsmokers for the last century or so, but there was no discernable odor.

Jack had no recollection of any part of the house except the basement, but Mac seemed to know the way, taking the first right down a narrow hallway. Jack glanced through an open door as they sprinted past – a blood-spotted bathroom – and Mac actually grabbed the doorframe on the left so that he could make the sharp turn at speed.

That room was also small, it had once been a bedroom and the naked metal bedframe was standing up on one end, apparently screwed to the wall. Two pairs of handcuffs hung from the top of the frame, in better circumstances he might have made a joke, but then Jack realized that Mac had led them here first, and anything else he was going to say died on his lips.

The floor was hardwood, and didn't show much blood. The room was otherwise empty.

From further down the hallway Jack heard Riley yelp, and then a low rumbling voice. He shot back out into the hallway, this time in the lead, and headed straight for the end of it, where the door was half open. He put out his hand to shove it out of the way as he approached, and his hand passed through it like it wasn't there.

The rest of him did the same thing.

Jack stumbled to a stop, too shocked by what he'd just done to get out of the way, and Mac, who couldn't see him, plowed right into him. While neither of them had been able to touch the door, Mac was still plenty solid, and they both went down. Jack craned his neck, to tell Mac to get off, and then he saw the rest of the room.

This room was somewhat bigger, maybe at one time it had been a sitting room. There were windows on two walls, covered in cardboard and only letting in a little light. Riley was seated at a collapsible card table, with the side of her hand pressed to the corner of her mouth, glaring daggers at the Romanian who had just pistol-whipped her. Wilt was piled up in the other corner, clearly slumped there after taking a beating himself; one of his eyes was swelled nearly shut. He looked pretty dazed.

"Boze," Mac called out, hesitantly, already climbing up off his partner, and Jack accepted the hand Mac absently offered him. Bozer, for his part, didn't seem to hear or see them, he just kept staring at the gun pointed at his face by the Romanian's lieutenant.

"I'm not going to ask you again," the Romanian snarled at Riley, righting the gun in his hand and cocking back the hammer. "We were merciful with the blond. But I can put a hundred bullets into his man while he's still alive to feel each and every one if you don't decrypt that drive."

"And I'm not going to tell you again," Riley growled back, her hand still pressed to the corner of her mouth. "He walks, free and clear. And he does it first."

The lieutenant sighed, as if his patience was at an end, and steadied his weapon. Jack shook himself out of his shock, marched right up to the guy, and punched him in the side of the head. But like with the door, his fist went right through the goon. He didn't even notice.

"Dammit, Mac, what do we do?!" he shouted, balling up his other fist and giving that one a go, with the same result. Mac had approached the Romanian, and waved his hand through the guy's upper body.

"Do you feel anything when you do this?" he asked, at the same time as the Romanian spoke.

"No, girlie. That's not how this is gonna work."

"Then kill us both right now," she snapped, dropping her hand and revealing the fresh cut in the corner of her mouth. "Because if you do anything besides let him go, not only will I blow away all that inventory data . . . I'll make sure every cop with an INTERPOL laptop knows exactly where you are."

Jack looked between them helplessly, even as Mac laid his hand palm open, ever so gently, on the back of the Romanian's head. Just like in the movies, it seemed to pass through like there was nothing there.

"I can kinda feel a tingle," Mac murmured. "We might be able to interact with them on a – well, on an electrical level."

Jack tried it, but he didn't feel anything. Besides rage. "Dammit, I thought when ghosts got pissed they could do shit!"

Mac continued looking thoughtful, almost seeming to caress the Romanian's hair, and Jack decided to concentrate on the gun instead of the goon. But just like the door, his strikes went right through it. It never wavered.

The Romanian, however, irritably twitched his head like he was shooing off a fly, and Mac got his 'I've got an idea' look.

"You know, getting your competition's inventory, that'd set you guys up for years," Riley added in a more offhanded tone. "You really want to throw that all away, when it's right there, ripe for the taking?"

"Riley . . . don't . . ." It was little more than a hoarse whisper, and Jack turned back to get a bead on Bozer. He sounded and looked weak and pathetic, like he couldn't get up if he tried. They hadn't even bothered to put his handcuffs back on him. For a split second, Jack was almost disappointed that he'd let his guard down that much, with so much at stake, with their lives on the line, and then –

And then he realized Bozer wouldn't. Bozer would pile on the bravado, just like Riley was doing, until the very end. He wasn't acting scared – he was acting pitiful.

He was acting. Which meant he was better off than he wanted them to think he was, and if they could just do something, create some kind of distraction, he might be able to take one of these guys down.

"Homie, tell me you got somethin', because if you don't, I think Bozer's gonna try to rush these guys –"

"Yeah," Mac said distractedly, closely studying the back of the Romanian's head. "Look, if you buy into – well, ghosts, the only theories that make sense are that we're – we're essentially in another dimension. We can see and hear, though, which means we're able to interact with the environment at some level, and light being waves and electrons being both waves and particles –"

The Romanian, in the meantime, had growled another threat at Riley, who looked ready and willing to rip his face off. This stalemate wouldn't last forever. "Dude. Spit it out before she gets shot?"

Mac closed his mouth with a put-upon noise, then focused all of his attention on the back of the Romanian's skull. After a beat, he extended one of his fingers, and poked him in the back of the head.

His finger went right through the guy, just like before, and Jack realized he was legitimately disappointed. He'd really expected that to work. "Alright, so what el-"

The Romanian suddenly jerked, almost like he was having a seizure, and then collapsed onto his knees.

Several things then happened, quite rapidly.

Riley jumped in the chair, legitimately startled, and the goon took his eyes off Bozer to whip around and figure out what just happened to his boss. Wilt was startled, too, but he didn't let that stop him; he shoved himself off the wall and tackled the lieutenant around the waist, taking them both to the ground. Riley recovered herself, making a grab for the Romanian's gun.

The Romanian gun-runner was only temporarily stunned by whatever Mac had done to him; he had the presence of mind to hang onto his weapon, so Riley tugged him forward and buried her right knee in his face, just like she'd practiced it in the ring, so many times. Jack felt pride swell in his chest, that turned into ice as he realized Bozer wasn't as well off as he'd seemed, because he was definitely getting the worse end of his wrestling match with the lieutenant.

The Romanian's goon still had his hand on his gun, and he'd turned it towards Bozer. Totally on reflex, Jack kicked the goon's gun hand – and connected. He didn't really feel it, but the gun flew out of the lieutenant's hand and clattered to the floor.

Bozer didn't look the gift horse in the mouth. He swung, uncoordinatedly but hard, and landed a solid left hook on the goon. Then he stumbled to his feet, right about the same time Riley followed up her knee with her bound hands. She knocked the Romanian flat onto his back, his nose a fountain of blood, and then reached out and grabbed Wilt before he could faceplant on the floor beside him. The two Phoenix agents stumbled towards the door, intent on escape, and Jack exchanged a quick look with Mac.

"Fuck yeah! Let's Swayze the shit outta these guys!"

Mac flashed him a quick grin, then glanced down at the Romanian, still trying to get his shit together after Riley very likely broke his nose. "You do realize we're not-"

"Less talking! More ass kicking!" He punctuated that sentence with a swift kick to the lieutenant's face – that went right through him without connecting. The goon was gathering both his wits and his gun, and to Jack's dismay, neither Riley nor Bozer seemed to notice or care. Riley did think to grab the door on her way out, slamming it behind her and buying them a few more seconds, but she didn't seem willing to risk continuing a hand to hand fight with her wrists ziptied together.

And then he realized why.

She wasn't going to leave Bozer's side, and she wasn't going to let them split up. And the reason for that decision – what might become a very bad decision – was frowning down at his guy, with his finger poking in the Romanian's skull again.

Only this time it didn't seem to be doing much of anything.

"Okay, hoss, why the hell ain't this workin'-"

There was no smile on Mac's face when the Romanian sat up – directly between Mac's legs. "I don't know - I'm just as new to this as you are, Jack! What did you do differently when you hit your guy?"

"I don't know!" Jack tried a hip check as the lieutenant hauled himself to his feet, but he had the same amount of luck as before. "I just did!"

"Well – do it again!" Mac was wearing his concentrating frown, but now the Romanian was a moving target, not as easy for Mac to hone in on, and he tried to wave his lieutenant off as the goon approached him.

"Get th'agents! The agents!"

Mac looked right at him, and Jack growled and turned for the door. At least he and Mac didn't have to open it.

However, once they'd run through it, Jack saw that Bozer and Riley hadn't gotten nearly as far as they needed to. Bozer was only halfway down the hallway, leaning heavily on the wall and clutching his right shoulder, and Riley had just darted out of one of the rooms with a laptop – and presumably the intel – in her still-bound hands. She extended her right arm, as much as she could, and Bozer grabbed it to help steady himself as they took off towards the front of the house.

Of course, the hallway took them right by the stairway that led to the basement, and Bozer started to slow. Riley shook her head, once, trying to pull him along. "Boze, we gotta go-"

"But-Mac'n'Jack-"

Jack couldn't see her face, he and Mac were still behind them, but her voice broke his no-longer-beating heart. "They're – we can't help them."

Wilt put on the brakes like he meant it, then, a half-protest already on his lips, and Riley's hair flew over her shoulder as she turned and looked behind her, right at them – at him and Mac – like she could see them bringing up the rear. There were no tears on her face, not yet. "Bozer, we can't – we can't carry them!"

But of course she was looking behind them, through them more like, knowing that the door was going to open any second, and their small lead wasn't going to be enough.

But Wilt didn't understand, still pulling for the open stairwell. "I'm'not leavin'em-"

"Don't! Don't look, please," she begged, juggling the laptop so she could slip one of her hands into Bozer's. "We'll come back, I promise you-"

It finally started to trickle in, and Bozer allowed her to drag him forward a few stumbling steps. "The . . . nuh-uh . . ."

The door behind him and Mac did open, then, Jack risked a glance behind him as Riley and Bozer made it at least around a corner towards the front of the house. "C'mon, man, we gotta stall 'em, buy some time-"

"I know!" Mac sounded as frustrated as Jack felt. "Look, maybe it's a timing thing, uh – we only generate so much of an electrical field at any given moment, like static, and we need to – to reload," he finally offered, an explanation he knew Jack would understand.

Understand and not like. "You're tellin' me we're already outta ammo?!"

Mac gave him a helpless shrug, and darted into the room that Riley had just vacated.

"Dammit, Mac, what're'y-" He gave up even as he said it, turning on the lieutenant, who had just started running after taking aim but failing to get a clear shot at either fleeing agent. Jack dug in his feet like a linebacker, just waiting to clothesline an unsuspecting quarterback. "C'mere, you son of a bitch –"

Just as the lieutenant was on top of him – and likely to once again pass right through – Mac re-appeared in the doorway and plunged his fist right into the guy's ribcage.

It was over in a second, the dude plowed right through Jack and he didn't even feel a tingle, and Mac's crestfallen expression told him whatever his partner had just tried, definitely didn't work.

"So much for that idea," he muttered, and then the two were in hot pursuit.

The lieutenant made it around the corner, and he fired twice before Jack caught up and got line of sight on his two teammates. The front door had been thrown wide and Bozer's back was just disappearing. Jack had no memory of the yard or the street outside, but he was somehow not surprised to see the area looked residential – though definitely run down. That was still good, that worked in their favor. No matter how well the basement might have insulated the sound of those gunshots, these guys couldn't shoot up a neighborhood street – even in a relatively poor area of Budapest – without attracting law enforcement.

Police would be on the way soon. Riley and Boze simply had to evade until then.

There was hope.

Jack started forward immediately, right on the goon's heels. Knowing that he didn't have to yield right of way, Jack's plan was to cut the corner and see what was on the left side of the house, see what Riley and Bozer could use for cover or escape.

But instead, a cold shiver ran through his chest, and the lieutenant was body-checked into the doorframe. His face bounced off the molding and then he was down.

Jack was shocked enough that he actually stopped, staring down at the dude and raising a hand to his chest. It was still tingling a little, where he'd made contact, but it didn't hurt. And it looked like he'd knocked the guy out cold. A firm hand slapped down on his shoulder as Mac slipped past him out the door.

"Nice, Jack!" But he had eyes only for the corner of the house, and Jack knew what he was afraid he was going to see. With one last look at the goon – who was definitely going to be out for a couple minutes – Jack followed.

The yard was non-descript, rain-drenched, and dreary. Winter wasn't far away and the trees and bushes weren't going to provide as much cover as they would have in a better season. Riley and Bozer had left a pretty easy-to-follow path around the corner of the house, and even as Mac slipped, barefoot, in the mud, Jack saw that he didn't leave a mark. He put his own bare foot down on the soggy half-dead grass, but he didn't feel any cold, any damp at all. He didn't so much as move a blade of grass, even though he could feel something solid under him.

It felt like . . . flat, room temperature concrete. Felt like the floor in that basement.

It also wasn't the most important thing he had going on right then, so after a couple steps Jack got used to the weird incongruity between what he saw and what he felt, and sprinted after his partner.

Riley and Bozer had made it to an alley that ran behind the two rows of houses, parallel with the street, and had chosen a direction apparently at random. It had enough trash cans and dumpsters to provide some cover, and better yet, it was paved. Mac followed them at a slightly slower jog, his head ducking every which way as he catalogued all the things around them – things he could have used, if he wasn't dead – to help them, to build boobytraps, to delay their pursuers long enough for the Hungarian po-po to get their act together.

After about fifty yards Riley decided they'd risked an out-in-the-open sprint long enough, and she tugged Bozer behind a pair of rusted-out dumpsters up against a nondescript, two story house. Bozer collapsed against the wall as soon as she let go of him, gasping for breath and still cradling that shoulder, but it didn't look like he'd been hit by either of the rounds the lieutenant had gotten off. Riley wasn't hit either; she kept glancing straight up, and once Jack caught up to them, he followed her gaze to the roof of the house, which had a fairly new-looking sat dish on the roof.

Looking for wifi, or a way to transmit the data.

"Riles, honey, you gotta get yourself safe before you fool around with that," he murmured, coming to a stop beside Mac, who was standing in plain sight in the middle of the alley, still examining their surroundings.

"She thinks once she transmits it, they'll cut their losses and run," Mac supplied, sounding distracted.

"Well, duh, chief, but it's not the right play here, she's a damn sittin' duck-"

"You and I know that, but they don't." Mac cut himself off, then quietly swore in frustration. Jack followed his gaze back the way they'd come, and spotted the Romanian, carefully poking his head into the alley.

"Damn these guys," Jack growled, glancing back at the two panting agents, thankfully huddled well out of sight. It wasn't so cold that their breath was steaming, so at least that wouldn't give them away. Riley had the laptop open and even with her hands still zip-tied together she was managing to type. Bozer was slumped against the foot of the house, his scalp digging into the brick and his good eye screwed tightly shut.

"I think Bozer's shoulder's dislocated," Mac knelt down in front of him, giving him a visual once over. "Ribs don't sound broken, though. He can run, but it's gonna suck." He inspected Riley with the same critical eye, then frowned, and moved so that he could see the laptop screen.

Jack kept tabs on their slowly advancing Romanian. Of course he'd picked the correct direction, too, meaning they had even less time. "What's she doin', and how long's it gonna take?"

Mac shook his head, studying the screen. "I can't tell. She's definitely trying to connect to Phoenix, but . . ." He trailed off, at the same time Riley frowned, and started banging faster on the keys.

As if Bozer could hear them, he sucked down a deeper breath. "We can't stay here-"

"I know," Riley murmured back softly. "But we can't just hide in someone's house – they'll find us, and if they don't Budapest PD will. What are we supposed to tell the cops, hey, we're American agents operating secretly in your country, please don't arrest us for breaking and entering?"

"I'll take hide and seek over dead," Bozer shot back, then grimaced and bit his bottom lip. "Those . . . all those gunshots-"

Riley hesitated, and her fingers stilled on the keys. "Yeah," was all she said.

Bozer closed his eyes again. ". . . an' . . . you're sure . . ."

". . . yeah." After a long moment she visibly shook it off, and kept typing. "I'm getting us a ride. See if you can find something we can use to fend those guys off til then."

"An' get you outta those zipties," Bozer agreed, opening damp eyes – as best he could around the swelling - and starting to really take in their surroundings.

"Good, Boze, you can do this," Mac murmured encouragingly. "Remember, you don't need a cutting tool, you can just pop the release on zipties."

" . . . that won't give you tetanus," Bozer continued sourly, trying to work his fingers into a rusted hole in the dumpster with the clear intention of breaking a piece loose. The look on Mac's face would have been comical if it wasn't a life and death situation, and Jack put a bracing hand on Mac's shoulder.

"Pretty sure they're both gonna do opposite what we say."

"I'm thinking you're right," Mac agreed reluctantly, as Bozer started to work loose a sharp piece of metal. He wasn't doing it silently, either, but at least he was trying not to move the dumpster. Riley shushed him with a soft hiss, and he winced in reply, then dared to peek around the edge of the dumpster.

He finally saw what they could see – that the Romanian was working his way quickly and methodically down the alley, checking the back doors of each house and looking behind every garbage bin. Jack estimated they had a little over a minute before he'd make his way to them, and given the sudden urgency with which Bozer was moving, it was pretty clear that he at least agreed with them on that.

"Riley!" he hissed, turning at the waist to avoid having to move his shoulder or neck in any way. "He's comin'!"

"Dammit," she growled to herself, still typing feverishly while Bozer tried to find something he could use as a weapon. Jack spotted several – there was plenty of glass to be had, it made an excellent weapon for hand to hand, and would cut through Riley's zip ties just as well - and Mac remained hunkered down beside Riley, studying the laptop. He poked the monitor experimentally, Jack actually saw the tip of his finger come out the other side. Based on Riley's expression, it did something, but whatever it was didn't seem to please Mac, who frowned and withdrew his finger.

"I can disrupt the laptop, but not in any way that'll help. Besides maybe making her pack up and run."

There were two paths of escape currently available to the agents, but with the ground as soft as it was, they'd leave footprints. "Unless Boze gets his shit together, I think that might be our only play."

"Well, the other option is to try to communicate with her, but we don't have enough time, and I doubt she'd take it very well. Hey, it's Mac, I'm dead but I'm also standing right here, you should run now?" Mac made a face and straightened, checking on the Romanian's progress for himself.

He'd hit the halfway mark. If Riley and Bozer didn't run in the next ten seconds, they weren't going to have enough lead to do anything besides get shot in the back. Bozer had to actually trip over a glass bottle before it occurred to him that it might be useful, and as bad as his shoulder was hurting him, Jack didn't like his odds.

"Hey, Riley – we can use this to cut your zipties," he whispered, and Riley glanced first at him, then the broken bottle in his hand, before she nodded and put the laptop down on its right side, propped up by the monitor in a 'V' shape.

"Okay – hurry," she shot back, holding out her wrists, and Bozer got started right away.

Their ten second window was ticking down too fast, and Jack eyed his partner grimly. "Think you can pull that seizure trick again?" he asked, jerking his chin at the approaching gun runner. "That was pretty cool."

"Yeah," Mac scoffed, but at least his thinking face was back on. "Jack, you've managed to punch these guys twice. How did you do it?"

"I don't know." Not that he hadn't been trying to figure that out, and it reminded him to flex his toes, confirming that he could still feel solid ground under his feet. "It's not gettin' mad and hulkin' out, that's for sure."

Mac made a 'hurry up' gesture and Jack frowned at him. "Well whaddaya want me to say?"

"Did you . . . did you feel something, before it happened? Did you do something differently?"

"Did you?" He didn't mean it to sound so defensive, but the truth was, he hadn't. Body-checking the lieutenant had been a total accident. "I wasn't even tryin' the second time."

Mac's head cocked to the side. "What were you doing right before that happened?"

"Bein' thankful I could plow right through the guy to catch up to these yahoos." Said yahoos had finally gotten Riley free, and she picked up the laptop, scanning the screen before a triumphant smirk curved her lips, and then she closed it.

"Let's go," she whispered to Bozer, who did a double-take to get the Romanian's position before he backed up and started following her up the muddy hill beside the house.

"Wait," he whispered suddenly, trying to balance on one foot and almost tipping against the house with his bad shoulder. He carefully backtracked – and he was wearing shoes, Jack suddenly noticed – and went back to the pavement of the alley. Then he walked his muddy feet forward all the way to the back door of the house.

"Nice," Jack complimented him. "Make him think the footprints belong to the homeowner." It wasn't perfect, since the mud was so fresh, but it was the best they could do, and it might buy them a few more seconds.

Riley had stopped dead in her tracks, and she simply encouraged Bozer to hurry up by waving a newly freed hand at him. There were shallow cuts on her wrist. "Come on come on come on-"

He then made a new path from the door to the hill and retraced Riley's steps until he caught up to her. "Step in my footprints," he murmured, and Jack was glad to see Riley was already on the same page. Bozer wasn't able to run quickly, by any stretch, and Jack uneasily let them scramble out of sight as he joined his partner, who was evaluating the quickly nearing Romanian.

"That big brain of yours come up with the solution yet?"

Mac shrugged, wiggling his fingers as if to warm them up. "Let's test a hypothesis."

"Yeah, let's just do that," Jack growled in agreement, as the Romanian headed quickly for their two dumpsters – and their two teammates.

This time it was Mac who stepped forward, then planted himself almost like a German sentry, and held up his hand, palm flat out towards the Romanian's face.

Jack would have held his breath if he actually needed to breathe.

The gun-runner had taken a whack at getting some of the blood off his face, but his nose was still sluggishly bleeding and every once in a while he'd reach up to dab the blood off. Again, residential area, someone heard those gunshots, and a bloodied man skulking around behind the row would definitely be the first thing the police would investigate. Riley and Bozer were questionable youths loitering around, but this guy was downright suspicious. And he took the opportunity to dab that oozing nose again when he walked face-first into Mac's outstretched hand.

And although Mac wasn't knocked so much as a step back, the guy bounced off his hand with a cry of pain, actually dropping to his knees to cradle his face.

Mac responded by turned his hand over and quietly studying it. Jack was less composed; he let out a whoop of victory.

"Yes!"

"Let's not celebrate yet, big guy," Mac cautioned him, but he was grinning when he said it, and the two quickly headed up the muddy hill after Riley and Boze.

Their single set of footprints led into the front yard of the house and up to the porch, right up to the front door, but they were nowhere in sight. Another set of muddy prints led down the front sidewalk of the house to the driveway and abruptly ended. Jack didn't remember hearing a car, though clearly the footprints had been left to make someone think they'd driven away, and he started looking at the rock and bricks that separated the garden from the mangy lawn.

Sure enough, fresh mud was smeared on a few, leading them to the street. From there, they'd gotten enough of the mud off, and the street had enough drying puddles, that there weren't clear sets of tracks.

However, there was a house across the street with another one of those shiny new satellite dishes, and Jack pointed to it. "My money's on that one."

"Let's go," Mac agreed, loping easily across the street. Though his bare feet made noises as they whispered over the pavement, he didn't make a single ripple in any puddle.

It was weird.

Jack followed him, a little slower, taking in the lack of regular street traffic. Flagging down a passing motorist was going to be a trick, and it meant the neighborhood was actually pretty quiet. Some kind of ethnic music was playing somewhere, but it was pretty muffled, and he could hear Riley and Bozer breathing before he actually found them, huddled behind the house Jack had picked.

"-don't know how," he heard Bozer admit. He'd taken a knee to help support his busted right shoulder, and while you could never really call Bozer pale, his lips were starting to turn ashy. Mac was standing at his shoulder, frowning at an old beater about ten feet away from them, parked under a rust-stained cover attached to the side of the house.

"Me neither," Riley confirmed. "I never really paid attention, Jack –" She cut herself off suddenly, and found her laptop suddenly fascinating.

Bozer's ashen lips pressed together, hard.

"I take it they can't hotwire the car," Jack said softly, and Mac gave him a solemn nod.

"Yeah. I mean, Boze helped out when I was tinkering, but he never really had an aptitude for electrical work. We both took shop together in high school, he could probably figure it out, but getting under the dash with that shoulder . . ." Mac sighed, then approached the car, and stuffed his head right through the driver's side door.

"Y'think you can use your Jedi powers an' start it for 'em?"

His partner's khaki-colored butt moved to lean on the side of the car door, but it passed through without making contact, and Mac stumbled a little. His feet were still visible, under the car. Weirdly, his voice sounded muffled when he replied.

"I don't think so, I could maybe get it to start but the battery'd still have to be connected . . . I don't see how I can do that without rewiring around the starter." Then he poked his head out the door and frowned. "I'd kill for a flashlight-"

His voice trailed off, and Jack followed his suddenly stock-still partner's gaze, to find none other than the lieutenant he'd knocked out, walking baldly down the street. His nose wasn't broken, but he had a huge egg on his forehead, and he was keeping his gun at his side, mostly out of view.

"Son of a bitch," Jack swore. "What the hell is with these guys?!" Worse, the Romanian had slipped his way up the muddy hill across the street, and the two men spotted one another and moved to reconvene.

Almost precisely across the street from the house that Riley had chosen to hide behind.

"Well, we're only getting in one hit at a time, it's hard to finish them off that way." Mac glanced back at Riley again, who was still working on the laptop. "Even if Phoenix knows where they are by now, there's no way armed exfil will get here before –" He cut himself off, then heaved a short sigh. Jack took a moment to be surprised that his partner could, and tried it out himself.

It worked. He was able to take a breath. In fact it felt totally normal.

"Hey, bud," and he rehearsed it in his head a second, to check how crazy it sounded, "How're we walkin' on the ground but passin' through everything else?" And – hadn't Mac actually touched the wall, that time, when he'd dashed into the room they thought Riley was being held in . . . ?

"Yeah . . . try not to think about that," Mac advised him, suddenly interested in the power lines running along the street. He started towards them, thinking face firmly in place, and Jack glanced back at Riley and Bozer, still oblivious, still focused on the laptop, then jogged after his partner.

"Why not? An' – how'd you palm strike that guy?"

Mac started pacing out distances, from where the powerline connected to the corner of the house, out to the street. There was a handy utility box a few houses down – with a big red warning sticker that did not require Jack to be able to read Hungarian to understand.

Mac had clearly spotted it too. "I, uh, I'm still not completely sure on the second one, but on the first . . . I think we probably could fall through the ground if we tried. So don't."

Jack was about to ask him why when the answer became readily apparent – because then he'd be underground. Potentially for – however long this lasted. Maybe forever.

There would be no difference between being a ghost, and just being dead and buried. Or alive and buried. Just –

Just you wouldn't eventually suffocate and die. There'd be no end.

Naturally, the second he realized he needed to stop thinking about it, it was all he could think about, and Jack immediately started grasping for a distraction. "So, whatcha thinkin' about these power lines?"

"I'm thinking we may be able to use them to put a barrier between these guys and us." Mac also seemed glad for the distraction. "Regardless of what Riley thinks, the local police are a better solution than trying to hide out here and eventually boost a car. And taking out utilities would guarantee enough activity on the street to keep them safe until Phoenix gets exfil here."

Jack eyed the power lines, then the utility box that he had no doubt was going to play a part in this little 'plan' of Mac's. "And that ain't gonna . . . y'know –"

"Kill me?" Mac suggested with a grin, before trotting back towards where the wire connected to the house. "I don't think so, but I'll be careful."

"Now when the hell are you ever careful, Angus?" Jack shot back, but he left Mac to it, sharpening his attention when the Romanian and his lieutenant seemed to be coming to some kind of agreement on a plan. Realizing he was being a complete idiot, Jack darted across the street to join their little meeting.

After all, wasn't like they could see or hear him.

Of course, not being able to see or hear him, they weren't polite enough to speak in English. He caught a few words here and there, and then the lieutenant gave a nod, and patted his pocket. There was a muffled, metallic rattle.

Keys.

"Yeah, it's about time you fuckers split," Jack agreed, but the Romanian seemed to be giving it some thought. He got a vicious grin on his face – that made him wince, and damn right it did, smiling with a broken nose sucked and if Jack could figure out how to break it more he would – and snarled something, and his lieutenant's answering leer was just as ugly. Then the goon turned and headed back to their base of operations, and the Romanian's eyes naturally fell on the house across the street.

"Come on," Jack whined as the man headed unerringly right for it. "You gotta be kidding me!"

Mac was studying the tangle of wires that was connected to the one-story house – probably trying to determine which was power, and which was whatever Riley was using to do whatever it was she was doing – and he glanced over when he clocked the movement. Jack threw his hands in the air.

"I know, right?!"

Mac started to signal something back, but gave up on it halfway and went right back to looking at the wires. "Buy me twenty seconds!"

"Dammit, Mac, if I could do that they'd be out 'til next week!" Or dead. Maybe it would be easier to punch them if they were also dead.

With that happy thought firmly in place, Jack danced along beside the Romanian, trying everything he could think of to make contact. A tight fist, a soft fist, he even just threw out his arm randomly, hoping not actually trying was the trick, but he wasn't accomplishing anything. The Romanian had just set foot on the pavement when a car turned onto the street from the corner, about five houses away.

For once luck was on their side; the four door sedan turned towards them, but unfortunately it wasn't a police cruiser – or at least it wasn't a marked one. Still, it was enough. The Romanian decided to stay on his side of the road for the time being, turning quickly so his blood-spattered shirt wouldn't draw immediate attention.

And luck stayed with them. After slowly approaching, the driver pulled up to the curb one house away. It was a young man, dark complexion, and he had his eyes on his phone. Outside of the driver, the car appeared to be empty.

For a moment, Jack couldn't believe that something was finally going their way; the Romanian was forced to turn again and walk back towards his own lair, though he did shoot a suspicious glance over his shoulder. And the driver in the car didn't get out, he stayed idling by the curb. And Jack had a terrible, terrible thought.

Riley had said she was getting them a ride.

Surely – surely to God and all that was holy in Heaven – Riley hadn't meant that literally. Hadn't literally called an Uber.

Jack glanced past the car, not surprised to see that Mac had also spotted it, and was staring at it with a mixture of bewilderment and slowly dawning dread.

And Jack knew, absolutely knew it in the bottom his lukewarm dead heart, that that was exactly what Riley had done.

Not five seconds later, a second car, this one coming from the opposite direction, pulled onto the street – and headed right for them. This one also approached sedately, and picked a house on the Romanian's side of the street. The next two arrived at nearly the same time, picking two houses further down, also on opposite sides of the street. A fifth then cruised down past the now-still Romanian, and damned if it didn't pull up right in front of the gun-runner's house.

"Riley you're a genius!" Jack shouted, jogging back across the street. It was still going to be a trick, getting into one of the cars without being seen, but at the very least she'd created a distraction, and some traffic to boot. It was a fairly narrow street, so if she could get all the Ubers to disperse at the same time, she might be able to get out in the confusion.

Their gun-runner had had the same thought. He was headed as quickly as he could un-suspiciously hurry back to his house, where a metallic gold four-door was just backing out of the covered carport.

His lieutenant.

Mac was hesitating by the house, eyeing all the cars and apparently re-thinking his plan to blow up the power grid, and Jack slapped his arm as he jogged by and looped the house.

To find that Bozer and Riley were no longer there.

"Mac, they bailed!" he shouted, then followed the trail they'd tried very hard not to leave, headed –

Headed directly towards the gun-runner's house.

And that tactic bought Riley another couple points. The Romanian would assume she'd want to use one of the cars furthest from him – in either direction – so she was essentially looping behind him and sneaking out right under his nose. It was a solid plan, until the Uber driver sent to the gun-runner's house ended up blocking the Romanian's lieutenant into his own driveway.

Jack watched it all fall apart in almost slow motion.

Riley and Bozer started out from the house across the street from the gun runner before they realized that he was in fact still at his own house. Jack watched them hesitate for a split second, then duck down and continue out, using the Uber car itself to block them from being seen as the gun-runner's lieutenant tried to back out onto the crowded street. Because Riley's Uber could see it was about to start loading passengers, it refused to move, leaving the Uber called to the gun-runner's address unable to move for the lieutenant's van. The Romanian himself was shouting at the Uber driver blocking his goon, and the Uber driver was shouting back – both in Hungarian, but the topic was easy to guess – and Bozer had just slid into the front passenger seat of his Uber, using the driver as a shield between himself and the arguing people, when the Romanian turned on their Uber to start yelling at it to move.

Bozer's tactic worked – the Romanian couldn't see him. But he could see Riley opening the back passenger door.

Shit!

Jack sprinted into the street, not caring about the shifting cars – they couldn't touch him, after all – as the Romanian shouted, probably to his lieutenant, pointing to Riley even as he started for the car. Riley looked up in alarm, then slammed the passenger door closed without getting in and pounded on the roof of it, trying to signal the Uber driver to leave without her. Their driver had his window down, to shout at the Romanian who was shouting at him, and Bozer got into the mix, trying to get out of the car at the same time.

He didn't want to leave Riley. And if at least one of them didn't make it out in one of these cars, all four of them were going to end up dead today.

Jack came to a quick stop right next to the Uber that contained Bozer, at the same time to Romanian, still across the street but with all his focus on the car Bozer was in, fired a couple shots into the air. Riley ducked out of sight, and Jack didn't even think. He reared back and jammed his foot into Bozer's Uber, into the driver's footwell, right where the accelerator should have been.

And though he didn't feel any more than a tingle, Bozer's Uber lurched forward with a squeal of tires.

Most of the other Ubers on the street were already responding to the gunshots by also peeling out, creating both smoke and general mayhem, and thankfully Bozer's Uber driver, who clearly hadn't expected the car to suddenly jolt forward on him, decided that was the best move and continued to floor it with Bozer still inside. One of the other retreating cars then sailed right through Jack like he wasn't there, giving him an unexpected tingle. By this time Mac had caught up to him, heading for the Romanian, and Jack only had eyes for where Riley had ended up.

And he discovered he had no damn idea. She'd pulled a disappearing trick of her own.

"Riley!" he shouted on instinct, mentally cursing himself when he realized how stupid it was, but the cars were clearing in both directions and she was nowhere to be seen.

Mac, meanwhile, had apparently reached his limit, because he ran full tilt at the Romanian – and connected like a quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys. The Romanian was hurled backwards hard into the muddy grass, gasping as if Mac had knocked the wind out of him. The lieutenant, who had been in the process of backing out of the driveway to follow Bozer's Uber, slammed on his brakes to jump out and help his boss.

Approaching police sirens cut through the noise of the still-retreating Ubers.

The lieutenant hesitated, then apparently decided to cut bait and run, because he peeled out into the street, leaving his boss in the yard. He headed in the same direction as Bozer's Uber, which had just turned the corner from whence it originated, still visible, and Mac growled something Jack couldn't quite make out, and dashed into the street, directly in front of it.

Jack watched the guy throw the car into gear and charge headlong towards Mac, who dropped his chin a little, as focused and furious as Jack had ever seen him. Just as the car was about to hit him, Mac ducked and put his shoulder to it, as if he thought he was going to be able to stop it in its tracks.

And for reasons he didn't understand, because they were dead, they were both of them already dead, Jack felt his chest seize up again, and his body hurled itself into the street to knock Mac out of the way, knowing he'd never get there in time.

"Mac!" Body-checking a human was one thing, but a car?!

The car plowed through MacGyver like he wasn't there, and Mac reappeared after the car passed, right where he'd been, eyes squeezed tightly shut. For a second it looked like whatever he'd tried hadn't worked - and why would it, they never managed two hits in a row, and Jack was pretty damn sure getting mad wasn't enough – and right about the time Mac dared to open his eyes, still crouched in the road, the goon's car gave a sharp squeal and a couple grinding clunks, and then the engine died.

Jack staggered out of his headlong sprint, glancing between Mac, the dead car, the lieutenant trying frantically to restart it, and the squeal of tires at the other end of the street that turned out to be a bona fide Hungarian Five O. In front of him, Mac uncurled himself and straightened, turning to stare at the car he'd just somehow taken out.

Jack wasn't sure whether to cheer or to scream. He did, however, cross the remaining distance and grab his partner's shoulder, spinning him so he could see the damage. "Dude, you okay?!"

And damned if that idiot wasn't laughing. "I think I'm starting to get the hang of this," Mac told him, clapping him on the shoulder. Jack only managed to choke a few strangled chuckles out of his strangely tight throat, and Mac's grin turned lopsided. "Jack . . . relax. There's no way a car can generate anything near the magnitude of the magnetic field it would take to affect either one of us."

He nodded – and not that he understood, but he'd trusted Mac with his life and he felt pretty confident he could trust him with his death – before it occurred to him that while he and Mac might be perfectly safe standing in front of moving vehicles, Riley was most certainly not. Mac could clearly handle the lieutenant and the Romanian, who was still laid flat out in the yard, so Jack left him to it, and headed to the last place he'd seen Riley. She'd left some pretty distinctive footprints near where Bozer's Uber had peeled out, but there were no fresh ones leading back to the house, nor into the street, so . . . had she managed to get into the Uber after all?

"Hey Mac – did you see Riles get in one of the cars?"

Mac had turned back to the street, watching the police cruiser barrel up, and he shook his head. "No, I lost line of sight. And I hate to mention this, but I don't know if we can actually ride in cars, so . . . they might be on their own until we can catch up on foot."

With no idea where they'd been headed – though Jack would have picked the US Consulate since they at least had half a chance of getting there and being protected until Phoenix could arrange exfil – that could take quite a while. And, shit, if they couldn't get in cars, that probably meant planes were out, maybe boats too-

Jack glanced around in shock as he realized the kids might have legitimately left them behind – maybe permanently - but then he saw his mistake, there in the thicker mud at the bottom of the drainage ditch in the yard. Jack hesitated, then hopped into the ditch and knelt down, and sure enough, there in the storm drain that ran under the driveway, he found Riley.

She'd wedged herself as deep into the corrugated metal tube as she could get, into the cold, fetid water and mud, her arms wrapped tight around something – probably the laptop – and her head bowed to her chest, so that her face wouldn't be visible to anyone looking in. As Jack approached, he could hear her panting unsteadily as she started to shiver. She was doing her level best not to make a single sound – not that anyone would have heard it over the police sirens.

". . . oh, honey." Unthinkingly, he reached out to touch her – only to have his fingers pass right through her hair. She'd wedged herself up on the side of the metal, trying to keep herself out of as much of the wet and muck as she could, but she was already feeling it and as soon as it got dark, the temperature was going to drop rapidly. It was a great place to hide out for a minute, but if the police decided to search the Romanian's home, they'd left the basement door wide open, and once the cops got a load of what was down there, between the coroner and the detectives, they'd be here for hours.

She couldn't stay in there that long.

"Got her," Jack called over his shoulder, and then he heard a sputtering motor fail to catch for the umpteenth time before a very authoritative woman's voice started shouting commands.

Jack popped back up in time to see the single Hungarian policewoman was now outside her cruiser, with her weapon drawn and pointed at the Romanian's lieutenant. He was still in the car, and held up one of his hands in surrender. Just one – the other one was holding a cellphone to his ear.

"Craaaap," Jack heard Mac growl, and he raced over to the car, dashing directly through the trunk and back seat even as the policewoman continued shouting orders – and the lieutenant kept speaking into the phone.

Of course. Backup. He was telling the Romanian's other men what had just happened.

Which meant –

Which meant these two were going to jail, but Bozer and Riley were still targets.

Where the policewoman had not been successful in getting the goon to put down his phone, Mac sure as hell was. He was standing stock still in the front of the car, Jack could only see a disembodied head, but whatever Mac did, the goon started yelling into it, and the language didn't matter. Jack had been on the wrong end of enough dropped calls to recognize it when he heard it.

And maybe Riley had, too, down in her storm drain. At least enough to know that he made a call.

Jack watched the woman take the goon into custody – only after he threw down his phone in disgust, and Mac's floating head supervised – and then put his attention on the Romanian, to make sure he was still down and not helping himself to his own cellphone. The asshole was struggling to crawl towards his house, and Jack bared his teeth and marched across the street to try to knee him in the face.

Unfortunately, like before, it didn't work. And Jack tried both his left and right knees, then left and right feet. So how in the hell could he have hit that brake pedal without even trying?! It had been effortless! This was just irritating as all hell -

"Mac! Hey, Mac!"

"You don't have to yell," a voice chided mildly, right in his ear, and Jack actually jumped before he put a hand against his chest.

Not that he thought he was going to feel anything -

"Dammit, dude, are you kidding me!?"

Mac still had that cocky grin on his face, and he stood at Jack's shoulder, staring down at the Romanian gun-runner, who was still trying to crawl away in the mud.

"I wish Riley was up here to see this," Jack growled, turning his ire onto the gunrunner that had damn near killed all four of them. "How do I curbstomp this guy?"

Mac's eyebrows raised, and he adopted what Jack called his 'professor's face' "Well, Jack, it's a lot simpler than I originally thought." He then demonstrated, picking up his right foot – still bare, but without so much as a smudge of mud on it – and brought it down on the man's back, smashing him back down into the mud. The Romanian yelled, but it sounded more frightened now than pained, and Mac cocked his head.

"You know, I think it's safe to say he believes in ghosts now."

Considering he'd run into a wall that wasn't there, been tackled by an invisible quarterback, and now shoved back down by an unseen bare foot, Jack was willing to bet Mac was right. "Serves that fucker right. I'd like to haunt his ass more, but prison's boring. So you gonna tell me how you're doin' that?"

Mac gave him a curious look, like he was trying to figure something out. "You're the one who told me. Showed me, actually."

Jack straightened, giving Mac a look of his own. "Hoss, if I knew how to do what you're doin', I'd damn well have done it by now-"

Mac opened his mouth to reply, but something behind Jack got his attention. "Ah, Jack . . . I think we might have a problem."

He very nearly didn't turn around. When he did, he noticed a nondescript four door creeping by the police cruiser – which now had the gun-runner's lieutenant sitting in the back of it, and the policewoman was headed right for their sniveling Romanian. The car that was crawling by her cruiser, however, had four passengers, all large men, all stereotypical skinheads, and they gave the cop a good long stare before they slowly moved on.

She responded by glaring after them, and getting back on her radio.

"They're lookin' for Ri and Boze."

Mac nodded grimly. "Looks like. You stay with Riley, I'll see if I can lock that basement door."

Because of course if she found the bodies, it was going to get messy. If all she had were suspects, she'd take them to the station, and Riley could get out of that culvert a lot faster. Jack let him go, keeping an eye on the policewoman, and after she got her second suspect in handcuffs and wrestled into the back of the cruiser, some backup arrived to the tune of a second officer and car.

It still wouldn't be enough firepower if the gang decided to bail out their boss, and Jack watched them a moment more before he headed back across the street, hopped back down in the ditch, and checked in with Riley.

She was right where he'd left her, but her head was up now, watching the reflection of the squadcar's lights on the wet grass outside her culvert. She was shivering harder, now, it wasn't until she dropped her head to the cold metal that Jack realized she was crying.

Cuddling her laptop to her, silently weeping, the way she used to when she was a girl, when she didn't want Diane – or god help her, Jack – to know.

It wasn't hard to guess what was on her mind. They were gone, Bozer was in the wind, she had no backup and she was lying in a cold wet ditch. Probably thought the Hungarian police would find the bodies, and make it that much harder for Phoenix to take custody, too. Not to mention she'd gotten knocked around herself, and while she hadn't looked badly injured, it didn't mean she wasn't hurting. In more ways than one.

"Aww, hon, I'm right here with'ya. You really think I'd be anywhere else?" Jack took a seat at the opening of the culvert, not feeling the cold even a little bit, and settled as close to her as he could without crowding her and risking accidentally passing through her.

The thought made him laugh a little. "Yeah, I know how y'are about your personal space," he told her, listening to the unintelligible chatter coming over the police radio, and the soft sounds of her crying. "Listen, Ri, this was a good place to hide out for a second, but you can't stay here all night. That asswipe's goons are lookin' for you, you and Bozer both. Hopefully you got him somewhere safe, somewhere they can fix up that shoulder. I know you're smart, too, woulda sent him to a clinic rather than a hospital." She'd probably still be on that laptop she was clinging to, tracking his ass, if she wasn't afraid the light would give her away.

"So you just wait for ol' Mac to clean up the evidence a li'l, then we'll take off outta here, find Bozer, and get the two of you to exfil, safe and sound. That work for you?"

Riley hugged the laptop a little tighter, then flinched as a car door slammed shut.

She didn't seem to have any response to the approaching footsteps, though, and Jack looked up to find Mac had returned. He was still up on the road above and made no effort to jump down with them. Instead, he was flexing his right hand, open and closed again.

"You get that door shut in time?"

Mac's eyes shifted, then, from his hand to Jack's face, and Jack finally did feel the cold. Felt it right in his gut. Mac didn't have to say anything at all, the look in his eyes was unmistakable.

Jack climbed to his feet immediately "What is it."

Mac didn't say anything, still wiggling his fingers, and then he seemed to deflate, just a little bit. "I couldn't shut the door, Jack."

And try as he might, Jack couldn't figure out how that could possibly be the end of the world. Because the look on Mac's face told him it was the end of the world. "It's alright, chief, you been kickin' ass an' takin' names, maybe you just need a second to recharge is all-"

"Yeah, about that," Mac interrupted, but then fell reluctantly silent, and Jack got colder. He hopped up out of the ditch and back into the road, getting a quick read on the situation. Same two cops, one in the car with the suspects, the other nowhere to be seen. Front door of the gun-runner's house was open. There was no other sign of the Romanian's gang.

So they'd find the bodies, so it'd make it harder for Riley to get out unseen. It was inconvenient as hell, but not life or death. Whatever this was about, it wasn't that.

"Talk to me," Jack said quietly, and put a bracing hand on Mac's shoulder.

And it tingled, weirdly, as if his hand might pass right through. Mac flinched, and Jack released him instantly.

"We don't. Recharge." Despite drawing back, Mac's voice was dead steady. "We use whatever energy we've got to interact with the world, and when it's gone, it's gone."

"What?" This, what this looked like – Mac's expression, his voice, the way he looked slightly . . . filmy . . . this was not happening. Couldn't be happening. "Let's not put the wagon before the horse, ol' son, you said it yourself, we're new to this, and you –"

"Yeah, Jack. I do know," his partner interrupted, gently but no less steadily. "It makes sense. If everyone who died could do these sorts of things whenever they wanted, ghosts would be a scientific proof by now." He'd balled his right hand into a fist, and Jack hesitated, then jerked his chin at it.

"Is that . . . hurtin' ya?"

Mac quickly shook his head. "Just tingles a little."

Okay. Okay. This was not the end of the world. They just hadda be careful, make him take a break, and he'd be fine. "So . . . you can't pull any more Casper the Friendly Ghost. No biggie. You just take a back seat, pal, and –"

"Jack, I don't think that's an option," Mac said quickly, balling up his left hand as well. "Like any other electrical field, once you lose enough charge, you lose structural integrity. I, uh," and then he hesitated, and gave Jack the barest smile. "I don't think I'm going to be around much longer. Not in any form you can interact with."

Jack refused to smile back. Smiling back would be accepting that pile of bullshit, giving permission, and the hell he was gonna do that. "Mac, we been through worse, we'll find a way through this. You said – electricity, right?" He gestured at the utility box, tantalizingly close, but his partner was already shaking his head.

"It doesn't work that way -"

"Then – then take mine! Take mine!" He made a grab for Mac's arm, intending to squeeze life, energy, whatever they were back into him, but this time there was no tingle at all. His hand clasped nothing but air, almost like with Riley but-

But emptier.

Mac had started to pull away, but when he realized Jack couldn't touch him anymore, he stopped, and Jack watched his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed. "I wouldn't accept that even if you could, Jack." His eyes brightened a little, and the wan smile on his face warmed. "Riley and Boze still need you, they still need help, and you can't afford any more – more Caspering. You can't hulk out, you've gotta be very deliberate about what you do-"

He broke off, suddenly, and a little shiver seemed to run through him. Jack reached out for him again, trying to steady him, but his shoulder was no more tangible than the rest of him. Jack could actually see his fingers through Mac's arm.

"Son of a bitch, this really is like that Swayze flick," he muttered, and then his voice cracked and he gave up pretending. "You . . . you promise you ain't hurting?"

Mac nodded quickly, then cleared his throat. Jack honestly couldn't tell if the little glitter near his eye was a tear, or the street light behind him, flickering and coming alive as evening approached.

"Yeah, I promise. It . . . doesn't really feel like much at all," he admitted quietly. "Big improvement over last time."

Jack knew he was supposed to laugh at that. That it was a joke, the kind of morbid joke that he preferred, and he knew why Mac had said it. Knew what he was going to say next. "You know," Jack started, and finally managed that passable chuckle he owed Mac, "I always hoped there'd actually be Death, y'know? The dude, the robe, the scythe, the whole shebang."

". . . because then there'd be something for you to fight," Mac finished. "I wanna say I'm disappointed too, but . . ." He looked around, mostly up at the cloudy sky. "This was more than I expected. More than I could have hoped. Getting to help Boze, help Riley . . ." Mac laughed a little, then quickly dragged a hand down his face. His voice was warm and calm when he spoke again. "Thank you, Jack. Thank you for always having my back."

Jack barked out something that couldn't even pretend to be a laugh. "I think I might be about to let you down there, bud . . ."

He had no doubts about what was next for Mac, and what was next for him. And that was okay. He'd made peace with the fact a long time ago, that him and God might not be on the same page about how to live a good life. But Mac, there was just no question.

But Mac didn't understand that, he just shrugged, and demonstrated how much more transparent he'd gotten, just in those few seconds. "It's the end of the day, Jack, and you're right here. Right where you said you'd be."

"Dammit, Angus, when I said-" Jack cut himself off, because there was no point in anger, not now. ". . . this ain't the end, brother. Oh, I know you don't believe in an afterlife," he continued, barreling over Mac's polite attempt to interrupt, "but believe you me, there's more to it than just this. It's all gonna be okay, man. You'll see."

Mac's smile seemed more solid, somehow, even as he became less so. "Now who's lying?"

Jack couldn't help it. He laughed. A real one this time. "Would'ya rather have, uh, evaporated in worry an' panic?"

Mac rolled his eyes, and Jack thought he'd take the out, take the joke. He didn't. ". . . not really," he finally managed. The smile was firmly in place, his partner seemed determined to project calm acceptance of his fate, but Jack wasn't buying it for a second.

He didn't believe, in Heaven or in God. But he didn't believe in ghosts, either, and here they were. Mac didn't know what was going to happen next. And even though he was thin as a wisp of cloud, Jack could see it, see it in his eyes.

He was scared.

Mac took a breath, to say it, to say goodbye, and Jack pre-empted him by casually nodding, and blowing out his cheeks. Like they were standing on his family's porch in Texas, chewing the fat. "Well, be sure an' tell your mom all about me. Oh, but leave off Cairo, okay? She don't need to know about that – unless she already does. Then just tell 'er it wasn't our finest day."

Mac blinked at him, unaware that a tear had escaped and was rolling down his face. " . . . Jack-"

"It's a good place you're goin', Mac, a real good place," Jack promised him, his voice growing husky. "And if I can follow you there, man, I will. But if I can't – if I can't, you jus' . . . you take care of yourself. Okay?"

Jack gave him a watery smile, and Mac said something that he couldn't quite make out. Then he faded away entirely.

Losing him twice in the same day was too much. Jack sat down on the curb and he cried. He cried for himself, for the unbearable pain of that loss, and he cried for all the lost opportunities, the lost lightsabers, the lost light. It took him a few minutes to get control of himself again, to get back on mission, and in the intervening time, a third squad car appeared. So, they'd definitely wandered down to the basement, then.

Coroner and detectives wouldn't be far behind. If Riley was going to get out, the opportunities wouldn't be getting better from here.

He just had to figure out a way to tell her so.

Jack forced himself onto his feet, mopped his face, and moved slowly back down into the ditch only to find Riley already halfway out of her culvert. She was wet and muddy, but she'd stopped crying, and clearly had figured out for herself that the going wasn't gonna be getting any better from here. She stayed low in the ditch, trying to get a position on the officers and vehicles, and the first cruiser, containing the gunrunner and his goon, finally rolled away. The other two squadcars were empty, and the second guy had even been dumb enough to leave the door open.

The first cruiser wasn't even quite out of sight before Riley darted quietly up out of the ditch, ducking as she hurried to the second car. Jack had half a thought that she'd boost it; if anyone could turn off a LoJack it was Riley, and besides, the cops weren't exactly the enemy here. But instead, her eyes raked over every item in the cab, and she snatched the cop's mobile off its dock.

And then she turned around and walked – fairly quickly, but not unreasonably so – down the street.

Jack watched her for a moment, not quite sure he could believe what he was seeing, and when she didn't falter at all, and walked like a woman with a destination firmly in mind, he followed her.

"Riles . . . there's a car fulla gang members gonna be drivin' up any second-"

And there was no Mac to break the car. Not a second time.

Mac hadn't even told him how he'd done it in the first place.

But Riley didn't continue her ill-advised public march for long. As soon as she got to the street corner she took a right, and Jack realized they were only a block away from some kinda park. And that was where Riley unerringly led him, into the park, away from street traffic. She glanced up at a couple CCTV cameras, but they looked old and mildewed, and once she was deep enough into the park, she grabbed a bench and popped open the laptop. She'd already cracked the phone, and Jack sighed and stood sentry behind her while she did whatever she was doing.

"Come on, come on," she urged the thing, under her breath, and Jack's attention sharpened as a couple wandered ever closer to Riley's bench, via one of the park's many bark-covered walkways. It was an okay park, but there weren't many working lamps, and it was long past sunset, and cloudy besides. Not a safe place for a beautiful young woman to be, especially alone.

Then again, safe was relative. Neither cops nor gun runners were going to look for her here. It was still cold, though, and getting colder, and Riley wrapped her soggy, useless denim jacket more tightly around her.

"Dammit," she swore softly, huddling around the laptop half to take comfort in the warmth, half to hide the light from the monitor. The couple, utterly unaware a ghost was standing guard over Riley, eventually passed by, without incident. Riley barely even glanced at them.

"Honey . . . I know we trained you better than this." She only had a few more months than Bozer did under her belt, but she was street smart, and prison smart besides. A shivering young woman with a nice piece of tech alone in a park at night was begging for the kind of trouble she really couldn't deal with right now.

"Where did you drop him off when you cancelled, you useless assface," she growled, manipulating a map. "Where did you cancel . . .?"

She was trying to track where Bozer's Uber had gone. Since it apparently had not completed its scheduled journey.

She gave a little disgusted snort, then, and made to close the laptop, but she stopped abruptly, and pulled the map back up. Riley traced a route with a muddy, broken fingernail, then closed the laptop with a sharp snap, and did something to the cop's mobile phone.

"Y'know, you could just call Matty," Jack suggested mildly, and Riley promptly tucked the phone in her pocket and took off generally due east.

". . . or, you could totally ignore me, which is whatcha'd do if you could hear me anyway," he finished glumly, and trailed along after her. Being dead had only been fun when he'd had someone to talk to. Now, though, he was starting to realize that it was going to get very, very lonely.

Riley took them out of the park, back into a residential neighborhood, but this one was slightly more upscale than the last, and it dumped them pretty quickly onto a commercial street. She marched past the convenience stores like they weren't there, didn't stop to get herself so much as a bottle of water even though he knew she'd had nothing to eat or drink since they'd been taken – however many hours ago it'd been. Hell, maybe yesterday for all he knew. She only stopped for traffic, checking street signs occasionally but otherwise looking like any other pedestrian.

Any other wet, muddy pedestrian, with matted, unkempt hair, an obvious cut on her mouth, and smudged eyeliner. If the roving gang happened to cruise by, the odds were not in her favor.

But Riley's luck, or maybe it was her fury, held. She must have taken then over two miles - and it was only after the first had gone by entirely that he realized she was still wearing her shoes, and if he wasn't a ghost, his feet would have been torn to pieces by then – before the road started looking a little more upscale commercial. She cut through an alley between two apartment buildings, checking the GPS on the phone for only maybe the fourth or fifth time, and she led them out to a four story stone building, older, with all of its windows staring down at them, black and empty.

Riley stared back, up at the second or third floor, and then she crossed the street and started trying to find a way inside.

Jack stood nearby, arms folded over his chest, eyeing it. Too downtown to have been permanently abandoned, but there was no sign of life at all. None. Not even a homeless population, so either the area was well policed, or the building was only recently vacated. Every door Riley tried was locked, and after the fourth she growled a few choice words and huffed, backing up a few steps to stand almost shoulder to shoulder with Jack.

He cleared his throat and indicated the windows at sidewalk level. "That's your best bet, darlin'. Break the top middle pane of glass and twist the lock."

And then it occurred to him, quite suddenly, that he ought to be able to do that least that. Clearly stopping cars was on the no-no list, but one little pane of glass?

Jack stood there another few seconds, seriously considering pulling a Casper, and reflected headlights glinted off the window. Jack turned, noting the passing car, and the one behind it. He might not have recognized it at all, silver four-doors were a dime a dozen all over Europe, but the big, bald head in the rear passenger window was more than enough to jog his memory.

"C'mon, you gotta be kidding me! Really?!" he snarled at the retreating car, and hurried over to the window in question. They might not have spotted her yet, but if they took another lap it was a done deal.

How in the fuck could they have tailed her? It defied belief. Jack channeled that righteous fury and aimed the ball of his bare foot at the glass. And damned if he didn't pass right through it.

"Son of a bitch! Mac, buddy, how in the hell were you doin' this shit?!" He'd said –

He'd said that Jack had been the one to tell him. But tell him what?!

"Okay," he grumbled to himself, casting a quick glance over to make sure he still had tabs on Riley. "What did you do, Jack ol' boy. The first thing you did – oh yeah, kicked that gun away from Boze. That was a good one," he allowed. "Next up, bodychecked that goon into the doorframe, but that was a damn accident."

And yet-

It seemed like Mac had figured it out after that.

Jack 'accidentally' waggled his foot through the glass pane, but nothing happened, and he made a face at the uncooperative stuff.

"Fine, whatever. Third thing was . . ."

Riley appeared, directly in front of him, and whipped off her damp denim jacket. Then she slapped it against the glass, winced a little, and put her shoe right through it. The jacket did somewhat muffle the sound of the break, and she used the fabric to wipe the sharp fragments off the frame before she delicately reached in, brushed the shards from the lock, and turned it.

Jack just stared at her, totally speechless, and Riley, in turn, totally ignored him and slipped inside the building.

Getting inside was even easier for him; he just walked through the wall and hopped down to the floor. Knee didn't even twinge, which was kinda a nice change. The inside was just as dark as advertised, and Riley hesitated, then moved further into the hallways, and used the cop's cellphone as a flashlight, dimly illuminating long, empty halls with uniform doors.

Some kinda bureaucratic building, then. Government, maybe. The only signs still there were all in Hungarian, or maybe German, but he was better with spoken language anyway and it didn't matter.

"Riles, hon . . . what are we doin' here?"

And she finally answered him.

"Boze," she whispered loudly into the silence, listening to it echo. "Boze . . . you in here?"

Boze . . .

Jack couldn't help himself. "Well, what in the hell stupid kinda question is that?" he demanded. "Why would Bozer be in some abandoned-ass government building, like, two blocks away from actual civilization –"

. . . why would two injured, frightened clandestine agents, unsure of protocol and without coms, agree to meet in an empty, relatively safe place, probably within blocks of the US Consulate.

This is what Bozer and Riley had been doing behind that house, while Riley was summoning her Uber army. Figuring out a safe place to meet up where the gun-runners wouldn't easily find them, to regroup and figure out how to approach the Consulate. The Uber Riley had originally ordered might very well have been ordered to take them directly there.

This had been Riley's Plan B. In case they got split up, or something happened.

His chest swelled up a little, and this time Jack didn't even question it. Beating heart or not, he could feel pride, love, admiration for his little badass agent. She was doing everything she could to get herself and Boze out, to get the intel to Phoenix, to complete the mission.

She just had the order wrong.

"Your life is worth a hundred times what that drive is," he told her softly. "Me an' Mac, that wasn't to save the mission, Ri. That was to save the two of you."

She didn't hear him. "Bozer!" she called, a little louder, and crept her way further into the building.

They'd entered on the lower level, east side, and Riley picked her careful way through what Jack could openly admit was a fairly spooky old building to a central marble staircase, ubiquitous to government buildings the world over. She climbed them quickly, bringing them up to the first floor, to the main entrance and an unimpeded view of the street outside. There was more glass here in the lobby than anywhere else, the white marble floors were brightly illuminated by the streetlights outside, and there at the stoplight was the silver four-door car.

And there in plain sight was Riley, holding a goddamn flashlight.

She pressed it to her leg instantly, but the damage was done, and she realized it when the four doors flew open, and very large skinheads all piled out. "Shit!" she hissed, darting to the next staircase and flying up it like she was Casper herself. Jack hesitated, torn between taking care of business and following her to make sure she stayed safe, and staying by her side won out. He took the stairs two at a time, hot on her trail, when the main door shattered, and a male voice bellowed into the lobby.

"Jack ol' son, you better figure out how to whoop some ass, and you better damn well do it now," he told himself sternly, pausing to look over the railing at the four men entering the lobby. Somewhere, an alarm was keening, but that was cold comfort. These guys could get their hands on her and have her back in that car in under a minute. Two of them headed up the stairs after them, and the other two headed in the opposite directly, to head them off.

"Oh, you done pissed me off now, boys." Jack watched the second pair another moment, getting a bead on their weaponry, then continued after Riley.

Riley, to her credit, didn't spend any time in the hallway. As soon as she found an open door she was through it, closing it almost silently behind her, and muffled her breathing as much as she was able, taking stock of the dark room. It was some kind of secretary's office plus muckity-muck setup, and basic furniture was still there. Riley hurried from the secretary's office into the main one, and as soon as she spied the door on the far side, she tried it, which led predictably enough to the next office.

In this way Riley made her way about halfway down the building, parallel with the main hallway, closing every door behind her – some right in Jack's face – until she came to one that had a half-glass door back to the darkened hallway. Riley slipped the laptop out from under her arm, set it on the desk, and opened it, with the screen facing the chair, like she intended to sit there and use it.

She made sure the screen was on, and bright enough that it might be seen from the hallway, and then she hustled into the next room, shutting the door softly behind her.

Leaving it – and the promise of the intel – in an empty office. She was hoping to gather them all in one place and slip out behind them, just like she and Boze had tried earlier.

"Good girl," Jack murmured approvingly, and tried to crack his knuckles, pleased when he was actually able to.

The two that had come up to this floor with her didn't take long to find the room, like moths to a flame. In this case, extremely tall, meaty, hairless moths, but as far as Jack was concerned, the analogy held. He let them enter, and they left the hallway door behind them wide open. Jack could very well imagine Riley, two doors down, huddled in a closet or behind a desk, listening for the faintest sign that her diversion was working.

It made him grin. "Oh, sweetheart, I gotchu," he assured the room at large, and slammed the door closed.

And by god, that door slammed. It tingled, just like it had when he'd body-checked the lieutenant, and those skinheads jumped about three feet into the air.

"Damn I wish I could make you fuckers hear me," Jack told them, baring his teeth. They'd both pulled back to the desk, staring uneasily at the door with their guns drawn, and Jack sauntered into the space between them, his dead heart singing.

"Boo," he taunted, and plunged his fist into the laptop.

It didn't tingle so much as tickle, and the laptop exploded around his hand in a ball of light and sparks. Both men shouted in alarm and jumped back, and Jack poked around in the laptop bits. They still had some electricity in them, maybe from the battery, so he was able to make them continue spitting and sparking, jumping across the desk. One of the skinheads – Jack decided to call him Tweedle Dee – had fallen against the wall and looked legitimately scared. Tweedle Dum simply swore and beat on the smoldering sleeve of his white supremacist tee. He growled something – in Hungarian, of course – and Jack mocked him as the two of them tried to decide what to do next.

It might not have been what Riley had in mind, but on the off chance the intel really had been on that laptop, it sure as hell wasn't anymore. And these guys were, as Jack liked to say, spooked.

His right hand was still a little tingly, and Jack stretched it out a few times before he realized he was doing exactly what Mac had done. His hand still looked . . . fine, it looked totally fine, not translucent or anything, and Jack shrugged it off and walked through the door into the hallway, checking to see if the pyrotechnics and yelling had attracted the other two.

He didn't see anyone else in the hallway, and after about thirty seconds Jack got a little antsy, afraid that Riley might prematurely leave her cover. He turned, balled up his fist and punched the glass window in the door, as hard as he could.

It shattered in a super-satisfying way. If he'd done that while he was still alive, his hand would have been macerated, but it still looked and felt as solid as it always had. Didn't even twinge.

Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum were now both pointing weapons at the door, and Jack walked back through it, taking the time to appreciate the glass shards he'd managed to knock about ten feet into the room. Tweedle Dee was still cowering against the wall, but Tweedle Dum was approaching the door, sure that someone must have taken a shot at them.

It was almost too easy. "Didn't anybody ever teach you not to walk downrange until after the cease fire's called?" he chided the a-hole, and sized up the trembling Tweedle Dee's grip on his gun.

A little nudge to the right, and he might be convinced to shoot his own guy in the back.

The gunfire was likely to spook Riley – and Jack hated that part of it – but he still came up next to Tweedle Dee, waited for Tweedle Dum to walk basically into his sightline, and he reached out and grasped the firearm, squeezing Tweedle Dee's hand. The man shouted, the gun went off, and Tweedle Dum went down with a bullet in his right ass cheek.

Confident that he'd essentially eliminated two of Riley's four attackers – Dee was going to have to help Dum outta the building before the alarm company was able to dispatch police to the address – Jack headed again back into the main hall. Maybe the laptop and glass hadn't been audible a floor down, but that gunshot sure as hell should have been.

He caught the tail end of what looked like a shape disappearing down the dark hallway, then a little bit of light as a stairwell doorway was cracked open, and the shadow slipped through.

Way too thin to be one of those meatheads.

Jack started after her at a dead run. Dammit, Ri, if you just coulda waited sixty seconds -

He made the stairwell maybe twenty seconds after her, through the closed door, slipped on the dusty marble tiles, and just about slid right into the gap between the flights of stairs. Jack actually fell back on his ass with an undignified yelp to stop the slide, only realizing a second later that he probably could have taken that fall without issues.

Or maybe he would have fallen through the floor and into the ground and stayed there.

Better not chance that one unless we can avoid it, Jack ol' boy.

From his vantage point, sitting between the railings along the stairwell like a damn five year old, Jack could see activity at the bottom of it, heading up, and there was Riley, halfway down the flight, reconsidering her options. A male voice was shouting, but it was echoing, and too faint to tell whether it was coming from above or below.

Whoever it was sounded pissed, and Jack didn't begrudge Riley reversing direction and racing past him, heading up to the third floor.

At least she'd had the good sense to at least try to go down the first time. Why everyone in movies ran up, where they were guaranteed to be trapped, he'd never understand –

Jack hefted himself up without the help of the bannister and waited for the skinhead. He was also taking the stairs two at a time, and clearly had a bead on Riley.

Time to see if these guys bounced.

Jack stood his ground and waited with his right arm outstretched, grinning in anticipation of the clothesline he was about to pull off, and the skinhead passed right through it like it wasn't there. Jack was after him like a shot, silently swearing.

God dammit! What the fuck did I just do different than I did in that stupid office?!

Riley was fast but also tired and cold, and she made it up to the third floor landing only half a flight ahead of the guy. She'd also decided to take advantage of that height, preparing herself to kick him back down the stairs, and the very bald gun-runner slowed, his hands empty and out to the side. He was speaking Hungarian, but sounded nice and calm. The message was pretty clear; he was peddling the same 'I'm not gonna hurt you, just come with me' bullshit she'd heard from their Romanian ringleader.

Based on her expression, she wasn't buying.

Jack reached out above him and grabbed the guy's ankle, intent on faceplanting him on the stairs, but this time there was no tingle, and no response from the skinhead. He took another stair, still wheedling to her like she was a hapless teenage, and Riley planted herself and got ready.

And while he was stupid enough to try to con her so blatantly, he wasn't dumb enough to simply get kicked down the stairs by a buck twenty American. He feigned taking the bait, and she gave ground, just like she'd been trained, and then her left foot lashed out. He caught it despite Jack literally standing inside his chest, then tried to pull her towards him, and she gave up and kicked her right leg up, using her caught left to pull herself into close enough range to get at least light contact with his face.

She landed on her left hip – and would certainly have a bruise – but she'd succeeded in getting free and started scrabbling back towards the hallway door. But light contact with a beef bus wasn't gonna cut it, and the skinhead reached for the .45 he had tucked in his waistband. He was tired of playing games, and he was running outta time.

Riley had scooted nearly back to the door, but her soggy shoes had no traction on the marble, and she only had eyes for the gun that was pointing right at her. The skinhead growled something in Hungarian as he topped the last step, towering to his full height, and Jack could see the actual moment that Riley realized she had no way out. Something in her eyes closed down, just a little, closed like she'd been that day in the interrogation room at the correctional facility.

It wasn't surrender – she was still plenty rebellious, and angry, and all those things.

It was giving up hope.

And he would be damned in Hell before he let that look stay on her face one more second.

Jack didn't even think about it. He disarmed the guy with a strike that also broke his wrist, kicked the fallen weapon in Riley's general direction, and punched him right in the nose, fist closed, the way you were never supposed to do. The guy's shiny bald head snapped back and he windmilled frantically, trying not to fall down the stairs. Jack helpfully fisted the front of the guy's white supremacist tee, catching him.

It was the first time he'd actually held on to anything, and it made his hand ache a little, almost like, for a split second, it was a real hand, and he was really there. "You ain't touchin' her," he snarled at the wide-eyed gun-runner, and then he hurled him down the stairs and against the railing.

Just as he'd intended, the overbalanced six foot muscle suit tumbled over the low bannister to fall onto the flight of stairs below. He left a red stain where his head encountered the marble stairs, and then slithered bonelessly to the second floor landing.

Jack took a deep breath, expecting to be winded, but he found that he didn't feel any different at all. And he didn't care. All he cared was that he turned around to find Riley pressed up against the double doors, the gun held tight in her hands, pointing directly at his chest.

He froze on instinct, forgetting that it couldn't hurt him, and Riley didn't lower it. The barrel was even held steady, while her voice wasn't even close.

" . . . J-Jack?"

He blinked at her, then gave her a slow grin. The gun didn't lower.

"Easy, darlin'. It's just me," he told her softly. Riley struggled to her feet, the gun gradually drooping towards the marble floor, but her wide, frightened eyes never left his face.

"Riles . . ." He hesitated, then took a step towards her. "Can you . . . see me?"

She didn't respond, didn't raise the weapon, and he risked another step. Then another. Her eyes stayed locked on place he'd been standing, holding the skinhead teetering on the stairs. He waved a hand tentatively in front of her face, but she didn't react.

The crushing disappointment he felt was worse than a bullet would've been. She couldn't see him.

"Hey, hey, it's okay," he told the landing, as she finally let the gun drop completely to her side, and covered her mouth with her other hand. Her eyes were still wide and wild, and Jack couldn't help it. He reached out and gently stroked a lock of her matted hair.

His fingertips tingled, and she flinched back into the door. He was standing right in front of her, he could see his own damn reflection in her startled eyes, but they never focused on him.

" . . . Jack . . .?" she whispered.

The grin was easier this time. "Yeah, sweetheart, it's me," he confirmed, daring to touch the corner of her mouth with his thumb, like he could somehow soothe the cut away. Again, it seemed like he made contact; she jumped a little, then pressed a shaking hand over his in total disbelief.

"I gotcha, Riles. I'm right here."

She scrabbled at his hand on her chin, as if trying to grab it, but it didn't seem like she could, because a sob suddenly exploded out of her throat, and she reached for the air in front of her, headed unerringly for the neck of his muscle shirt, knowing exactly how high and how far away it would be if he was really standing there. The door to the third floor hallway behind her suddenly exploded open, causing her to yelp and bring up the gun, and Jack turned on the enemy before he registered the black uniform, the tac gear.

The M6, he clocked it a little faster, and knocked the barrel off sight before he even though about it.

These weren't skinheads. This was Hungarian SWAT.

The officer flinched back himself with a menacing shout, assuming Riley had somehow made contact and reacquiring her to fire, and Jack honestly didn't believe it himself when the next person crowding out of the door was Wilt Bozer.

"Wait wait wait!" he yelled, even as Riley hit the wall behind her, with nowhere else to backpeddle, targeting the man targeting her. "That's Riley! That's Riley!"

There were a couple more shouts – and two more black-clad special assault troops – on the landing before they got it sorted out, and Riley awkwardly raised her hands – gun included – into the air. And Bozer, bless his warm, clueless, innocent little heart, then walked right in front of those rifle barrels and bear-hugged her.

Once they got the gun away from her – and without a fight – the team continued down the stairs, leaving one man on the landing with Bozer and Riley. It took Jack longer than it should have to recognize the strap of a sling across Bozer's back, and the fact that he was only hugging her with one arm, and he wasn't sure Riley had even noticed yet. She was clinging to him like her life depended on it, her face in his shoulder, and Jack resisted the urge to get in on the goodness.

They probably wouldn't appreciate it.

"Riley, are you okay!? I'm sorry I wasn't here, when you didn't show up I was afraid they'd caught you, an' I wasn't sure what to do so I went straight to the consulate an'-"

Jack tuned out the rest of Bozer's rushed explanation – what he'd heard was enough. Boze had gone to the consulate, probably spilled his guts to the guard in the guard house, gotten entry, phoned home, and Matilda Webber had stepped in. That explained the very well-armed group appearing rather than the alarm company's regular guards. And of course Bozer would insist on going with.

It also explained why the gun-runners had been prowling the neighborhood, knowing the two US agents were most likely to hit the consulate for help and hoping to get lucky.

The one he'd left on the stairs hadn't gotten lucky. He'd gotten dead. And even knowing that he was absolutely adding insult to injury, committing sins even as a ghost, Jack couldn't scrounge up one single scrap of remorse.

If God didn't want him protecting his kids, then He shouldn't'a made him a ghost in the first place.

It took tac less than five minutes to finish clearing the building, and they did not require any supernatural assistance. Jack stayed glued Bozer and Riley, providing overwatch until they were hustled into a car. Mac's prediction of Jack's inability to ride in a car was proven depressingly accurate, and Jack broke into a slow jog as the black sedan took off.

He hated running when he was alive, but now that he was dead, it wasn't so bad. His knee never hurt, and he never got out of breath. Besides, he knew that car was only going a couple blocks.

By the time Jack caught up, walked through the gate - a couple times, actually, just to screw with the guard, since apparently it did something to the video surveillance and freaked that guy the hell out – and found his way through the consulate to the suite where Bozer and Riley were being kept, Riley had had an opportunity to clean herself up a little and swap her filthy, damp clothes for US Army-themed sweats. She'd tied her hair back out of her face, revealing the bruises and the cut, and a woman Jack could only assume was the consulate nurse on call was treating her.

Bozer was hovering nearby, seemingly wanting to sit but not able to make his butt actually contact any surface long enough to accomplish it. After about three more passes of his pacing, the nurse turned and fixed him with a decidedly mothering look.

"Sit," she commanded, with a very endearing Eastern European accent. "Or I will glue you to that chair." She then waved the skin-safe adhesive she was using to seal Riley's cut at him.

Bozer held up his only free hand in surrender, then came and set himself a little fearfully on the opposite side of the couch from Riley. She was getting her face glued, so she couldn't do more than look at him out of the corner of her eye, but she did reach out her right hand, and find his left halfway. That seemed to be enough to ground both of them, and the nurse was able to finish up without further incident. She put away her kit and gave Bozer another appraising look – apparently she was responsible for the sling, because Bozer pulled back a little – and then gestured at a cart full of goodies that was sitting tantalizingly close to the sofa.

"You should both eat. Keep up your strength. Your jet will not be here for another hour."

"You should listen to her," a very familiar voice added dryly, making both the agents on the couch start.

The TV across from them was equipped with videoconferencing gear, and Matty was there large as life on the screen. She was in the war room, with Carter and her assistant – Jack could never remember the Asian chick's name – and the director looked utterly unruffled, despite the fact that it had to be close to ten am in Los Angeles and she couldn't have slept a wink. She had a tablet in her hand, but her eyes were on her agents.

The nurse quickly took her leave, shutting the double doors quietly behind her, and once she was gone, Bozer ducked his head. "I'm sorry, I should have called you-"

"You did exactly what you should have done, by accompanying our allies to retrieve your teammate and fellow agent," Matty cut him off, not unkindly. "It's the ambassador's job to run logistics, not yours. I need the two of you to stay together until exfil gets to the Consulate, so you're exactly where you need to be."

Riley had jumped up off the couch as soon as she'd heard Matty's voice, and didn't look like she planned to get comfortable any time soon. "Matty, we have to go back –"

"It's already been taken care of." Matty's voice was velvet steel. "Agents MacGyver and Dalton will be waiting on the tarmac when the plane touches down, and you two will accompany them home."

Despite how kind Jack knew Webber was being, and how direct and factual was the only way to be kind in a situation like this, it hurt his now-cold heart to watch Riley try and fail to find some way to protest. To insist that she needed to be there. When that proved unsuccessful, she said the only other thing that could have hurt him worse.

"It was my fault," she told the television. "It was my fault, Mac tried to tell me but I-"

"Agent Davis, we'll debrief when you touch down." A little less velour, a touch more metal. Even if the consulate was American soil, the walls could – and did – have ears. "We had incomplete intelligence. Had we known that the Rossz Farkas were in the country and also after the weapons cache, the mission would have been scrubbed. From the moment you entered that hotel, there is nothing that any of you could have done differently that would have changed the outcome. I'm just grateful you're both still alive and in one piece. We've received the electronic copy of the inventory that you recovered, and Hungarian intelligence has been informed. Your exfil team will be on prem in a little under an hour. Your codeword is persimmons."

Riley subsided but did not appear comforted by Matty's words – which Jack could attest were five hundred percent accurate – and after a moment, the director took pity on the two exhausted, grief-stricken agents in front of her.

"I know it feels like you made mistakes, like you failed. But the important thing is that you kept your heads and you protected each other. Mac and Jack would be so proud of the two of you. I know I am."

"Damn right," Jack agreed solemnly.

"Rest and try to eat something. We'll have you back in Los Angeles as soon as we can."

Bozer eventually nodded, and the screen went blank. Riley wrapped her arms around herself and wandered over to the consulate window, the one overlooking the back of the property. Bozer stared after her, a hundred questions on his bruised and swollen face, but eventually, his attention turned to the cart overflowing with snacks, cheeses, lunchmeat, and spreads. He ultimately selected a bag of plain potato chips, and the sound of the bag being torn open was almost deafening in the silence that had descended on them.

"It wasn't your fault," he declared, his voice only a touch uncertain, and then he balanced the bag of chips in his sling, and popped one in his mouth.

Riley, by her window, didn't even twitch.

The chip seemed almost unreasonably crunchy, and Bozer swallowed and eyed the bag another second before he also wandered over to the window. "You weren't even there, you were somewhere else. I heard Mac tell 'em-"

"I was there," she snarled, taking both Boze and Jack by surprise. "I was standing right there, Bozer, right there when they-" She cut herself off, then went to bite her lip before wincing, and touching the glued cut with the tip of her tongue. "He tried to . . . and I couldn't even get to the gun. I just . . . I just stood there . . . I just stood there," she repeated in hollow disbelief.

Wilt wasn't sure what to do with that piece of information. He rocked back on his heels a little, as if she'd actually knocked him off balance, but he recovered quickly enough, and stared at her reflection in the glass for a long time.

"Well, at least he wasn't alone," he finally noted, his voice thick. "He told 'em if they stopped beatin' on me, he'd tell 'em where the drive was. They took him away. After that, they left me alone. Until I heard the shots . . ." He trailed off. "He did that for me. So they'd stop hittin' me."

Riley shook her head once, then quickly wiped her face. "Jack was already . . . I couldn't do anything."

"They were together, then?" Weirdly, it sounded like that made Bozer feel a little better. "I didn't know if maybe they left Jack at the hotel . . ."

Riley shook her head again. Jack resisted the almost overwhelming urge to throw his arms over both their shoulders.

"You dumb chowderheads . . . it was neither of your faults and I hope Matty makes damn sure you two know that before all's said and done."

"I can't believe he's actually . . . gone," Wilt said slowly. "I keep expectin' . . . like, I know it's stupid –"

"The door to open, and the two of them to come tearing in here like frat boys after a kegger?" Riley suggested, her voice wavering only slightly.

Oh honey, if only we could.

Wilt nodded. "Maybe it's the pain meds, but . . . when I was waitin' for you, I couldn't get into the building, all the doors were locked. There was no real good place to hide but a couple'a trash cans. These guys kept drivin' by the alley, I thought for sure they were gonna stop an' – the trash can beside me just – just caught fire. All by itself. I coulda sworn – I know it how it sounds –"

Jack found himself grinning ruefully. Damned if it didn't sound like their boy. If he hadn't watched Mac disappear with his own eyes hours before that could have happened, he would have believed it too.

"Afraid that one's just a coincidence, brother. But he woulda done it if he coulda." Knowing Mac, maybe he really had found a way to work one last miracle.

Or maybe – just maybe - he'd found a way to work his first real miracle.

Riley had been watching Bozer out of the corner of her eye as he talked, but now she turned towards him – just a little – and gave him such a long look that he started backpeddling.

"It was prolly just a cigarette butt or somethin', but the smoke ended up gettin' the fire department, and that's when I decided to head here-"

"No, I mean – I know what you mean," Riley rushed to head him off. "About . . . about it feeling like . . . they're still here."

It was enough to make Jack himself turn around and inspect the room. There was no grinning blond in it, ghost or otherwise, but he had said that he wouldn't be in a – how'd he put it? A form he could interact with.

". . . bud?" Jack asked the air, half daring to hope.

"In the – the building, I saw . . . it couldn't have been what it looked like." Riley didn't sound like she knew who she was trying to convince. "It was like . . . Jack was right there. The guy just – he, like, dropped his gun and just fell down the stairs. By himself."

The two of them let their last words hang heavy in the air, but no Mac turned up to reassure either one of them.

"If anyone could do it . . . it'd be Mac and Jack," Bozer agreed softly, then gave a half-laugh and rubbed his swollen face on his shoulder.

At least Bozer had gotten that right.

It took a little while, but the three of them pulled themselves together, and Bozer eventually even coaxed a couple potato chips into Riley. The crunch and salt seemed to remind her that she hadn't had anything to eat or drink in over twenty-four hours, and she downed a half liter of water before there was a knock on the door, and a person Jack didn't recognize gestured for them to follow.

This time, when they were led outside, it was to a three car convoy, and Jack was pretty sure he knew exactly what – or more accurately, who – was in the first car. Seeing as it was the kind of limo that was actually a hearse. When Jack tried to poke his head in to confirm it, he smashed his face right into the side of the car. No one seemed to have heard it, but Jack rubbed his smarting forehead, and then laid his hand flat on the glass of the car.

And he did it, in the same way he felt solid ground under his feet. It didn't tingle. It felt normal.

A little unnerved, Jack decided to climb into the car – and only the driver's side door was open, so he was forced to slide into the middle so as not to be seated inside the driver – and he was able to put his butt on the seat. Furthermore, it actually stayed there when the car pulled away from the consulate, and Jack was somehow able to ride with the silent driver from the consulate to the airport. He didn't dare move, didn't so much as breathe, but he kept his eyes on the rear view mirror, ensuring that Riley and Bozer's car remained behind them.

Once they hit the tarmac, he slipped out behind the driver – and the driver then rudely ducked through his chest to retrieve the clipboard Jack had apparently been sitting on – and nothing happened. Yet Jack could still reach out and rap his knuckles on the top of the car.

No one noticed.

"Okay, is anyone gonna explain the rules?" he complained aloud, kind of hoping he'd hear a familiar chuckle or scoff, but it didn't happen. Jack was left standing on the tarmac while a Phoenix tac team he actually recognized hurried Riley and Bozer aboard the jet.

Hesitantly, Jack followed. He put his bare foot on the stairwell – and it held, exactly like every other stairwell he'd encountered. He was able to get on the jet without a problem.

He also noticed that while Phoenix tac had been keeping Riley and Bozer's attention, two crates had been loaded into the baggage compartment.

Their bodies.

Maybe that was the trick. He could stick around because his body was nearby.

But that made no sense, his damn body had been in the basement and he still had only been able to land a punch here and there on the bad guys. He'd been miles from it when he'd whooped ass on the guys attacking Riley.

. . . attacking Riley . . . and attacking Boze.

His first hit had been when that goon had been about to shoot Bozer. Mac's first had been when he'd grabbed the doorframe trying to get to Riley. And poking the guy in the brain when he'd been about to shoot Riley.

And again, Jack had body-checked that guy into the doorframe trying to get line of sight on Riley and Boze, to make sure neither one had gotten shot. Mac had punched, tackled, and even disabled a damn car trying to save Boze from getting tailed and killed.

It wasn't focusing on the thing you were doing, the bad guy, the act you were trying to prevent. It had nothing to do with how angry or scared you were. It was focusing on the why you needed to do it.

You're the one who told me. Showed me, actually.

And then Jack found himself starting to laugh.

He had shown Mac how to do it. He'd shown Mac a thousand times before he'd ever kicked that gun away from the goon about to shoot Boze.

He was able to do it because he loved the person he wanted it to happen for, wanted to protect that person that he loved. And of course Mac would be a natural at that.

Jack was still smiling to himself when the captain locked down the cabin, and they started to taxi. The going up didn't feel like anything at all, his ears didn't even pop, but a little tingly feeling returned, and Jack took the seat across the aisle from Riley, and watched her settle in. Watched over her as she nodded and closed herself off to tac, to anyone who wanted anything from her, until they got the message and left her alone, there in tech hub of the plane, typing away on a laptop. Working, like she'd done after that Organization schmoe had nearly killed her.

Jack watched her keep typing, silently crying, until he just couldn't take it anymore. He was a little afraid touching the monitors might accidentally crash the plane, so he paced to the front, where Bozer had selected the bench along the side of the cabin, that Mac always claimed, and was weeping unabashedly on it, staring at nothing at all.

He could save them from gunrunners, but he couldn't save them from this. Jack sighed, then pinched the bridge of his nose, wracking his brain for some way to comfort them without scaring the shit out of them.

When he opened his eyes, he realized he could see through his own hand.

Mac was right; it didn't feel like much of anything. Just tingly. He opened and closed his hand experimentally a few times, and it still worked, but it felt . . . odd. A little like falling asleep.

He smiled a little, glancing up at the ceiling of the cabin. "You were right, dude. Big improvement over last time." Maybe the flying was taking it out of him, or maybe it was just time. Maybe all ghosts just . . . just faded away with enough time. No one said anything to him, no light appeared and certainly no Whoopi Goldberg, and Jack sighed, then took his usual seat on the jet, which was still sitting empty.

"Hope my ass doesn't fall through," he added, mostly to himself. That'd be a hell of a fall. "You don't owe me anything, big man. You just . . . you do right by him. He's special, that one. He'll take care of the rest."

Mac would keep them safe.

Jack settled into the seat, letting his skull bounce gently on the headrest, and he waited for the end.

"Jack?"

A hand settled onto his shoulder, warm and most certainly solid, and Jack opened his eyes with a shout.

Bozer, to his credit, had already been standing about as far away as he possibly could have and still touch him, and recoiled like he expected Jack to grab him and throw him across the plane. Which Jack almost did. Bozer held up both his hands placatingly.

"Whoa, it's just me-"

Behind Bozer, a slim figure in torn jeans and a Nightwish tee poked her head into view. "Would you two quit it? Mac's still trying to sleep-"

". . . not anymore," a sleepy and slightly grumpy voice floated over, from the general direction of the bench seat.

That was about the time that Jack realized Bozer was holding up both his hands. Neither one was in a sling. Also, his face wasn't swollen, and both his eyes were open.

Wide.

Jack also discovered that he was on his feet, and he held up his own hands, checking that they were empty before he let himself collapse back into his seat. Something tickled his jaw, and Jack reached up to find that it was wet. He drew his fingers back, for some reason expecting to find blood, but the liquid was perfectly clear.

And then everything else became perfectly clear.

Jack scrubbed his face quickly, clearing his throat. On the plane. He was on the plane, en route to a mission in –

In Budapest.

"You finally awake, Jack?"

Jack dropped his hands to his jeans and briskly rubbed them. "Yeah, I'm 'wake, hoss." Then he carefully stretched his tense back. "Listen, Boze –"

"Hey, gimme some creds." Bozer's voice was easy and faux offended. "I know how to wake up sleepin' badasses from bad dreams, okay? Not my first rodeo. You try wakin' up Mac here when he doesn't expect it. Number of times he put me flat on my ass, I shoulda figured out he was a spy years ago –"

Riley was watching them both curiously, finally aware that something had happened. "Is that – why the first time I walked into your house I found Mac –"

"Oh, you mean when I was showin' my bro some moves?" Bozer leapt into the world's best known and least useful fighting pose, which did not impress her in any way. Jack silently appreciated that Boze was trying to take the attention off him, and it was at least temporarily working.

"Because you were working on that movie script, and Jack and Mac had just gotten back from North Korea." It seemed like the first time she'd put that together, because Bozer looked crestfallen, and Mac appeared in the aisle, his hair askew but his eyes bright and alert.

Bozer's antics notwithstanding, he knew exactly what had happened.

"You okay, old man?" Riley turned her unimpressed look his way, not letting him off the hook, and Jack gave her a broad smile.

"You know me."

"He died," Mac announced glibly, then ran a hand through his hair, frowning when he figured out exactly how cattywampus it was. Jack gave his partner a deeply hurt look – mostly feigned – and Mac offered his trademark shrug. Bozer nodded like an old sage. Only Riley seemed to be taken by surprise.

"He . . . died," she repeated, like she hadn't heard correctly, or they were idiots.

"Yeah." Mac decided to take the seat diagonal from Jack. "Jack dies in all his dreams."

"Not all of 'em." He wasn't sure why he sounded so defensive about it.

The blond gave a tired snort. "Name five."

Jack opened his mouth to do so – and he had a really good one, about that blonde they'd met in Madagascar – before Mac realized his error, and hastily waved his hand in the air.

"I take it back. Just – take my word for it. Jack dies in his dreams. A lot."

"And you know that you're one of his peeps if you die in his dreams too," Bozer added. "How many have I died in now, Jack?"

He had to stop and think about it a second, and in that time, Riley's gaze had settled back on him. "Wait – you dream about us dying?"

"Yeah." Mac had finally won the battle with his hair – mostly. "The first time it happened to me was back in Afghanistan. He acted super weird all day, it wasn't until we were on the way back to base that I got it out of him –"

Jack fixed his partner with his best no-nonsense look. "Now that was a bad one, chief, and I didn't wanna worry you, bein' new an' all –"

"New to . . . dying in your dreams?"

Jack transferred the look to Riley. "New to the sandbox," he clarified. "Look, it just goes to show how much you three reckless chuckleheads make me worry. You see all this?" He gestured dramatically to his scalp. "You think all these grey hairs just grew themselves?"

Thee pairs of eyes blinked at him, and Jack mentally congratulated himself for effectively redirecting them. Mac wasn't the only master of that game.

It was Bozer, predictably, who responded. "They did grow themselves, Jack, and you better be grateful for it, because when they stop growin'-"

"Hey, there's no call for that," Jack cut him off. "Ain't nobody in my family ever gone bald, and I sure as hell ain't gonna be the first. Despite the three of you doin' your best to make me an egghead."

Riley gave a very unladylike snort. "Not to worry, Jack," she told him. "No one would ever accuse you of being an egghead."

He simpered at her, miming a talking puppet with his hand, and Mac gave a low chuckle as Riley rolled her eyes, and she and Bozer returned to whatever they'd been doing before he'd so spectacularly interrupted them. Mac stayed comfortably slouched in the chair diagonally across the aisle, and Jack made a face at him.

"Yeah, you're the egghead. All that hair's gonna fall out one day, 'cause'a too much thinkin'. You mark my words."

"Duly marked," Mac promised, inclining his head and taking the opportunity to attempt a second hair-taming. His next question was said in exactly the same teasing voice. "How many of us did you lose?"

Jack kept making the face at him – for appearance's sake only – but dropped his voice so no one else would overhear. "Just you and me. Boze and Riley made it out okay."

One of Mac's eyebrows twitched, but that was the only surprise he showed. "So not a nightmare, then?"

Jack chuckled humorlessly. "Hard to say." Any time he lost Mac was a nightmare. "Actually, I think you mighta become an angel, and then started a dumpster fire."

Whatever Mac had been about to ask next was paused as he tried to untangle that. ". . . an angel."

"Bona fide." Jack used his hands to mimic flapping wings. "Fire saved Boze, though, so props."

Mac completely abandoned his previous line of questioning. "I saved Boze as an angel?"

"Yeah. You were a ghost first, though." Jack had to admit, it was one of the weirder ones.

"Ghosts . . . become angels?"

Jack shrugged. "To be honest, I really ain't sure. I, uh, sorta woke up before I got to that part." And he was more than thankful to Bozer for arranging it the way he had. Jack was pretty sure his next stop wouldn't have been Heaven.

Mac made a production of propping his feet up on the seat across from him – which was right next to Jack – and getting comfortable. Jack's ears had just popped, telling him they were beginning their descent, and had about twenty or so minutes. And Mac was well aware, because after Jack just looked at him politely, he gestured impatiently.

"I gotta hear about this one from the beginning."

That was a terrible place to start. "The beginning ain't pretty."

Mac's eyes grew a little more serious. Much as he liked to tease him, Mac was well aware of how truly unsettling Jack found some of his dreams. "Tell me anyway."

Jack gusted out a sigh. "Well, it started in a basement. Chain link pen, like you'd lock a dog up in. Guess you could say it started at the end, really. The whole ambush, the fight, I don't remember it at all, just that I knew it'd happened, an' that the whole team was screwed. I was already done for, yaddah yaddah." No need to paint too detailed a picture. "You traded the enemy intelligence to get invited to the party. Said some nice things," Jack admitted, then let his expression harden. "Then you damn well lied to my face, told me Riley'd gotten away and was callin' the cavalry, even though it wasn't true."

Mac looked unrepentant. "So you . . . died at the very beginning?"

Of course he wasn't going to focus on his transgression. "Yeah, I did." Jack took a second to wonder about that. "Actually, I think even after it happened I thought it was weird, but not weird enough to clue me in . . . anyway, you got yourself shot, Ri tried but she couldn't get 'em to call you a doctor. I was prolly a ghost by then but I didn't know it, so . . . sorry."

Mac pressed his lips together in sympathy. "So then we were ghosts."

"Yep." No need to mention the details. "After I yelled at you for lyin' to me – and I really think you would, now, so if it ever comes down to it, an' I'm dying, an' you're screwed, you just give it to me straight, okay, because there's nothin' worse than lyin' to a dyin' man, nothin' –"

Mac held up a hand. "Wait, are you seriously mad at me for lying to you – in a dream?"

"Damn right I am. Because I wouldn't put it past you." Jack pointed at his eyes, then back at Mac. "I'm watchin' you, hoss."

Mac stared at him another second, then just closed his mouth with a shake of his head. Once he felt like his point was made, Jack cleared his throat and continued.

"Anyway, the gun-runner – some Romanian guy – and his lieutenant started workin' on Riles, to get her to boopity-boop the intel you gave 'em, so we –"

"Wait." Mac had his skeptical face on. "Just two guys? We were – the whole team – completely screwed . . . and there were only two bad guys?"

Jack wasn't following. "Yeah?" I mean, clearly there had been a gang, he remembered skinheads in a car later -

"Jack . . ." Mac was smiling at him in honest confusion. "There's just no way two guys could . . . could get the drop on you like that. How could we possibly not be able to take out two guys?"

Jack felt his eyebrows climbing. "You want me to tell you about this, or you just wanna poke holes in it?"

Mac leaned back and held up his hands in surrender, laughing quietly. "Sorry. Keep going."

"Thank you, I will then." Jack straightened irritably in his seat. "So you and me pulled a Swayze on 'em, got Riles and Boze out of the house, and Riley got a laptop, so." He didn't feel the need to explain that, and Mac nodded as if he was buying in again.

Of course he was. There was literally nothing Riley couldn't do if she had a laptop. That was just a fact.

"It took us a little while to figure out how 'ta . . . I called it Caspering, as in Casper-"

"The Friendly Ghost, I got it," Mac interrupted. "What kind of things could we do?"

Jack gave him a broad grin. "You, son, could do just about any damn thing you wanted. You facepalmed the Romanian dude, right were Ri'd already broken his nose, oh and then you full body tackled him a little later, which was a nice move, by the way, wish you'd try it in real life sometime-"

Mac's eyebrows had slowly been raising, but he accepted the compliment graciously.

"But my favorite hadda be when you were good and pissed, and the bad guy's goon was about to tail the Uber Bozer had just gotten into-"

" . . .the Uber . . .?"

"Now don't interrupt, it was Riley's idea and she ordered about a dozen of 'em, so it was a better plan than it sounds like," he defended, even though Riley was probably in the tech hub at the back of the plane and also, it was just a dream, "an' you were talkin' about how we could interrupt electrical whatever and so you hunkered down like Wolverine in front of the oncoming car and I dunno what you did, but that thing was totally wrecked after you were done. Bet it never started again."

Mac looked like he had more questions, so Jack pressed on. "But there was a downside. All that Casperin' used up our life energy, or souls, or whatever. You showin' off did you in." He sobered a little. "Lost ya twice in one day."

They were quiet a moment, then Mac nudged him with a foot. "It was just a dream, Jack."

"Yeah, I know." There he was, plenty alive and giving him crap about it, but that never made it hurt any less when it happened. "You'd think one day I'd learn. But you're the same Mac, you still nerd out, even in my dreams, y'know? You thought that we were able to zap the bad guys using static electricity."

Mac pursed his lips, glancing off into space for a second. "Actually," he mused, "you know, that might technically be possible . . ."

Jack blinked at him. "Really?"

Mac left his thinking face on for another few seconds, then dissolved into laughter. "No, Jack," he chuckled. "That absolutely would not work, because there are no such things as ghosts, and even if there were, they would not be able to generate static electricity because static is generated by-"

"All right all right all right, see, you're makin' my point for me, Mr. MIT." Jack slapped the foot near him, making Mac drop it back to the floor. "I dunno, though, everythin' just seems to . . to make sense when I'm in one."

The good-natured teasing vanished from Mac's face. "Well yeah. The same as with flashbacks. Soldiers report smelling gas, tasting blood, feeling pain –"

"Soldiers report?" Jack asked, quirking an eyebrow at him.

Mac held up his hands. "Can't say I have much experience, big guy."

"Can't say you don't neither." Bozer knowing exactly how to wake up a dreaming Jack Dalton proved as much.

"Fair enough. My point is, I don't doubt that it seems absolutely real and absolutely sensical in the dream."

"I didn't say I was cold –"

"No, not an ici-" Unfortunately, Mac caught on, and cut himself off with a scoff. "So when did I start – setting trash receptacles on fire?"

"Only after you evaporated," Jack told him, low and serious. "Got Boze out of a pickle while I was busy chasin' Riley all over Budapest. Then I kicked a lot of ass –"

"That sounds more like you -"

"-an' went and used up all my ammo too. Got to send the kids back home, safe and sound, and . . ." Jack spread his hands.

Mac nodded, and the pair fell quiet again. Jack glanced out the half-covered window beside him, barely making out the tarmac a few hundred feet below them through the rain clouds. Mac presumably followed his gaze.

"You ready to get this done?"

Jack snorted. "I was born ready."

"Sure you were," Mac agreed, slapping Jack's knee as he levered himself straighter in his seat. A few moments later they touched down, and after that the four of them regrouped in the tech hub as the plane taxied towards their ground transportation.

"Alright, Riley, what are we looking at?" Mac prompted, and she flashed him a grin. It was the first time he was having her run the briefing summary, and Jack treasured the little burst of pride he felt in his now-properly-beating heart.

"Intel hasn't changed. Our target is a weapons cache belonging to the Heves Torok, a group smuggling weapons through Hungary from Germany to their like-minded buddies in Egypt, Syria, and Iran. We know they receive the inventory physically from a German courier, and we think we know where the dead drop is. Bozer and I," and she raised her eyes from her tablet to her partner, getting a nod, "will hit the dead drop and recover the flash drive with the inventory. You and Jack," and she made eye contact with each of them, "will have eyes on the hotel lobby and surrounding block. We can't be sure when the courier will drop the drive, so Boze and I will hang out in the lobby disguised as millennials borrowing the free wifi, and as soon as we've got the drive, we regroup, decrypt, and securely upload to the Phoenix."

"I believe the term is, milk run," Bozer added with a beatific smile.

Mac was smiling, too, but there was something just a touch cautious under it. "Yeah, Boze, we try not to use that word in the field. You'll remember your first milk run, in Amsterdam?"

The young agent shuddered dramatically. "I really prefer not to, thanks –"

"Me too," Mac agreed. "So everyone on their toes. If you get made, bail and circle the block, and Jack will pick you up. Once I'm sure you're both clear, I'll follow suit. Comms?"

Riley offered up the box, and each agent took their custom-shaped earwig and tucked into place. Once testing was done, Mac looked at Riley expectantly, and she took the cue with only the tiniest flash of a whoopsie.

"Everyone good with the plan?"

Once she confirmed nods from them all, she glanced back at Mac, who inclined his head. "That's how it's done. Good job, that was textbook."

"Damn skippy. To the Batmobile!" Jack led the parade off the jetway and into their hunter green four-door sedan, getting settled in behind the wheel and trying to figure out where the damn windshield wiper controls were as the team piled in. Riley was their de facto navigator, and she soon had him on his way to the questionable Hotel Boheime, where all your smuggling dreams apparently came true.

The non-commercial landing strip was a little ways out of town, and their path took them through the surprisingly sprawling suburbs of Budapest. While Mac was extolling all the wonders of the city, Jack was eyeing first the houses, then the unexpected muddy park that popped up on their right. It was ridiculous, of course. He'd been to Budapest before, he must've just driven this route before –

The park gave way to another little neighborhood, then a more commercial street. They drove past a convenience mart, right on the corner, and standing right beside it, waiting on the light, was a young woman wearing a soaked-through denim jacket, with her disheveled hair piled to one side, the way Riley sometimes wore it.

Jack didn't realize he was staring until someone behind them honked, and Riley delicately cleared her throat. "One, eww, she's jailbait, and two, the light turned green like ten seconds ago."

Jack shook it off, accelerating maybe a little aggressively through the intersection. As they passed more and more buildings, buildings he'd walked past barefoot, Jack's doubt grew, and when they hit the corner with a three story stone building, clearly government and just as clearly standing empty, he couldn't take it any longer.

"New plan," he said shortly, glaring at the darkened lobby through the falling rain. "No one's splitting up. Mac and I will provide support from inside the hotel, we'll stash the car in the alley where they take deliveries."

No one else said a word; the windshield wipers got through three cycles before Mac, in the passenger seat beside him, finally glanced his way.

". . . Jack, I-"

"I'm not sendin' those two into gun-runner territory without overwatch, and if I leave you in the car, you'll just end up havin' to turn it into a missile launcher or somethin' anyway. There's plenty of traffic, gettin' a new vehicle won't be a problem." Jack glared at the administrative building until it had finally receded from the rear-view mirror, and reset his eyes on the US Consulate, which was only a block up, its American flag flying proudly over its gate.

Mac was silent in the seat beside him, just watching him, and Jack finally glanced at him, telling him without words or sign language that it was not up for debate. And after a second, Mac gave him a barely perceptible nod.

"You heard the man," he announced. "Riley, Bozer, you're still on the dead drop. Jack will be in the lobby with you, and I'll be on the door in the back."

There were quiet, confused murmurs of agreement from the back seat, and Jack gave Mac the faintest of smiles, knowing that he knew why, knowing that he didn't believe. Not in the dreams, anyway. Thanks, bud.

Mac acknowledged by turning back to his own window as they passed the consulate, but tapping his middle finger twice on his leg, their Sandbox Shorthand.

Let's do it.

-M-

FIN

-M-

So this one came from a prompt from a couple guest PMs, so whoever you are, I hope I nailed it – it as a combination of "when did Mac figure out Jack was so superstitious" and "when does Mac learn about Jack's dreams". I thought those were a lovely combination, so here we are.

I know it's not technically a first – I have plans to mention it in the sequel to Ground Rules and Decaf Coffee – but this would be the first time Riley became aware of Jack's dreams, and I thought it also nicely explains why Mac tolerates Jack's superstitions so well. Mac trusts Jack's gut in any variety of situations, and while he constantly makes fun of him for the vampires and the werewolves, I think at some point he must have noticed a correlation between Jack freaking out for no reason, and Jack freaking out for good reason.

Plus it was just fun. This was actually meant to be a little more light-hearted than it turned out, but hopefully there were enough clues and plot-holes in Jack's dream that you were able to figure it out.