By the time he got to the part of the story where the rescue team arrived, Mac's breathing was a little uneven. He could feel Jack's eyes on him but he struggled to meet them.

He'd never told the entire story of the attack on that patrol before, and he found himself wishing that he'd just reported all of it back when it happened.

He just hadn't particularly thought that the third of a day he'd spent as a captive was all that important. Well … if he was honest, and if he couldn't be honest with himself, what was the point? … He hadn't remembered all of it at the time and wasn't about to report something he could only recall vaguely.

Time, and frequent vivid dreams, solidified some of the details for him.

Jack was staring at him. Waiting.

Mac opened his mouth to go on, to finish telling the story, the part where the Mazari gave up hunting for him, assuming he was dead most likely, and had moved the other men out of the town, the part where he followed, mostly because he couldn't think of anything else to do. Then he closed it again. That happened a few more times.

Finally, Jack spoke. "So you just followed them?"

Mac glanced at Jack and flushed at little at the open admiration he saw there, and then almost backpedaled to revise his story like a kid caught in a lie, because despite the truth of everything he'd said, he could see a fair amount of disapproval beneath the surface in Jack's expression. Mac sighed. "I … yeah. I didn't know what else to do."

"Didn't think about finding help locally?" Jack asked, sounding merely curious.

Mac shrugged. "Didn't know if I could trust anyone … And we weren't so far out, I guess I sort of figured our guys were already looking. And … I knew they had the radio." He paused and half smiled at Jack's expression. Then he joked, "It made sense at the time. I mentioned the part where I'd gotten blown up, right?"

Jack didn't seem to think it was even a little funny though. "Yeah …" He paused, frowning. "Mac, why wasn't any of this in the report in your file, bud?"

Mac shrugged again. "I … I was a little foggy on the whole thing when they brought us in … And nobody believed me that there were still other guys back there. They were using it as an excuse to make a much bigger deal out of my concussion than it should have been …"

"Yeah, no big deal." This time Jack smiled a little. "Concussion, knife wound, fever, dehydration …"

"Okay, fine, so you've read the report," Mac huffed. "I was fine … or more fine than they thought I was anyway, I just … I don't know … at first I didn't think of it. Then I was just kind of desperate to get them to go back looking for Tallahassee and Big Z …"

He sighed again, this one sounding terribly tired and his shoulders slumped a little.

"After a while I just wanted it to be over and to move on to whatever was next … It was maybe a little stupid not to say anything, but I was …"

He trailed off, at a loss as to how to explain himself.

"Nineteen?" Jack said gently.

Mac snickered then. "I was gonna go with afraid I'd get in trouble, but yeah, I was still pretty green, too, I guess."

"Way back then," Jack observed wryly. Mac rolled his eyes.

"It feels like a lifetime ago," Mac sighed, not sure he wanted to admit to too much more, but deciding Jack would be pissed if he didn't and the older man found out. "I tried doing some digging on my own a couple of times, but I kept running up against dead ends."

Jack was peering at his face closely, but it didn't particularly make him self conscious at this point. This wasn't so much Jack's worried face as it was his trying to figure something out face.

"I couldn't let it go. I really did kind of think I was losing it the first time I saw one of the guys I recognized from the Mazari's camp." He looked away from Jack and then back a little sheepishly. "That's why I was still out at the cabin. Gramps wanted me to move in here, Hell he wanted to be living here when he was sick … He decided to go out there when I came back from the drug store with his medicine all freaked out one day … He thought it was PTSD and was kind of a pain in the ass about it …"

"Is anyone who wants you to look out for yourself automatically a pain in the ass?"

Mac half grinned then. "Usually … But only because it's often motivated by the conviction that I don't know how."

Jack patted him on the shoulder with affectionate exasperation. "Well, you're learnin', I'll give you that, kid."

"Anyhow, we got out of the city after it happened a couple more times. He figured I'd let it go if I wasn't reminded about it all the time."

"But you never did," Jack said, almost as a question.

Mac shrugged. "Dreams wouldn't let me, won't let me." He paused, then his shoulders squared a bit. "And now we have evidence that I was right. So … what to we do about it?"

Jack looked like he had a lot to say about that, instead he just shook his head a little. "Nothing yet, kid. I wanna talk to a friend about it first."

Mac looked like he might argue, then he just huffed a frustrated puff of breath, ran a hand through hair that was in need of a trim, and said, "Okay. Sure."

0-0-0

Mac looked at the blueprint for probably the fifth time. Something he was not accustomed to having to do. He chewed his lip for a minute. Then he decided to get a second opinion. "Hey Barry? Can you come take a look at this?" he called to one of the other lab techs.

He would have preferred Harkins, who seemed to think, mechanically any way, more like he did. But Jay was on vacation, apparently living it up at his sister's destination wedding at Disney in Florida, so one of the biotech guys was looking at his polymer project while he was gone since their organic chem chops were probably the next strongest.

"What's up, Mac?" the lab tech, who Mac thought had even more of a baby face than he did, asked, coming over almost tentatively. Mac had been a little prickly the last day or so. Barry heard that a friend of his who was out on a security job had missed a check in and the longer they went without hearing from the team, who were somewhere in the Andes (apparently a little hostile to outsiders) for an environmental study, the more intense and snappish Mac got.

"This just looks …" Mac groped for a word that encompassed how he felt about the specs and settled on, "stupid."

Barry squinted at the schematic. "I dunno Mac. Looks like an insert tab a into slot b situation to me," he hedged. Then he frowned at Mac. "Maybe you oughta take a break man. You didn't even leave to eat today … it's almost closing time. Director Thornton gets pretty intense about us office types hanging around after hours. You may have noticed," he said lightly. Barry knew Mac had personally been kicked out by the director at least once a week since he'd started here.

Mac frowned and looked at the clock. Then, he got out his phone and checked it for probably the hundredth time since Barry had come back from lunch. Still no word from Jack. Jack and the scientific expedition team that he and another guy were providing security for were pushing four days past their check-in.

Mac had been trying to be cool about it, but, after the incident of the "scrape" which Mac was about 90% certain was a bullet wound, he had some serious questions and concerns about what it was Jack actually did here. In fact, to be honest, Mac was starting to have some pretty serious questions about what "here" really was. They were working on a lot of things that didn't fit into his conception of what a scientific or humanitarian think tank did.

"Hey, Barry, would you mind shelving this for me? I want to go check in with admin."

"Still no word from your friend?" Barry asked.

Instead of answering, Mac just shook his head, grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair, folded it over one arm, and headed for the bank of elevators down the hall from his work room. He'd never gone to Director Thornton's office himself, but he knew where it was. And Markinson, the current Head of Security, had been less than useless to Mac in his increasingly frequent inquiries over the last several days.

Mac found himself more nervous than he'd ever been dealing with any CO in the Army as he approached the office of Director Patricia Thornton. There was something absolutely forbidding about the woman and her cold, dispassionate demeanor. However, his unease was tempered by the fact that he sort of liked her. He appreciated her no nonsense approach, and he was still a little impressed that she'd bothered to meet him personally when he was hired.

He was about to rap his knuckles on the frosted class when the door pulled open, startling him into stammering. "Dddirector Thornton …" Her eyes widened in surprise, but Mac thought he saw something else there, too. "I was just wondering … that is, I haven't heard from Jack … Um … Dalton … and he was supposed to be back last Friday and …"

She reached out a cool hand put it on his shoulder. "I was just about to come and find you, Mac," she said. It was in the same cool tone she always used, but there was something about her expression that was just shy of neutral.

Mac felt his stomach drop. The "scrape" went through Mac's head again. If he was really doing a job that put him in danger of bullet wounds and in a position to have to lie about them, how long a walk was it to a "scrape" right through his center mass. Jack was a helluva a shot. In a world full of them. He was about to open his mouth to try to form a question, but Thornton gave his shoulder a brief squeeze before dropping her hand back to her side gracefully.

"The research team Jack was with was attacked by one of the rebel groups that's been terrorizing Huancavelica."

"In Peru?" Mac asked, picturing the map, as well as all manner of horrible things that might mean.

"Yes," Patty replied. "Apparently they got roughed up a fair amount and Jack being Jack took the brunt of it."

"Is he okay?" Mac asked, know full well that he no longer sounded as calm as he'd been determined to when he decided to go talk to the boss.

Thornton took him by the elbow and started walking back toward the elevators, pushing the call button and continuing to fill him in as they moved through the building. "No injuries were too serious … a few cracked ribs, some abrasions, a few knife wounds requiring sutures …"

"Knife wounds? That's not serious?"

Mac hadn't meant to snap like that, but found he couldn't help it. He'd gotten himself good and stressed out over the lack of communication from a man he'd fallen back into the habit of counting on much more easily than he would have liked.

She sort of side eyed him with a small half smile. "You've known Dalton for a while now, Mac. Does that sort of thing normally slow him down much?"

Mac couldn't help smiling back a little. "I guess it doesn't. He's a next level ninja master at making everyone else's condition seem way more dire than his and ghosting on getting himself taken care of." He snickered to himself without meaning to.

"Something funny?" she asked.

"No … just one time … Nothing. I can't tell that story."

"Is it classified?" she asked pleasantly.

Mac shook his head. "Not the part I was laughing about anyway. Just … Jack would kick my ass … I mean … pardon me, ma'am, I didn't mean …"

She was vaguely amused by his sense of propriety. "No offense taken, MacGyver," she offered, keeping her amusement out of her voice. "And I'm afraid he won't be kicking anyone's ass for a week or two."

They were now walking down a long hallway that Mac recognized as the one leading to the company infirmary.

"You see, he did, for a change, seek medical care locally since their assignment wasn't over. Unfortunately the only one available was a small private facility rather than the more reliable state run institutions and he managed to contract a case of typhoid."

Mac frowned. "Are you sure?"

Thornton raised an eyebrow at him.

"I mean, is it confirmed, because typhoid is part of the standard vaccination protocol for a lot of overseas deployments in the Army and …" He caught Thornton's expression. "I know it's not a hundred percent effective, but …" There was a slight almost amused wryness to her eyes now, Mac was quite certain. "And he probably flaked on getting the booster, right?"

She stopped at the door to the infirmary. "That appears to be the case. Something we'll have to take steps about in the future for employees who travel for us, I believe."

Mac nodded. That was sensible. Especially for someone like Jack who had an uncanny ability to avoid anyone aiming remotely medicinal sharp objects in his direction. Mac almost regretted showing him how to use superglue to avoid stitches. He took the construct to ridiculous lengths a few times.

Jack often accused Mac of being worse than he was, but Mac was not, under any circumstances, going to acknowledge that they were even close in that regard. Mac asserted that he just didn't like being slowed down so he was careful how he presented himself to others if he was sick or hurt. He didn't know Bozer and Jack had already discussed why that might be behind his back.

"But he's okay?" Mac finally asked as Thornton had gone silent, sort of studying him.

"He certainly should be. He came in with his team last night, a bit feverish and miserable, but he's enough himself this evening to be pestering everyone to either find his phone or go tell you where he is and to be nagging the medical staff to let him go home."

Mac relaxed a little. A Jack who could drive anyone in scrubs nuts, or worry about where Mac was, was probably going to be fine. "Does it seem likely that they'll let him?" Mac asked as they passed through the doors. If Jack had already spent a night here, Mac shuddered to think what his reaction would be to hearing he'd be spending another one.

Thornton glanced at him. "That depends, actually." He met her eyes. "On you. How would you feel about taking him home and keeping an eye on him?"

"I'm not exactly qualified for …"

"I suggested sending one of the nursing staff home with him and even I nearly blushed at the language that elicited from our Mr. Dalton. All you need to do is what you'd normally do for a sick friend. And follow the medication and follow up schedule, sanitary procedures, and keep an eye out for concerning symptoms that they would give you the list for. You'd get to help a friend as an assignment I would consider a personal favor, and I would get to spare my nursing staff undue pain and suffering."

Mac smiled a little at that. If Jack was sick, mostly likely all he'd do would be to sleep on the couch, watch Bruce Willis movies, and whine a little. "I mean, sure, if he's really okay to leave." Mac thought for a minute, going through a mental inventory. "If he's been on antibiotic therapy for the last twenty-four hours … probably by tomorrow he'll feel quite a bit better, based on typical response times of typhoid to treatment and he should be back to normal in seven to ten days. I can keep an eye on Jack for a couple days. Wouldn't be the first time."

Thornton nodded. "Until he's cleared by the medical staff to be on his own. I very much appreciate your flexibility in your work, MacGyver. And your loyalty to your friend."

She then opened the door to a small hospital style room where Jack, looking sweaty and pale and utterly miserable was currently engaged in a losing argument with a petite pixie-ish blonde nurse with the worlds perkiest voice and smile.

Mac thought she looked downright evil, or at least diabolical. Poor Jack. He pushed his way into the room and immediately sat down in the chair next to Jack's bed. He butted into the mostly one-sided conversation the nurse was having at Jack. "Hey, pal. How you doing?"

He earned himself a glare from the pixie devil as she chose to exit the room, which he studiously ignored, preferring to focus on Jack's hangdog countenance. Jack heaved a dramatic sigh. Then he shook his head. "I've been better, bud."

"I heard," Mac said sympathetically. Mac thought Jack looked even younger than him with his dejected expression on his overly pale face, picking absently at the tape over where an IV ran into the back of his hand, looking for all the world like the universe's scruffiest kid. "The good news is, Director Thornton is going to get these guys to send you home without dragging one of the medical staff with you."

Jack's face split into an immediate grin, suddenly looking a lot less sick and miserable and a lot more like himself. "Awesome!"

Mac grinned back and shook his head. "The bad news is I've been assigned to be their proxy."

Jack didn't quite seem to catch on at first. Thornton helped him along. "Meet Nurse Mac."

Jack groaned and rolled his eyes. "Ah, c'mon, he's a worse mom than my actual mom when he thinks he's in charge of somebody!"

The director smiled the same Cheshire Cat smile Mac had noticed when he'd met her in the gym several months ago. "Maybe you should have thought of that before you argued for twenty minutes with Nurse Boyers. She's retiring this year Jack. She doesn't have the patience with her patients that she used to."

Jack managed to chuckle at that. "I think I'm a bad influence. That was almost a pun, Director Thornton."

She looked at Jack for a long moment and he actually squirmed under her gaze. Then her small smile returned. "Glad to see they haven't over medicated you this time, Jack. I appreciate you not resorting to overly familiar nicknames." She sniffed like she was actually offended. "Patty, indeed."

Jack had the decency to blush at that. "Director, I am so, so sorry. I didn't mean any disrespect …"

"Relax, Jack. I know what they prescribed you. If you'd called me Mama I wouldn't have been surprised."

Jack's eyes widened. Then Mac snorted laughter and looked a little surprised at himself. "Mama," Mac snorted almost under his breath.

The director turned and stepped into the hall at a soft tap on the door.

Jack immediately relaxed more completely now that the menacing pixie of a nurse and his boss were gone. "Mac, buddy, I'm sorry I left ya hangin'."

"I'm just glad you're okay, Jack. I was worried." Mac's face said it was more than simple worry, too. He paused, then admitted, "It's been good to have you back around again, old man."

He couldn't have said anything that would have cheered Jack more. "I know it ain't formal anymore, kid, but it's been damned nice to be watching your back again … As much as you'll let me."

Mac reached out and patted Jack's arm, wincing a little at how warm it felt. "But for the next couple of days, you let me be your overwatch, okay, pal? Typhoid is treatable, but it's still serious. And Thornton said you guys got jumped by rebels in the mountains, too? Promise me you'll take it easy, please?"

Jack frowned, like he really wanted to respond with something other than the solemn nod he gave Mac, but he held his tongue beyond, "I promise, kid."

Mac grinned and was about to ask Jack where he could find him some clothes and what he wanted to do about transportation, because Mac would rather drive his Jeep to Jack's place, but he understood if Jack didn't want to leave his father's beautiful classic car here in the parking deck, but Director Thornton leaned back into the room.

"MacGyver?"

"Yes, ma'am?" he said, managing to look just interested and not like he thought he was in trouble.

"Have you received a typhoid vaccination before?"

"Yes, ma'am," he answered with assurance. "I was part of several foreign deployments before my discharge, ma'am."

She nearly smiled. Boy Scout. Soldier. Well-brought-up boy. Whatever it was, there was an unfailing politeness and respect inherent to Angus MacGyver that was a little surprising and altogether pleasant. "How long ago was that?"

Mac frowned, thinking backward. "A while now, I guess, ma'am."

She gave a curt nod. "Emily will be in in a few minutes to give you a booster and get you all of Jack's paperwork."

Mac swallowed. "Ma'am, I'm not sure I see the point in …"

"How long ago specifically was that vaccination, Mac?" she asked.

He blinked. "A couple of years now, I guess, ma'am, but …"

"They're good for two years. And you're going to be taking care of Dalton for us, so pick a sleeve and roll it up."

Mac frowned. "But, ma'am, those vaccines take a couple of weeks to reach efficacy so I'm still not sure …"

Director Thornton raised a single eyebrow. Jack and Mac exchanged a look. It was a familiar 'oh shit' look that said they knew they'd pushed back a little too far with a superior. "Are you really trying to pull a Dalton right now, MacGyver? Because trying to avoid something this routine and reasonable is a problem worthy of consideration at your upcoming three-month performance review …"

For once Mac decided that rude was better than called on the carpet. He interrupted, "No. ma'am. No problems here, ma'am." To emphasize how very not a problem he was, Mac definitively put his folded coat down across his lap and rolled the sleeve of his t-shirt up above his bicep. "Whatever you need me to do, Director Thornton."

She just gave him an approving little smile before ducking back out the door.

Mac turned back to Jack then, his glare impressive. Jack began, "Mac, I really appreciate …"

"You owe me." He made sure Jack saw how serious he was. "Big."