Runaway

Part 1

The houseboat came into view slowly. MacGyver breathed a sigh of relief he hadn't realized he had been holding when he parked his jeep at the marina. After two weeks in Madagascar that had quickly gone from helping implement a new botanical conservation program to fighting for his life from a crime ring that he had accidentally uncovered evidence against and breaking his arm in the process, he felt as though he could have fallen asleep in the jeep.

But then he noticed that something was definitely off about the houseboat's lights – particularly, the fact that they were on.

MacGyver cautiously climbed out of the jeep, glancing at the other cars, but he didn't see any vehicles that weren't usually parked there. Leaving his bags in the trunk with a plan to bring them inside after he had checked out the house, he locked the car and quietly walked down the dock, towards his front door. He peered inside the front door, expecting to find either some battle-hardened criminal or an accidentally-left-on light switch, but the person standing over his kitchen island making a sandwich was neither.

There was a young girl standing in his house. She couldn't have been older than 15.

She looked up as MacGyver unlocked the door, her braid falling over her shoulder again. She blinked.

"You wouldn't happen to be MacGyver, would you?" she asked, her voice quiet but strong.

"I—yeah. And, uh, what would your name happen to be?" He replied, staring oddly at her and not even trying to hide his shock.

"Ashton," she said simply, brushing a strand of her brown hair behind her ear with one hand and holding out one of the two sandwiches she had made to him with the other. Then she went on, "It was my aunt's name, too." When MacGyver hesitated for a moment, she nodded towards the sandwich and said, "You can take it; it's vegetarian."

MacGyver took the sandwich.

"How did you get in?" he asked, glancing at the door and then pulling out a plate to set the sandwich on.

Ashton brandished two oddly-bent paperclips that she had tucked onto her belt, looking sheepish. "I picked the lock."

"Ah." MacGyver said, mentally making a note to himself to look into a safer home-security system. "Would you mind telling me what's going on?"

For the first time, Ashton stopped smiling and her face grew serious. "I came to warn you. Someone's going to-" She stopped suddenly, as though she had heard something. He noticed a faint splashing sound coming from outside. "They're already here," she whispered, panicked. "Stay out of sight of the doors and windows. Hide. Try to find something to fight with. I'll go upstairs and try to distract him. If I can't, I'll just… figure something out." The mysterious girl whipped around and ran up the stairs, two at a time.

MacGyver stared after her for a moment, processing what she had said. What was she doing here? Who was she, really? What the heck was even going on? He contemplated following her for a moment, but heard footsteps coming from just outside the boat. He quickly moved closer to the wall, toward the bag with his hockey gear, and picked up one of his hockey sticks. Holding it like a baseball bat, albeit an awkward, one-handed grip due to his injured arm, he wondered what the kid was trying to do and wished that he had a clue what was happening.

Ashton looked down through the window and saw the man, his form shrouded from head to toe in a black trench coat. Her eyes darted around the room, trying to find something that would work. She grabbed a dusty tennis ball that had rolled into a corner and been forgotten, slid open the window, and chucked it at the deck of one of the empty neighboring boats, then practically threw herself back inside the room in case he figured out the real source of the noise. She heard the impact of the ball on hard floor and a satisfyingly loud clunking, but she didn't see the man stop and turn toward the other boat. She didn't hear the man mutter, "Ah, MacGyver, there you are, trying to fool me again!" and didn't see him turn back again and continue walking toward the door.

She didn't hear his creepy laugh, either. But MacGyver sure did. The man's laugh sent a spine-tingling shiver through Mac, and his grip around the hockey stick tightened until his knuckles turned as pale as his face had become. He knew Murdoc's laugh only too well.