Part 4

"What? How can you tell?" MacGyver asked, frantically searching the rearview mirror for signs of their tail, but all he could see was the road and the deep forest surrounding it.

"Wait! I have an idea!" Ashton cried. "Murdoc probably knows that we would plan on going to that cabin, so he might just be following the directions to go there. Once we get to the next fork in the road, turn off all of the lights and pull over into a dark area. See if he hesitates or if he is just using directions to get the safe house."

It made sense, so when they came upon the next bend, they did just that. Murdoc sped right past them, confidently turning left and heading for the 'safe' house.

"What's Phoenix's code for that cabin?" Ashton asked Pete, watching the black SUV fade into the distance.

"I think that it's… M-7." Ashton recognized the code from one of the files that she had read a few months prior.

MacGyver was catching on, too. "Pete, didn't you say that no one's been up there in months, say, to maybe check for psychotic assassins setting traps for marked Phoenix operatives?"

Pete sighed. "Well, we can't go back there. We don't know how many or which of the safe houses that madman knows about."

"I've got a place that I know he doesn't know about," Ashton offered. "You guys like roughing it in the woods, right?" Both men in the front turned to look at her at the same time. If the situation hadn't been so serious, she would have laughed.

"Lead the way," Pete said.


Two hours later, MacGyver found himself driving down one of the most rural, country roads he had ever seen. It was barely even a road, really. As instructed, he stopped next to a large, triangular rock on the side of the road, trying his best to shield the jeep at least a little behind the boulder from any cars that might come up the "road" after them.

Ashton removed a flashlight from the backpack that she had been toting around through the whole ordeal and hoisted one strap onto her shoulder. "It's all on foot from here." She turned on the flashlight with a satisfying click and found the discrete path that she had traveled hundreds of times. The deep, dark woods ahead of them looked ominous, but she felt relief knowing that she was about to be home.

It took a little over ten minutes to get to the end of the path, MacGyver looked up from the ground in front of him for the first time and saw a rough, rustic, peaceful-looking cabin standing and welcoming them inside. A small stream of smoke poured out of the chimney in the corner, and he thought longingly of a warm shelter from the middle-of-the-night freeze. His gaze fell on the windows, which threw what looked like candlelight out onto the porch.

Ashton had already reached the front door and placed her hand on the knob when he saw a figure in a black trench coat appear for a moment in one of the windows, then disappear just as quickly.

"Wait," he whispered, reaching out and putting a hand on Ashton's shoulder to stop her from going inside. She whirled around to face him, surprise all over her face. "Someone's in there."

It took her a moment to figure out what he was talking about. Then she smiled and sighed with relief. "That's just Charlie. We, uh, live here together." She turned back to the door and pushed it open.

"ASH!" Charlie cried from inside the house, flinging his arms around her and pulling her into a tight hug. He had short, curly blond hair and forest-green eyes, and he looked to be the same age as Ashton. His black coat blew behind him in the wind from the open door. "How did you get back so quickly? You said you were gonna be gone for, like, a month!"

"I said three days to one week, actually," Ashton quipped, smiling at her best friend. She walked inside, throwing her bag onto a shelf and beckoning the two adults inside.

Ashton grinned as she watched MacGyver and Pete admire her home. "What do you think?" she asked, holding out her arms like she was giving a presentation.

MacGyver looked around in awe at the small but beautiful cabin. Part of him had always wanted to live in a place like this. He closed the door behind him, turned around, and took note of its homey furnishings. Two beds with rumpled, worn quilts and washed-out, pastel pillows sat in one corner with a simple nightstand in between. There was a CD player sitting on top of it that had been rigged up to a car battery instead of an electrical outlet, which the cabin seemed to be entirely devoid of. The furniture was all made of some type of natural-looking wood. A large square table sat in the other corner, with four chairs around it. Two of them were pushed together, and there was a dirty plate in front of one. A lantern sat on the middle of the table, with a lumpy, tilted, light-pink candle burning inside. Shelves and cabinets adorned the walls as well. Some held books or dishes, and one held a small music collection. A few feet away from the beds, there was a small fireplace with a pleasant fire burning merrily inside and a bubbling pot hanging over it.

"It's gorgeous," MacGyver said. "Do you live here?"

"For the past year and a half," she answered. "We built it ourselves. That's why there's no...electricity...or...plumbing..." she continued, and she chuckled. "Make yourselves at home. You can have the beds. Charlie and I'll figure something out. I think that we have two old extra mattresses somewhere around here."


A few moments later, the four of them sat down at the table, Charlie taking the seat with the plate, Ashton in the seat next to him, and Mac and Pete across from them.

"So," MacGyver began cautiously, "What's really goin' on?"

Charlie sat back in his chair. "Get ready for it."

Ashton glanced at him sideways. "He's right. It's kind of a...long story, so make yourselves comfortable. I'm going to have to go pretty far back to explain this."


Thank you all so much for sticking with me so far! I promise some of the questions will be answered soon! Until then, I'd love to hear what everyone thinks. A special thank you to fellow original MacGyver fan and fanfic writer Uniquelyjas for her support! (Make sure to check out some of her stories!)