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Mac switched off his cell phone as he walked out of the Phoenix building into the parking garage. He was sure that Jack, Bozer, and Riley would come looking for him—also that they’d find him. That was fine—he would want to see them eventually. But he needed some time on his own to think things through first.
He knew that his decision to quit the Phoenix would hit them all hard, and he wasn’t sure what it would do to their little family, as they had come to think of themselves.
Family wasn’t supposed to walk out on each other, a nagging inner voice told him.
Except, apparently, it was quite the pattern in his family. So—like father, like son.
Mac pushed the thought away. He wasn’t sure what the future held for him. In fact, he wasn’t sure about much of anything at all at this point. That was why he needed some time to think.
He drove his Jeep north and westwards, to a beach he knew of that was likely to be fairly deserted and wouldn’t be one of the first places his friends would look for him. The sand wasn’t all that nice, so it wasn’t frequented by tourists, and the number of strolling locals should be fairly small at this time of day. Once parked, he wandered up the narrow beach, keeping his eyes and mind on the incoming waves and the way they moved the sand, eroding it as a result of longshore drift. He could see how the jetty up the beach, off to his right, was affecting the erosion of the beach, moving the sand in an unnatural pattern.
Well, wasn’t that an appropriate symbol for his own life, he thought bitterly. He had thought he was making his own way in the world—that he had been doing so from adolescence onward. And instead there had been an unseen jetty all along in the form of his father, creating patterns and currents in his life that he had never been aware of, shifting his course invisibly but inexorably. Had any of his decisions been his own?
MIT?
Joining the army?
Obviously joining DXS hadn’t been.
Part of the problem was he had no real idea how much his father and his grandfather had been in touch. A lot more than he had thought at the time, apparently. And how much had they been in collusion? He shied from the ugly, painful word: it implied that his grandfather had been a part of the whole mess of his father’s departure and absence, working in some ways over the years to further his father’s agenda for him. Repellent and deeply hurtful as the idea seemed, it also seemed likely.
Pretty amazing—his father had not only ruined his own relationship with Mac twice over (once by leaving when Mac was ten, and now by revealing himself as Mac’s secret boss for years), but he had now also managed to undermine Mac’s memories of and sense of affection for the only other remaining family member he’d had.
That made pretty much a clean sweep of the wreckage of Mac’s childhood.
Maybe if he could remember how he had made his decisions, he could see his father’s hand in the process? Mac focused on choosing MIT for college—but his memory was pretty hazy now on just exactly why he had made that particular decision. He had wanted to get away from home, away from Mission City and its painful memories—he knew that. He had chosen MIT over Cal Tech or Stanford or UCLA or Harvey Mudd in part because it was on the east coast, not in California like so many of the other great technical schools were. It was far away and, of course, the top-of-the-line technical university. His grandfather had supported his choice—or had he helped guide it? How much had he pushed it? Had his grandfather approved it because his father had? Worse, had his father gone so far as to somehow arrange the big scholarship Mac had won? That had been a major factor in helping him make up his mind, and it had come as a big surprise. . . .
Cursing inwardly, he couldn’t help wondering if he had actually won the award on his own merit—or not.
Mac had loved his two years at MIT, before he had decided to leave and enlist. He remembered the story of his grandfather’s war buddy who had died, the story his grandfather had told him that had been at the bottom of his resolution to drop out of MIT and join the Army. Had that been a story his father had wanted his grandfather to pass on, a seed to plant in order to get that very result?
Or had Mac’s choice to enlist been unexpected? How many strings had his father pulled to affect his career in the Army? He had already admitted to hitching up Mac and Jack as EOD specialist and Overwatch back when they were in Afghanistan. Had he also made sure Peña was his EOD instructor, to be sure Mac was the one who got the best trainer—the one everyone else also wanted?
Had his father in some way been one of the reasons the Ghost had fixated on Peña and Mac? One of the reasons Peña was now dead and his daughter even more fatherless than Mac had been?
He had so many questions, and no way of answering them. His dead grandfather couldn’t tell him. And at this point he certainly didn’t trust anything his father would tell him about it. James MacGyver—Oversight—had his own agenda.
And his son was just a tool to achieve it.
Mac picked up one of the beach stones and spun it into the surf, as hard as he could. It skipped twice before plunging into the water.
His recruitment into DXS had been a sham. He hadn’t earned his way on his own merits: he was taken in because he was the director’s boy.
Come to think of it, that might also explain his difficult initial evaluation with Matty when she first joined the Phoenix. She had told him she didn’t trust his methods, that she wasn’t a big fan of improvising. Well, no wonder: she had to have been wondering how much of his success as an agent was his own and how much was due to his father’s intervention.
And wasn’t that just the ironic icing on the cake, given that, as far as Mac could tell, Oversight had never lifted a finger to help him. Hell, Oversight hadn’t interfered even when Mac had been arrested for murder, or when his team had been disavowed in Amsterdam, times when he had desperately needed help. Apparently Oversight didn’t give a damn that he was also his agent’s father.
He thought of how much time he had spent hunting his father in the past year, and his cheeks grew hot, embarrassed. What a ridiculous figure he had cut. And he had dragged poor Jack from one end of the earth to the other, quite literally, instead of letting the poor guy rest during their off time, as his hard-working partner had deserved.
Chasing false leads. Chasing memories, longings, emotional wants and needs, all wrapped up in the figure of the father who had abandoned him years ago.
Chasing a ghost.
A ghost who could set off emotional bombshells as destructive as any of the real bombs Mac’s nemesis the Ghost had devised.
Even worse than wasting Jack’s time, he had actually quarreled with Jack over his hunt too, that time in France, hurting his partner badly in the belief he needed to find his father on his own.
Memory rose in Mac’s mind like a bubble in a boiling flask of water over a Bunsen burner, popping in hot brightness: himself in a dark coat and scarf, sitting in front of a French café on a chilly afternoon with a bottle of wine open, waiting for his appointment with his father’s former professor, and Jack sitting across from him, concerned and more than a little ticked off that Mac had ditched him to come search without him. He remembered with shame how he had snapped at Jack, “Look, just because I can’t find my dad doesn’t mean I need you as a helicopter parent,” and the hurt he had seen in Jack’s eyes at Mac’s rejection. He had later apologized to Jack for that, and Jack had forgiven him. Nonetheless, it had taken a while before Jack had called him “son” or “brother” again in affection, apparently wary of trusting the depth of their emotional connection after that.
Another of the worst things about that whole hunt, looking back, were the little dreams that he had treasured in his heart, so private and precious that he couldn’t share them even with Jack or Bozer. Those fantasies were now blown all to hell. Little daydreams of finding his father—maybe in trouble, in hiding—maybe for reasons Mac could help him with. Dreams of showing his father what he had done with his life in all the years since his dad had left, showing him what he could do, all the skills he had developed. Hopes of seeing a look of pride on his father’s face as he saw, as he realized, all that Mac had become in the years since they had last been together.
Mac’s cheeks burned again at the sentimentality of the memory, despite the cool breeze off the ocean.
Reality had been quite different.
They had met for professional reasons, not personal—and only because Mac had been so full of misplaced anger at Matty that he was ready to leave the Phoenix, ready to resign. They certainly had not met because James had any desire or plan to actually see his only son.
Mac had gone to meet Oversight, not his father.
And rather than Mac helping his father, Oversight had saved Mac’s life when the gunman in the house had opened fire within seconds of them laying eyes on each other.
Afterwards, instead of the paternal pride in his accomplishments that Mac had dreamed of, he had gotten a series of complaints and critiques. Not enough gas in the car? Really, Dad? Not to mention the damned quizzes while on the mission, like he was still a ten-year-old kid instead of a Phoenix agent and team leader of several years’ standing.
As Oversight, his father had to have read all of Mac’s mission reports and debriefs—he knew what Mac was capable of.
And knowing all that, he had still treated Mac like a raw rookie, not as an experienced professional, even while claiming, in the same breath, that he was the one who brought Mac, as his son, into the profession.
Maybe a habit of pulling strings for his son had left his father unable to believe Mac was capable of anything.
Learning about the pulled strings wasn’t doing much for Mac’s own self-confidence at the moment either.
That was a big part of why he had to leave the Phoenix now, go and find another job somewhere else, somewhere very far from here. Find a job of his own, on his own, something that used the knowledge and talents that he possessed.
But, he swore to himself, now he would use them in ways very different from how he used them for Phoenix.
Someplace that needed his skills, a place where he could do some genuine good in the world.
Someplace without guns, or bombs, or any kind of violence.
Someplace warm—he’d lost his sense of romance about snow by the end of his first year at MIT. He hadn’t enjoyed the freezing winter months in Afghanistan either. Not to mention that time he and Jack had nearly gotten frostbite when stranded in Siberia. He could handle cold when he had to, but Mac knew he was a California boy at heart and he preferred it warm.
Maybe Puerto Rico? It could be nice to live near Carlos and his family. There was plenty of work that needed doing in the wake of the hurricane. And it sure was warm.
That was a possibility worth thinking about. He filed it away for the future.
And if not there, then some third world country, where it wouldn’t matter that Mac was a college dropout. While he was sure that Matty would write him a good recommendation if he needed one, it would be hard for him to land a lab or tech job in the U.S. without a college degree, even as a veteran. Not that a job at a soulless corporation with the primary goal of making money to satisfy stockholders was what he wanted to do with his life, even if he could get such a position. He wanted something practical, some real-life problems to solve that would make a difference in ordinary people’s daily lives. That was why he had left MIT for the Army, after all.
Except that decision had probably been pushed by his father via his grandfather too.
Which brought him right back to where he had started this train of thought.
He bent down to pick up another rock and threw it into the waves, not trying to skip it this time, just throwing it as far and hard as he could. It disappeared into the ocean with an audible plunk, the ripples from its entry smoothed over immediately by the incoming wave, like it had never entered the water.
Just as his father, washing over Mac in a big wave, seemed to expect to wipe out all the emotional ripples that his desertion fifteen years earlier had made.
But relationships and feelings didn’t work that way. The stone was still there, under the water, affecting the waves’ action for the next century and onwards. Mac knew that—and his father damn well ought to know it.
For so many years he had wondered if his father had left him to start a new family: some other woman, some other children, maybe some other less difficult, more satisfactory son. He had thought that would explain why his father never came back, never seemed to show any interest in him.
How ironic it was that right now that the long-feared theory seemed so much better an alternative than the reality he was stuck with.
All the adults in his life—his grandfather, his teachers, Bozer’s parents—had assured him over and over through the years that it wasn’t Mac’s fault that his father had left, that he mustn’t blame himself. Mac hadn’t been able to believe that when he was younger, especially remembering his own fury during the final argument, just before his father left, when he had spit out that he blamed his father for his mother’s death. At ten years old and as a teenager it had been so easy to believe that his own anger had driven his father away. But on reaching adulthood and taking a rational view of the situation, he had seen how such a fear had been natural for an insecure, abandoned boy, that the reality was that his father must have had a bunch of reasons for leaving, and that Mac couldn’t have been the deciding factor.
So Mac had been totally floored when his father claimed during that argument, right there in the middle of the burning lab when Mac thought both of them might die unless Jack pulled off a miracle, that he had left because of Mac.
Pacing the shoreline, Mac still couldn’t believe the man had said that, even if it were true. No truly loving parent would do that—would try to make a son, even a grown one, feel responsible for the parent’s choices and actions.
The more he thought about it, the more it looked like just a poor rationalization. His father couldn’t stand to look at him because Mac resembled his mother? So he just took off, citing “protecting” Mac from his anger as his excuse? Refusing to take responsibility for his son—refusing to love. With that cop-out excuse that he had in some way been “with” Mac from that distance, by “watching” over him, first via his grandfather, and then the Army, and then the Phoenix.
As Oversight. Yeah, right. That was his dad’s idea of parenting. His idea of being “close”: watching invisibly, entirely anonymously and unknown.
Well, his father hadn’t been “close.” He hadn’t even been close to “close.” As far as Mac was concerned, his father had just been gone. Learning about his father’s job, knowing that he had been right there in the same building Mac worked in, didn’t change that at all. All Mac had felt was his absence.
Apparently his father couldn’t even be bothered to take the elevator a few floors up or down to see his only son.
At this point, Mac thought, he would take Matty over his own father. She was at least there when he needed her for the past couple of years, acerbic but always caring if you looked at what she did instead of how she talked about it. She had proved she was willing to risk her own job for him. He remembered how, when he had hugged her in the War Room earlier after thanking her for giving him the clues to follow, she had been stiff with surprise for a moment but then had gentled and held him close, and even stroked his hair on the back of his head. For just that moment, she had felt more like a parent than his own father had yet to manage.
He thought enviously of Bozer, who was truly close with his father, and even Jack, who might have lost his father to death but at least had felt his father’s love and knew his dad hadn’t deliberately left him. For that matter, Riley’s father Elwood was doing a better job of re-entering her life than Mac’s dad was managing. Elwood at least admitted that he’d really abandoned her, that he’d hurt her, and that he wanted to make it up to her. Mac was glad for Riley that she had been able to start forging a new relationship with her dad, but he couldn’t see himself doing the same with his own father now.
Hell, even Murdoc was a better father to Cassian. Mac remembered Murdoc telling him, down in that clammy basement where he’d been handcuffed to that chair, “The difference is that Cassian’s father is looking for him as we speak, while your daddy doesn’t seem to want anything to do with you.” What had really gotten Mac’s goat at the time was knowing Murdoc might be right. For that matter, knowing now that his father had been head of the Phoenix the entire time Mac had been an agent there and hadn’t once made contact until Mac had unknowingly forced the issue meant that Murdoc had been right, an idea which was way past irritating.
Plus, how sick was it that Mac could envy Cassian for anything to do with Murdoc, but especially for Murdoc’s attention to his son?
Not to mention that James MacGyver wasn’t doing a particularly good job of integrating back into his son’s life now. Mac distinctly remembered his father saying, as they looked into the cartel compound, that Mac deserved answers to all his questions and that once they had taken out Walsh they could “sit down and have a long overdue father-son chat.” Except that hadn’t happened—although it could have. As far as Mac could tell, his father had decided that the argument they’d had in the burning lab counted as that “chat.” When they had made it to exfil and climbed into the plane, his dad had settled into a seat and slipped almost straight into sleep—for the entire trip home. Granted, they all had been running on fumes to get through the mission by the end, but Mac had thought that he’d have his dad to himself on that trip home. Jack would have given them space for that.
But there hadn’t been any need for Jack to do that. Too wired to sleep himself, Mac had just stared out the window at the sky and the earth far below, with occasional glances over at his soundly sleeping father, all the time aware of Jack watching of both of them with considerable concern.
And then once they were all back at the Phoenix, his father had asked if Mac had changed his mind and was planning to stay: “So do you want to work with me or not?” And he had asked it with such cheerful confidence, as if Mac couldn’t possibly really think of doing anything else but playing fetch at his master’s bidding.
So it really hadn’t been at all hard at that point to say no.
He didn’t trust his father. Not one bit.
He had finally realized that the people he really loved were the ones he trusted—that they were his real family: Bozer. Riley. Matty. Jack.
Not some empty dream of a man who was supposed to love him, but didn’t.
At least he had told Jack that the only family he needed had been right in front of him all along. Jack would know that had meant him. Mac had meant it both because it was true and partly as an apology to his partner—because he had wronged Jack in so many ways, including one that Jack didn’t even know about—and that Mac intended to keep private. And that secret injury was very much his father’s fault.
The very memory of what he had done hurt Mac’s conscience deeply. He had been standing there on the side of the road just minutes after meeting his father, siphoning off gas from the car of the man who had just tried to kill both of them, when his dad casually revealed that his grandfather had known where he was all those years he had been gone. It had felt like having the rug yanked out from under him. Harry had never told Mac that. Never passed on any messages, never told him his dad was okay … just nothing. Harry had betrayed him almost as much as James had. Mac’s fist clenched at the thought. And then suddenly Jack had appeared out of nowhere, driving up in his car, and Mac couldn’t think, couldn’t figure out how his partner could possibly know how to find him … all he could think was that somehow Jack had also been in on the whole secret all along.
It was as though the very ground beneath his feet had crumbled away, leaving him in free fall.
Reeling from the mere idea, he had even put it in words to his father: “Jack—does he know too?” and then rounded on Jack, asking him aggressively, “What are you doing here?!”
Jack hadn’t even had a chance to answer. Nor had Mac been reassured by how his father had taken over the situation, interrupting Jack to say he was sure Riley had tracked Mac down. Because it had all sounded just too pat, just too much like Oversight giving cover to an agent, coming up with a story to fit the circumstances and smooth over the problem so the unwitting civilian wouldn’t notice.
Mac would be the one playing the role of unwitting civilian right then, of course, the very idea of which had raised his hackles further in suspicion of both his father and his partner. Just how much and for how long had he been made to play the fool to them?
Poor Jack had been puzzled by the situation and the exchange, but especially by Mac’s open hostility toward him. But Mac hadn’t been able to immediately put aside his suspicion because everything Jack said would be exactly what he would say if Mac’s suspicions had been true.
It was only when Mac saw Jack’s face change as his partner jerked back the hand back he had extended to Oversight, right at the moment when Mac added that Oversight was his dad, that Mac had felt any kind of faith that his betrayal by his father and grandfather didn’t extend to his partner.
Jack’s obvious and immediate dislike of his father had been immensely reassuring, like getting a firm hand to hold onto, one that stopped his fall. Jack had kept it up through the whole mission to Mexico, needling James as only Jack could—but also encouraging Mac to take some steps forward, to try to get to know his father.
Because ultimately Jack believed in the importance of family—and that it would be good for Mac to get reacquainted with his father.
Well, that hadn’t worked out very well.
Not to mention that both of them were alive only because of Jack’s quick thinking in getting both MacGyvers out of that lab where their relationship was burning up as fast in that fight as the building itself was around them.
But the fact remained that Mac had actually suspected Jack of duplicity—not the kind that was part of a practical joke, but the real kind, the serious playing-for-the-other-team kind. Even if that other team was Mac’s own father. That ate at Mac, deeply—the idea that he could suspect Jack, who wore his heart on his sleeve, of any kind of real betrayal. That he could feel that level of paranoia over his partner.
He was the one who had betrayed Jack, by thinking that, even for a short time. And he didn’t want Jack ever to know he could do that—and had in fact done it.
It felt as though somehow his relationship with Jack had been somehow polluted by the treachery James MacGyver had experienced from his partner, Jonah Walsh.
Mac didn’t like the person he was becoming as a result of contacting his father: someone full of envy, suspicion, paranoia, and deep, deep anger. He wasn’t going to infect Jack or Riley or Bozer with this darkness. That was reason enough to leave.
He would protect them from himself by going somewhere else, somewhere far away, where he could work out the anger, balance the bad by doing some good for other people, and find himself—find the person he wanted to be.
He pulled out his phone and switched it on. Messages from his worried friends immediately lit it up. He estimated he had about fifteen seconds before whatever software Riley had watching for him had notified her where he was, and Jack or Bozer called him—whoever had won the argument about which one should be first.
It was time to go: first to his grandfather’s house, to pack and say goodbye.
Then on into the world. On his own—for real, this time.