Okay! Let's see how the rest of this story plays out, shall we? :D

I don't own these characters

"Mac, you should have called someone," Jack repeated for the umpteenth time, sounding just as grouchy as he had the previous times.

"Next time an assassin shows up at my door and threatens to kill anyone I call for help, I'll be sure to quickly call my best friend," Mac shot back.

"I'm just sayin', things could have been a lot worse if Murdoc hadn't called us," Jack stated. "Why did he do that, anyway?"

"I honestly have no idea," Mac said. "If I had to hazard a guess though, it would be because of Carter. He wanted his son to be able to get out alive, even if that meant letting me go for another day."

Jack's mouth pressed into a thin line, but he didn't say anything else to his young friend, at least in ways of berating him. He'd gotten an earful from Matty, as well as the many chewings out Jack had given him, and the older man decided to give the poor agent a bit of a reprieve.

A few minutes of silence went by before Jack finally pulled his car up in front of MacGyver's house. "Are you sure you don't want me to stay overnight?" Jack asked as he put his car into park, turning to look at his friend.

"I'm sure, Jack," MacGyver said, moving gingerly to open his car door. His scuffle with HIT had left him more sore than he'd been in a while, and the only thing he could think of was the nice hot shower waiting for him inside. "Besides, Bozer's on his way back from Mission City, because someone had to go and call him and let him know what was going on," he said, pausing for a brief moment to stare Jack in the face.

"'M not gonna apologize for it," Jack said, crossing his arms and returning Mac's stare with equal intensity. "I don't like the idea of you being here alone," he added. "Just let me stay here until Bozer gets here," he persisted. "It's gonna be a few hours at least, and if you don't let me stay, you know I'm just gonna be blowin' up your phone with texts all night long," he warned. Mac had stopped moving, with his hand on the car door handle as he finally rolled his eyes.

"Fine," he relented. Jack's eyes gleamed in triumph, but Mac held one of his hands up. "I'm going inside, and I'm going to take a shower and get out of these clothes though," he said. "You can come back in an hour; I don't care if you bring food, or a movie, or whatever, but for the next hour, I just want to be alone," he insisted.

Jack looked like he wanted to argue, but he knew Mac. This was his version of Deal or No Deal, and Jack wasn't about to mess it up. "Deal," he said. "I'll be back here in one hour, and you'd better prepare yourself for a movie marathon," he said, waggling his eyebrows. Mac rolled his eyes again, but a smile had come to rest on his face as he opened the car door.

"Okay, see ya in an hour," he said, patting the car door where the window would usually be, if it were rolled up.

"See ya, bud," Jack said as he put the car into drive and backed out onto the road. Mac shook his head with a chuckle as he walked slowly up to his front door.

As he stood in the hot shower, the warm water gently massaging his sore muscles, the blond thought about the day and its events.

After the Foundation showed up, the rest of the HIT members had been rounded up from where they'd been taken out by Murdoc. Carter had clung to Mac like his life still depended on it, until a woman who identified herself as the boy's mother had arrived, hysterical and in tears and she clung to her child. Phoenix confirmed that it was indeed Carter's mother, and when he got the OK, Mac had given the little boy over to the woman, making both of them cry even harder.

MacGyver was slightly confused when he saw the woman; she didn't look like someone who used to be with a psychopath, which led Mac to wonder about Murdoc's past. Had he always been as crazy as he was now? How had the man gotten into the assassination business? What had driven him to become the way he was? What did Carter's mother think of her previous lover? Did she know what he'd become? Did she even know he was alive?

MacGyver shook himself out of his Murdoc train of thought and went back to events of the day. After Carter had been given back to his mother, Mac had been taken back to the Foundation and debriefed on the whole situation. That had taken up the rest of the day, and by the time he and Jack had climbed into Jack's Shelby, the sun was setting. Thankfully, before his debriefing, he'd been allowed to at least wash the dried blood off his face, so that helped him feel more human.

Phoenix medical staff had also checked him over, and besides a few mild cuts and bruises, the worst thing he would be suffering from would be a sore shoulder, as well as a headache. None of his ribs had even cracked, for which MacGyver was grateful. Several of those kicks to his chest had been hard enough he was worried about broken ribs.

Finally feeling a little more human than he had a few minutes prior, Mac turned off the hot water and stepped out of the shower, wrapping a towel around his waist. He wiped some of the condensation off the mirror and examined his torso and face, which were peppered with bruises both large and small. Mac winced as he prodded at one of the purple spots. Yup. Pain receptors still working, idiot, he thought to himself, wondering why on earth he'd felt the urge to poke the bruise.

As he dried himself off, Mac couldn't help his mind wandering back to the murdering psychopath. He didn't know how Murdoc had gotten away so cleanly. When Mac had told Matty and Jack that Murdoc had been there, they'd immediately sent a team to cover the grounds, but unsurprisingly, their search came up empty. The blond shook his head, deciding to forget about the assassin for the time being. There were people out there searching for Murdoc, and Mac knew they were more than capable of doing their job. Letting it go though was almost as difficult as giving up the search for Nikki had been.

"Snap out of it, Mac," he muttered to himself as he slipped on some comfortable sweatpants a a t-shirt before he exited the bathroom. A quick glance at the clock let him know that he still had about forty minutes before Jack came back, and even though the older man was more than likely going to come back with food, Mac wandered into the kitchen. He flipped the switch on the wall, and unlike earlier when he'd done it, this time the lights actually turned on on the first try.

Something wasn't quite sitting right with him, but it wasn't until he walked towards the pantry to grab a snack that he realized what it was. There was something sitting on the table that definitely hadn't been there when he'd gotten home.

It was a glass of water, placed next to a note that had been folded in half. A tingle went up Mac's spine, and he immediately whirled, paranoia setting in as he scoured every inch of the house within eyesight that he could. He didn't see anything, but he knew that that didn't mean anything. He grabbed the closest thing to him, which happened to be a broom, and he began wandering around the house.

Upon hindsight, he figured it would have been a better idea to grab a knife from the cutting block, especially if Murdoc was still in the house, but he knew he didn't have time to run back to the kitchen to grab the better weapon. If Murdoc was still in the house and wanted MacGyver dead, the blond would be dead already.

After thoroughly searching each room in the house, as well as scouring the living room and the bathrooms twice, Mac finally concluded that the murderer wasn't actually inside the house anymore. He cautiously made his way back towards the kitchen table that the note was sitting on, and he picked it up by the very corner, letting gravity unfold it for him.

Angus,

Now that you've finished searching your house for me and found that I am indeed no longer inside, please read this note carefully. First, drink the water. It's important to stay hydrated while recovering from the beating that you received today. Second; you are one out of two people that I have ever said this to, so feel special, because you are.

Thank you.

I am in your debt for your help getting my son back. Payment of this debt will come, and then it will be back to me, you, and the game of life and death. I will win, Angus.

Expect to hear from me soon.

P.S. Drink the water. I promise it's not poisoned.

The note ended there, and MacGyver looked at the glass of water sitting on the table, condensation dripping down from the glass onto the table. Mac didn't trust the hit man one bit, so he picked up the glass and dumped the water in the sink, then set the glass aside to have it taken to the lab and tested for any sort of poisonous compounds. He didn't actually think that Murdoc had poisoned his water; it wasn't the man's style, but Mac would rather be safe than sorry.

Once he had dumped the water out though, he did indeed reach up and get a cup out from the cupboard and filled it with water, drinking the cool liquid. The blond glanced at the clock and realized that searching his house and subsequent reading of the note that he had left unfolded on the table, it had taken up most of the rest of his hour; Jack would be back in roughly ten minutes.

Even though Mac was still creeped out by the fact that Murdoc had been in his house while he was showering, he walked to the pantry and grabbed a granola bar from a box, unwrapping it and taking a bite.

Five minutes earlier than expected, Mac heard the rumble of Jack's Shelby pull into the driveway, and the older agent hopped out, DVDs in one hand and a pizza box in the other. Mac walked over and opened the door for his friend.

"I thought you said an hour," Mac joked as he took the pizza box from Jack.

"Maybe the clock in my car is fast," Jack retorted, though both he and Mac knew that it wasn't. "Anything exciting happen while I was gone?" Jack asked.

Mac's eyes darted over to the kitchen table, and Jack followed his gaze. His eyes narrowed as he saw the note on the table, and he stalked over to the kitchen, dumping the DVD's on the couch as he passed by. He reached the table and picked up the note by the corner, just like his friend had done, and when he read the words on the page, he let out a growl.

"That creep was in your house?" he asked angrily.

"I guess," Mac said with a shrug, though he was much more creeped out than he was letting on.

"Wait," Jack said, reading the last line of the note over again. "You didn't drink the water, did you?!" he asked incredulously, glancing over at the empty glass.

"Jack, do you think I'm an idiot?" Mac asked sarcastically. "No, I didn't drink the water. I dumped the water out, and I'm gonna take it into the Foundation tomorrow to have them test it for anything out of the ordinary."

"Good," Jack said. "I mean, no I don't think you're an idiot, but you also took a couple hits to the head and I didn't know if you'd just spaced who you were dealing with."

"Believe me, I'd never be that spacey," Mac assured his friend. Jack looked back at the note. "I guess we need to call it in, huh?" Mac asked as they both looked at the piece of paper.

"Probably. Matty would skin us alive if she found out we didn't contact her," Jack agreed, pulling out his phone. He hit Matty's contact number, and after a few rings, their boss answered.

"Dalton, you'd better not be calling to tell me that you've lost Mac after only an hour on babysitting duty," she said in lieu of a 'hello.'

"Hi Matty, I'm right here," Mac greeted with a chuckle.

"Good," Matty said, not sounding sorry at all for referring to Mac needing babysitting. "Then why are you calling me?"

"Murdoc paid Mac another little visit tonight," Jack answered. The two agents could almost feel Matty's tension as she finally responded.

"You saw him? Are you okay, Mac?" she asked. "Did you catch him?"

"No, I didn't see him, and that means that no, we didn't catch him. He left me a note on my counter. I was in the shower when he was here. I cleared the house as soon as I realized he had been in here, but he was long gone by the time I started searching."

"You say he left you a note?" Matty clarified. "What does it say?"

Mac read the note to his boss, and when he was finished, the two of them waited for Matty to say something. It took her several moments, and when she spoke, she sounded like she was chewing on her words. Or maybe it was her cheek.

"There's nothing you can do about it now," she finally said. "I'll send a team over to double check the place, but for now, I think what Mac needs is rest," she said. "Bring the note into work tomorrow, and we'll discuss what to do from there. Jack, no movie marathons," she cautioned. "I'll see you both tomorrow."

With that, the phone call was ended, and Jack looked at his friend. "I mean, we're not actually gonna listen to her about the no movie marathon, are we?" he asked. Mac chuckled and shook his head.

"Honestly, I don't feel much like sleeping right now," he admitted. "So yeah. Movie marathon sounds good to me," he agreed. Jack grinned and got to work getting the movie all set up, while Mac broke into the pizza box.

Lately I've been working on my stress levels, and how I worry about things more than is needed. Yes, Murdoc is still out there, and while we will catch him again one day, I know it's not going to be tonight. He is a deranged psychopath that needs to be taken care of, but honestly, a strange part of me believes the part of the note that said he owed me. So I think it's okay to sit back and just enjoy a few movies with Jack tonight, and worry about catching Murdoc tomorrow.

Sooooo? Thoughts? Love it? Like it? Hate it? Never want to see me write for the MacGyver fandom again? ;)

Lemme know whatcha think, and I'll see you next time, whether that be in a Spider-Man story, or a Mac story! :D