Chapter Text
Chapter 1
MacGyver stood in the mall staring into a children's clothing store. Moms pushed babies in strollers, toddlers cried, and older children hid between clothes racks causing chaos when their harried parents realized they were missing. A small group of men stood in the doorway. One caught his eye and gave him a sympathetic smile. Mac took a deep breath. He had done recon missions behind the Iron Curtain that were less intimidating.
"Maybe I'll just stay out here with the other dads," he said to Betty and Michelle who were standing next to him.
"But Daddy, you promised you'd help me pick out a new dress," Michelle whined.
"You did promise her, Mac," Betty reminded firmly yet gently. "Besides, there are other fathers in the store. It won't be that bad."
MacGyver had a different opinion, but he agreed to join them...for Michelle's sake. He found it harder and harder to deny his little girl anything. She was growing up too fast and before he knew it she'd be going to the mall with friends instead of him.
The next thing he knew, he found himself standing just near a rack of clothes while Betty headed off to a different area of the store to look for a pair of shoes. Betty had already discussed this with Mac before they left home; there was a specific style of shoes Betty wanted to try and get that she had been eyeballing for a while–one she felt would be perfect with most of the clothes that Michelle already had at home.
“Daddy, I like this one!”
Mac took a look at the dress that Michelle was gently tugging from the rack. He hardly considered himself an expert on girly fashion and part of him wished Betty was here at the moment to take a look, but he could at least tell that the dress was made out of a very pretty material and… well, it looked cute. Actually, it looked like a life-sized version of something Michelle might put on one of her dolls at home…
“I think it’s nice,” Mac told her, honestly hoping that he wasn’t leading his daughter astray or that this might turn her into a fashion outcast amidst her peers at school. Then again, did girls really care about that at this age? He had no way of knowing–though if his opinion mattered, he felt that his daughter could possibly set a few fashion trends…
“Can I try it on?”
“Sure, just come over here–you know the drill.” He gently took the dress off by its hanger and guided his daughter toward the dressing room, then handed it to her just as she went inside.
“Mac!”
His head swiveled when he heard Betty calling out to him. After a moment, he could tell that she wanted him to come over to where she was for some reason–he figured their daughter would be safe enough for just a moment.
When he found Betty a couple of aisles over, he found himself grinning–then he bit down on the corner of his lip to keep from laughing. It seemed that, somehow or other, Betty had managed to become entangled with the tendrils that dangled from the sleeves of a blouse on a manikan. Her bracelet–the same one Michelle had given her for Mother’s Day–had clearly caught on it somehow–yet somehow, the sight was almost comical. If Mac didn’t know any better–due to the position of Betty’s hand and the way the manikan was poised, one would almost think the life-like plastic ‘person’ was trying to steal Betty’s jewelry.
“How did this happen?” Mac asked mildly as he came over to try and gently help her become disentangled.
“I’m not sure–I was just walking past, I sorta stumbled over something but I’m not even sure what it was–and next thing I know I’m in this ridiculous position,” Betty griped.
Between the help of a store employee holding the manikan steady and Mac using his pocket knife to cut through some of the tendrils, Betty and her bracelet were freed unscathed. Mac had to admit, at least to himself in the privacy of his mind, that part of him would never understand women’s fashion in some ways. He really couldn’t imagine Betty or even his own daughter one day wearing something like this… the dangling, elongated strings with beads on the end of them looked more like something one would find on the side of a blinder to pull it shut than anything in wearable fashion–but it didn’t surprise him. He’d actually seen weirder outfits at a fashion show once that Nikki had somehow managed to talk him into joining her on… and he’d done a double-take at one point when Nikki actually bid on something during the auction phase he never thought she’d touch in a million years.
All of a sudden, Mac froze and stared at the outfit on the plastic dummy.
“What are you doing?” Betty wanted to know, as she watched him fingering the outfit and examining it more carefully.
Instead of answering her, Mac suddenly turned to the store employee who was still standing nearby and asked urgently, “Is this blouse a standard item for your shop?”
“Well, I’m not sure–a few new things were put out on display this morning, but I’m new here so I don’t really know.”
“Did you see who put this outfit on this makikan earlier?” MacGyver pressed firmly.
“No… why?”
“Mac, what’s going on?” Betty asked.
“There’s something about this blouse–it’s not stitched together in a way that any kind of clothing that’s meant to be worn would be,” Mac quickly explained. “If you look here and here, it’s almost like someone took some scrap pieces of fabric and did just enough to make it appear like a normal blouse from a distance.” He demonstrated by tugging on it, revealing that the stitches pulled apart almost effortlessly when he pulled on the right areas.
“Couldn’t that just be the result of a defect at the factory or some kind of hand-stitching mistake?” the employee asked.
Mac shook his head. “No, if you look closely here,” he pointed at some of the tendrils that were still intact, “you can see that these tendrils appear to be mostly composed of unwaxed hemp–this stuff is not normally used in clothing–it’s normally used for things like bagpipe maintenance for tuning purposes. It’s like an adhesive that can easily wrap or knot around whatever it comes into contact with–which means,” his eyes narrowed into slits, “it was just right for tangling around that bracelet at the slightest touch.”
Both Betty and Mac exchanged a look of horror as realization dawned on them.
They wasted no time racing over to the fitting room where Mac had left Michelle. Mac yanked the curtain back, just to find the space empty and the cute little red dress lying on the floor in the dead center… with no trace of Michelle, not even any sign of struggle or anything.
“Call the police now!” Mac shouted as he got to his feet and bolted to the door. He tried to survey the area just outside, but there were so many people passing by and it was impossible to tell, especially at this point, which direction the apparent kidnapper could have gone… particularly when a decent headstart.
That was when he noticed a neatly folded piece of paper on the floor off to the right, just outside the door… like someone had carelessly dropped their shopping list or something. On a hunch, he quickly stooped down to pick it up–and then his blood froze in his veins as he read it:
Dear MacGyver,
I have your little girl.
Revenge will finally be mine.
Sincerely,
Quinn
“Quinn,” Mac snarled helplessly, his tone so fierce that the name sounded almost intelligible as it ripped its way out of his throat. If he so much as harms ONE hair on my baby girl’s head I’ll kill him…
It was only when he realized Betty was practically shouting in his ear and he felt her pulling on his arm that he noticed that the letter had been tightly crumpled in his fist. Rational thinking once again took over as he forced himself to calm down and smooth out the paper–they were going to need it as evidence.
“Quinn’s got her,” Mac managed to grate through clenched teeth. “Did you call the police?”
“The employee is doing that right now–MacGyver!” Betty clutched Mac’s more tightly, as though he were an anchor–the only thing preventing her from going into full panic mode right now. “What are we going to do? He has our child!”
Mac’s brain raced–part of him wanted to make a dash around the mall and try to locate Quinn, but it was safe to assume that the twisted sicko had already made a clean getaway. If he could somehow make it out of the store with their daughter without anyone noticing anything or the girl uttering a sound, the creep probably had a solid getaway plan in place.
“I want you to hold onto this until we get to the police station–keep it safe,” Mac instructed Betty quickly as he carefully folded the note and handed it to her. “I’m going to check around the store to see if I can find any more clues.”