In the first 5 episodes of Mac, as a writer I've kept him on a short moral leash. He was always pulling savagely against the restraints, but he stayed in bounds. In this episode, Mac is off the leash. To protect his heart and his psychic, Mac has to let go, and that includes letting go of Eddy and all the feelings he has for her. If he approaches her rescue any other way, he will not survive the fallout of something happening to her. This is possibly the last story in the series. But never a cliff hanger. The MAC series can be read in any order, but you might prefer the order in which they were written.