The sound of a beeper going off woke Jack O'Neill out of a sound sleep. The blonde head pillowed on his chest moved and snuggled closer, but showed no sign of fully awakening. For a moment he considered ignoring the beeper and snuggling back down, going back to sleep, and maybe waking her up later for better reasons than whatever his captain had in store for him.

That was, until her beeper went off.

This time her head rose from his chest, her smiling eyes searching his out before turning into a frown.

"I thought we were both supposed to be due for a full weekend off?"

Jack laughed, the rumble of his chest causing her to bounce. "Still glad you transferred over from nights?"

"Oh, god, yes." She kissed his chest lightly. "We never got to spend time together like this when we were on different shifts."

"True." He leaned down to kiss her, her sigh as they parted making him wrap his arms around her just a bit tighter. "Guess we should call in, huh, Carter?"

"I guess so. Might as well see what wonderful events everyone else's Friday night culminated into."

Jack moved so that he was leaning against the headboard and waited until Samantha was out of bed and had retrieved her cell phone from her purse before he picked up the handset for his phone and dialed the number for the precinct.

"What's up, Hammond?"

He listened while George went through the basic details of the case, quickly getting out of bed and throwing on clothes once he realized there was no way he was going to get out of this.

"Just for the record, we do know this is my day off, right?"

"Yes, Jack," Hammond droned on, "I realize that today is your scheduled day off and I'm sure there is a lot that you would rather be doing."

"You better believe it." He muttered, glancing toward the bathroom door as Samantha emerged and closed her cell phone quietly. "I'll be there ASAP. Let Murray know." He clicked the talk button to end the conversation and flopped the phone on the bed.

"Double homicide over on North Hancock." Samantha stated as she grabbed a brush and swept her hair up into a loose pony tail.

"Same here." He leaned over and kissed her gently on the neck. "You know, we could ride over together..."

She turned, her arms threading their way around his neck. "I'd love to, but that would only complicate things."

"They're not complicated already?"

Samantha slapped his arm. "You know what I mean. If I ride in with you then I'd have to catch a ride to the lab with Daniel or Janet and then later I'd need to either wait around for you or have someone drive me here so I could get my car."

Jack smiled, "At least you're keeping some spare clothes here now. You look much sexier collecting evidence in something I didn't strip you out of the night before."

The comment earned him another slap, this one harder, while her other hand grabbing her jacket and purse. "We need to go, Jack."

Grabbing her in for a quick kiss, Jack whispered, "You know the bodies will still be there when we get there, Sam, they're not going anywhere."

The drive across town to La Petit Maison went quickly for Sam, though the rides to most of the more central 'Springs locations usually did go more quickly from Jack's house than from her own. Pulling up outside the restaurant, she saw Detectives O'Neill and Teal'c questioning some of the late night staff, while Sheppard and Mitchell secured the crime scene.

"You got here pretty quick tonight, Sam." Mitchell quipped with a smug smile as she walked by with her kit and joined Daniel over where the bodies lay.

She shrugged him off with a roll of her eyes and pulled her camera out of its case. "Get any pictures yet, Daniel?"

"Not yet; haven't quite had the stomach to pull the camera out yet." He smiled sadly in her direction. Sam loved him like a brother and they had worked together for years, but there were days when she wondered if he was really cut out for this job. Then, again, there were days she wondered if anyone really was.

She flashed several pictures before kneeling down next to the body of a woman approximately her own age. There was one thing to be said about this job, it never let you take your own mortality for granted.

"Two victims. She's on the sidewalk, a foot from the curb and he's in the middle of the street." Daniel's face frowned slightly as he stated the plainly obvious.

Standing from her position on the sidewalk, beside the woman, Sam moved to stand in the space between the two bodies. "Something's missing here. Where's the car?"

Daniel shrugged as he stood from his position next to the body of the man in the street. "Not sure. I'm assuming it wasn't here when Cam and John got to the scene. Neither one of them is stupid enough to move it."

Sam's lips pressed together in a thin line. "Well, it's a possible motive; though most carjackers don't slit their victims' throats right off."

"This guy's been stabbed at least five times. I collected some reddish hair off the body. His hair is brown."

Jack and Murray approached them and Sam gave them each a sad smile in greeting.

"So, what do we got, campers?" O'Neill quipped.

"The couple appears to have had dinner at La Petite Maison. The new coroner's assistant, a Doctor Carolyn Lam, has the male victim's wallet with the credit card receipt." Murray Teal'c, Jack's partner, added helpfully.

Jack knelt down over the male victim's body. "Poor, cheap bastard, didn't bother to valet. It saved him five bucks and cost both of them their lives." He paused as he cast a glance in the woman's direction. "Think it's a carjacking gone bad?"

"Carjackers do not typically use knives, O'Neill."

Jack raised his eyebrow and winked quickly at Sam. "You should know by now that I never rule out an option simply because it's not the typical answer, Murray."

Sam smiled shyly, looking away from Jack and the others and turning back to the bodies lying on the pavement before her. She'd wanted to come to this restaurant for a while, now it just seemed like another of the many crime scenes she'd visited. A drip fell into the pool of blood beside the woman's body and Sam sighed as she felt another land on her shoulder.

"Oh, hell." The last thing she needed tonight was to have to process a crime scene in the rain. "Come on, Daniel, there's no telling how long we have until the skies really open and every bit of evidence we haven't already collected gets washed into the gutters."

Jack stood there shaking his head. "Where the hell is Fraiser with the truck, anyway?"

Murray popped open an umbrella before responding. "Doctor Lam mentioned that she was processing another crime scene, but would be along momentarily."

By the time Janet arrived Sam had packed away her camera and the rest of the scene had been processed the best that was possible given the rushed circumstances they were working under. Each increasing drop of rain washed away what could be another vital piece of evidence; hair fibers, blood traces, possible footprints.

Janet and Carolyn, her assistant, approached the scene in a flurry of gurneys and body bags. "Sorry, got held up over on Mesa."

"At least you got here before the real rain hits, Doc." O'Neill added as he grabbed the body bag from Carolyn's hands and moved to assist her and Daniel with the preparation of the body.

Janet paused for a moment as they moved away. "Guess he's not too happy about the interruption to his nice weekend off, huh?"

Sam raised an eyebrow and tried not to blush. "Wouldn't you be? We get little enough private time as it is." Sam grabbed another body bag out of the truck and moved toward the woman on the side walk. Janet followed, as did Murray, and the rest of the loading went on in silence.

Once the bodies had been successfully loaded, Jack slammed the back door shut as Janet and Carolyn took their seats and the van started off. Sam ran a hand through her rain soaked hair, thankful that they'd been able to collect as much as they had before the brief downpour had occurred. Now, the rain was more of a steady drizzle, still annoying and possibly compromising to the crime scene, but not nearly as disastrous as it could be. Sighing once again, she turned back around and took her flashlight from her kit before walking by Jack to meet up with Daniel and see what, if anything else, they could salvage from the scene.

Tilting her flashlight along the sidewalk Sam walked up the street away from the restaurant and away from where the body of the woman had been found. Walking a few feet, Sam knelt down and picked up a cigarette butt between the tongs of her tweezers. "I guess we can't do much more than hope that the rain wouldn't have screwed up all of our chances at getting a decent DNA profile."

Daniel walked by and she was slipping it into an evidence bag. "Not sure I would even bother. You'll just waste your time processing it." As he walked away to see what else he might be able to find Sam shrugged her shoulders. "At least it's my time to waste."

Jack O'Neill was not having a good night. Being pulled out of his comfortable bed – on his night off – to have to come to a crime scene was one thing. Getting pulled out of said bed that had previously been inhabited by not only himself; but also Samantha Carter was a completely different level of wrong. Having his crime scene washed away by a momentary down pour did not top this evening off well.

"So, guys, do we have any witnesses at all?"

"It's a fairly quiet street, sir. It's Thursday, they're not all that busy unless it's a weekend. A few of the locals heard a commotion, but mostly non-descript stuff." Sheppard filled him in.

"We do have one kid that claims he got a bit of a view, sir. Says he tried to help the vic out after he was hit by a car." Cameron Mitchell stated as he leaned against the hood of his patrol car.

Jack's gaze followed the nod of Cameron's head to the figure of a young man sitting on the curb. "Guess I better go have a little chat with our 'witness', then."

Moving away from the two patrolmen Jack didn't stop until he came to stand right in front of the man. "What's your name, son?"

"Narim, Narim Simons." The man replied as he stood from his spot on the curb.

"Well, Narim. I'm Detective Jack O'Neill." Jack shined his flashlight over Narim's soaked clothing. "Is, uh, that your blood?"

"No. It's… it's his. The guy you took away. I tried to help him. I thought I was doing everything correctly. I should have known better than to interfere, but I thought I could help. Instead, I think I killed him."

Jack never liked it when stories started out this way. "What exactly did you do?"

"I was crossing the street, heading into town to get my girlfriend a present for her birthday, this SVU came outta no where. He almost clipped me. When I turned around I saw the body in the street. I freaked. I didn't remember anything. I didn't tilt his head, didn't clear his airway. I'm sure I wasn't compressing the right part of his chest…."

Jack shook his head, the kid was a mess. "If it makes you feel any better, that is not what killed the guy. Even if you had done all of that chances are he still would have bled out." He motioned for Sam to come over with a new collection kit. "Narim, I'm going to need Ms. Carter here to collect your jacket and the rest of your clothes most likely too."

"Why?"

Sam gave a reassuring smile and placed a hand on the man's arm. "Because they're covered in blood."

Narim looked down, as if in shock, before going mutely with Sam.

Rodney McKay was sitting at the table in his lab, staring through his microscope. The last thing Daniel wanted to do tonight was go into that room and have to deal with that man. But if he wanted to do his job there was no way he was going to be able to get around it.

"Hey, Rodney, how are you?"

Rodney held up his hand, as if asking for silence. "Shhhh. I'm looking at the future mother of my children here."

Daniel shook his head as he snapped on a pair of latex gloves. "Okay, if you ask me, that's beyond the first sign that someone's been putting in way too much overtime."

Rodney spun around on his lab stool. "This is serious. She's perfect. She's got the most impossible blue eyes, just… BAM! Shoulder-length blonde hair… intelligent… and she smells so amazing."

Daniel listened to the description, the sinking feeling in his stomach turning into a churning detest. "Really."

Rodney spun back to his microscope, a rather self-satisfied grin on his face. "Yes. But you know, it's what's on the inside that's really important to me. That's what I really need to know."

"So, you're interested about what's in her heart?"

"No ... her DNA ... and let me tell you - she has got some fine epithelials."

Daniel took a full second to wonder whether or not the sandwich he'd grabbed earlier was about to make a repeat appearance. "That's just… that's sick. You have officially lost it." Daniel grabbed the slide prep kick and moved about the lab prepping the slide he would need. He wanted to get the hair that they'd found at the scene analyzed as soon as possible so that he could leave.

"No, no, no. The people that charge loads of money to test your spouse's underwear for foreign DNA, those are the people that are sick. Me… I'm a romantic. And someday… someday Sam will-"

"Okay, no. I've totally heard enough." Daniel was seriously tempted to pull a Jack and put his fingers in his ears and hum, loudly.

Daniel opened the evidence bag containing the hair sample and placed it on the slide he'd prepared. Rodney noticed his movements and looked over.

"What are you doing? What have you got there?"

"We got some hair off of our male stabbing vic, a Mr. Tomin Doran."

Rodney took the slide out of Daniel's hand and exchanged it with the slide that apparently contained Sam's skin cells. "Okay, baby. What do we have here?"

"What?"

"Nine lives. The one true friend a person can have."

Daniel blinked, afraid of where Rodney might go with this. "Wait. You mean that's cat hair?"

Rodney nodded.

"Damn." Daniel shook his head and, finally, left the lab. He had been hoping that the hair would be from the killer. Now it would probably end up that the Doran's owned a cat. Or that a stray had come up to them at some point and just been extremely friendly.