What A Tangled Web We Weave…
Daniel pulled up outside Sam's house, parked alongside the curb and shut off his car. Gathering the paper bags full of groceries and Sam's prescription, he decided his hands were full enough right now; he'd come back for his overnight bag later. With a little effort and a whole lot of contorting, he managed to open the door, push it open and climb out of the vehicle without squishing anything too badly. He closed the car door with his hip before turning and making his way up to the front door, tucking his chin down when the late autumn breeze picked up and managed to work its way under the collar of his jacket. He had to look over the top of his glasses to see where he was going, making the world fuzzy and more than a little out of focus, but he'd been to Sam's house so many times that he could navigate the uneven walkway stones from memory and managed to avoid tripping on any of them. As he got closer to the house, the exterior slowly slid into focus and he realized that the front door was slightly ajar. Daniel blinked once, checking that his eyes weren't playing tricks on him and when he opened them again, his heart constricted and a ball of dread formed in the pit of his stomach.
Setting the paper bags on the lawn, Daniel turned and hurried back to his car, glancing over his shoulder every few steps. When he arrived, he made a point of positioning his body behind the passenger door and the meager cover it provided. Reaching into the glove compartment, Daniel removed the weapon he'd gotten into the habit of storing there whenever he left the house. Years ago, when Jack had first started insisting that Daniel never leave his house unarmed, the archaeologist had loathed the routine, but now he was grateful the gun was there.
Daniel loaded the weapon with one of the clips he kept in his jacket pocket at all times before he slammed the car door shut. Although he was armed now, he didn't feel any better about the situation or about being caught out in the open, the expanse of lawn he had to cross in order to get to the house offering him nothing in the way of cover. Jogging back up to the walkway, Daniel shouldered the front door open and stepped inside, sweeping the gun around the room. As his eyes raked over the front hall, he took note of the paper bag lying on the floor and the deactivated security system, his dread growing with each passing second.
"Sam?" he called loudly, his ears straining to pick up any hint of sound in the silent house.
Not hearing anything but the blood pounding in his ears, Daniel slowly and carefully made his way through the main level, clearing it one room at a time. He wished the floor plan was more open; the many rooms connected by narrow hallways complicated his search. When his sweep of the main floor turned up nothing, he worked his way upstairs cautiously. From one room to the next, he failed to find any trace of either Sam or an intruder, yet he followed the training the SGC had drilled into him and went through each room before turning his attention to the attic. When the uppermost level of the house also failed to turn up anything, he whipped out his cell phone and called Jack.
"O'Neill," his friend answered brusquely, picking up on the first ring. It was a sure sign that he had been confined to his desk until his paperwork was finished and was already bored out of his mind. Although his news would get the older man a free pass out of his office, Daniel knew Jack would prefer the paperwork to what was to come.
"Something's happened to Sam," Daniel stated matter of factly. His voice sounded much calmer than he felt, his heart racing as his mind presented him with a thousand possible explanations for Sam's disappearance, each worst than the last. Making his way back outside as he spoke, he explained: "The front door was open when I got here and she's not in the house."
"The alarm didn't go off," Jack argued, even as he was no doubt checking his cell phone, just to make sure. The alarm system had been installed over the summer after someone – most likely the NID, though they'd never been able to prove it – had broken into Sam's house and spray painted threats on the walls. As an added security measure, the system had been set up to send alerts to Jack's cell phone and General Hammond's office line whenever the alarm was triggered.
"It's deactivated," Daniel informed him, stepping outside and blinking against the bright November sunshine that assaulted his eyes.
"Doctor Jackson!" a familiar voice called, reverberating eerily up and down the still, quiet street.
Looking up, Daniel saw Moira Smithson, Sam's elderly neighbor, ambling over to him. She was a sweet woman, but she had a tendency to be rather talkative and Daniel wasn't in the mood for polite conversation right now. However, since Mrs. Smithson also tended to be nosy and keep careful tabs on all the neighborhood goings-on, he figured it wouldn't hurt to speak with her and see if she had noticed anything suspicious lately.
"One second," Daniel said into the phone, knowing it would push Jack's patience to the limit and not bothering to wait for the no doubt snippy reply that would come. To the woman hurrying over, thick woolen shawls flapping in the breeze, he asked, "Mrs. Smithson, did you see anyone hanging around Sam's house today?"
"No, dear," the old woman replied, tucking wisps of flyaway grey hair behind her ears. "Why?"
"She's missing," Daniel replied distractedly, scanning the houses up and down the street. He wondered if it would be worthwhile to knock on a few doors and see if any of Sam's other neighbors might have seen something. In the suburbs, there were usually very few people around on a weekday morning and even fewer with nothing better to do than spy on their neighbors – Mrs. Smithson was the exception in Sam's neighborhood, not the rule – but still, it couldn't hurt to try.
"Didn't anyone tell you, dear?" Mrs. Smithson asked, blinking at him in surprise from behind her big horn-rimmed glasses.
"Tell me what?" Daniel pressed, trying to decide which house to start at. Not for the first time, he wished each house on the street had its own driveway; street parking kept him from being able to simply knock on the doors of houses that had cars in their driveways.
"That nice young man from Cheyenne Mountain stopped by to check on her earlier and took her back with him," she stated, snapping Daniel's full attention back to her. "He was worried because Samantha lost consciousness, so he was going to take her to see a doctor."
Daniel's brain raced to process this new information and reconcile it with what he knew to be true. No one from the SGC had been by to check up on Sam, knowing that she needed to sleep as much as possible. Besides, it hadn't been necessary. He had told Janet that he would bring the prescription himself when he came to stay the night, and had gotten General Hammond's permission to leave as soon as the re-supply shipment arrived. But Sam hadn't had any way of knowing that and probably would have opened the door to someone in uniform if she had reason to believe that they were making the delivery. That explained both the paper bag in the hallway and why the security system was deactivated.
On top of that, Daniel knew with absolute certainty that Sam hadn't been taken to the infirmary; he'd been there less than an hour ago and he hadn't seen her. Even if she'd been brought in after he'd left, Janet would have called either him or Jack, probably both, to let them know.
All things considered, Daniel could only come up with one possible explanation for Sam's disappearance and it stopped his blood cold. Lifting his phone back to his ear, he shared his conclusion with Jack.
"The NID has Sam."
