Saturday-Afternoon
Teal'c surveyed the parking lot intensely. He was well trained in tracking but as long as he'd sheltered on this world he'd spent comparatively little time on its surface. He could of course employ several of the techniques he'd studied for observation, but tracking was an entirely new matter on this world. Fortunately, he'd learned much in a short time about the way things were done on earth, which was why the manager of the grocery store was standing behind him and slightly to the right just waiting to answer any questions or be of any service. Flashing his Air Force ID had definitely been the correct approach. Teal'c honed in on a small box at the front of the building.
"We are being surveiled."
"That's the security system." The manager told him.
Teal'c turned his attention to the little man. "You did not previously mention this."
"Sorry" the man apologized. "It's just that we don't usually show our security footage to people. "Of course, we can make an exception." he added quickly.
Teal'c placed his hands behind his back. "Indeed"
Teal'c sat in the security room staring intently at the screen. The store didn't have cameras on the light poles, only on the building itself, which meant they had a fairly good distance range but a limited view along the sides of the building. Teal'c blinked from focusing so intlently and almost missed the truck pulling into the parking lot. He rewound it for about one second and pushed 'play' it was impossible to deistinguish the exact color of the truck on the video but there was no doubt it was O'Neill's pickup.
Not only because it was a dark colored pickup in the parking lot in the middle of the night, not only because it parked in the same parking spot they'd found the truck in -as far as possible from the light posts- but also because he'd parked in just the right place and at such an angle that the cab was out of camera range and he couldn't see them get out of the vehicle. Teal'c didn't even blink as he watched the tape far longer than necessary. When the time on the film read eight o'clock in the morning he stopped the tape and turned off the monitor.
He considered the possiblities of where his friends could have gone and for the first time had serious doubts they could be found. Colonel O'Neill and Major Carter were two of the most intelligent people he knew. And the very fact that thier minds worked in different ways made them far more formidable and difficult to anticipate.
For the first time Teal'c felt like he was hunting his own people. He had been thinking of it as a search and rescue. He was looking for them to protect them and the SGC. Now he was unsure whether this was the best course, but the course was decided and he had no choice but to continue. Daniel Jackson and Janet Fraiser were exploring one direction, and as much as Teal'c trusted both of them with his life he realized hewas unsure of thier ability to best handle this situation. He walked down the stairs from the security with a renewed determination that if O'Neill and Carter had to be found he was going to be the one to discover them.