Chapter Thirteen: Missing... who?
Nope. Not here.
Daniel stepped into Sam's lab to find her slumped in her chair, her head back and hands over her eyes. "Hey," he called softly. "Are you okay?"
"Huh? Oh, yeah, I'm fine." She shook herself a little and straightened. "I'm just, uh... I'm just tired."
She hoped he wouldn't push the issue, but he knew her better than that. Grabbing a stool, he pulled it close in front of her and stooped a little to look her in the eye. "Did you sleep last night at all?"
"Not a lot."
"Let me guess," he ventured. "Your body was in bed, but your brain was here?"
There wouldn't have been any point in lying to him – he'd have known better – and she sighed. "No. It was a lot further away than that."
"Ah." He cringed a little. "I guess I've kind of been stuck in my own problems, but... you must miss him."
Startled, her head shot up. "What?" She'd hardly mentioned the colonel; she was sure of it. And 'husband' or not, there was no way in the world she was that transparent.
"The vision. You said there was a... a man you cared about. You must miss him a lot."
"Oh," she said softly. Pete. She wondered if he even knew she was missing – if he was concerned about her. "Right."
"Something else I should know?" he asked, one eyebrow raised.
"Uh, no." She could hardly admit to him – she'd only just realized it herself – that she'd spent very little of her time worrying about getting back to Pete and the rest of it missing her team.
Oh, who was she kidding? She missed the colonel. It wasn't Daniel who was supposed to be standing in her lab, trying to cheer her up – it was him. The stupid magnifying glass tricks, the way he played with things he shouldn't... It was endearing, even if she pretended to be annoyed. And spending so much time in her lab without even one interruption was getting harder by the hour.
"So, I've narrowed down the options some," she told him, trying to maneuver the conversation back to safer ground. "I nixed a couple of things that I was done with and just hadn't handed off yet. And I think, since I don't remember doing anything, that I have to consider that I might have dozed off and done something accidentally."
"Valid theory," he answered with a shrug. "But what does that mean?"
"That it was something close by. It only ever happens when I'm sitting right here, in reach of my computer and the magnifying glass, so it would have been something I could reach from right here."
Daniel raised an eyebrow. "So how many does that leave?"
"Four. And I've learned I really need to clean out my lab," she said with a sigh. "I've been writing reports for General Hammond this morning – everything I remember about the planets we found them on. I'm hoping he'll let us retrieve them."
He coughed. "Four?"
"Yeah. But this one," she said, pointing to one of her sketches, "is the one I was working on at the time and probably the most likely culprit. You were in the middle of doing the translations, but I never got a chance to ask what you thought it was."
"Do you remember any of the writing on it?" he asked, suddenly intensely interested.
"Uh, no," she chuckled. "The colonel may think what I speak isn't English, but I disagree."
"Well, I'd love to get a look at it. Let's go talk to General Hammond."
She gave him a smile. "Sure. Give me a minute to print out this report, and I'll meet you up there."