Chapter 18
Virginia Coast
3 October 1995
The deserted stretch of coastline had its advantages.
He didn't have to travel too far for the both of them to get their much-needed rest.
More importantly, very few people came by, and if they did, they were holidaymakers with just the right amount of curiosity and nosiness who could easily be turned away by a few lies. To the few who insisted on chatting, they'd pretended to be a newly married couple on a honeymoon seeking precious time for themselves before the real world intruded again.
It was clichéd enough to elicit either embarrassed chuckles or knowing looks, but it did the trick of getting rid of unwanted attention.
Jack had rented a beachfront chalet with a balcony that extended out to the beach where they could sit on deck chairs and watch the sunset. At least, he had been doing that alone for the past two days. He made quick but necessary stops at the supermarket in town, preparing their meals in the little cottage itself, far from the public eye.
Carter had spent it sleeping her injuries off, waking only for meals and short walks on the beach.
It worried him more than he cared to admit as he stood on the balcony contemplating the grey horizon.
She'd insisted that she was feeling better, but he'd caught glimpses of the dark, mottled bruises on her ribs that made him think otherwise.
Bruised ribs would heal, he knew that from painful experience. But he hadn't quite so solid a grip on Carter's mental state to know yet if she'd break from the mounting stress, but he'll bet on the fact that her stubbornness wouldn't allow her to.
From a military perspective, Carter was hell of an impressive solider. He knew that very few women actually participated in the bombing runs in the Gulf, or attained the advanced level of hand-to-hand. While the gap in their ages and experiences was still blindingly obvious to him, it didn't take much to figure out that a few years of experience in the field would make Carter a damn good field commander with more nuanced instincts. Despite it all, he'd come to admire the spunky courage that she'd shown and the self-assured way she'd handled herself in dire situations.
He just wished he could be there, several years down the road, to witness that growth.
If the both of them didn't get killed first.
"Penny for 'em."
The sound of her voice reversed the direction in which his thoughts were heading. Jack turned to see her sleepily regard the horizon as she leant on the balcony door.
"Carter, good to see you in the land of the living again. Just wondering what to cook for dinner," he said lightly and turned back to the waves lapping at the shore.
Sam wasn't fooled. But if there as something that she had learnt in the days that she spent with Jack O'Neill, it was that he was as closed a book as he wanted to be. Unless he decided to tear down those walls that guarded the inner sanctum.
"Steak for dinner and chocolate cake for dessert," she quipped. "You don't have to think anymore."
"Woman after my own heart," he grinned boyishly and pushed away from the balcony, catching sight of her surprised face. "Just what I bought from the shops. And beer. A steak dinner is not a steak dinner without beer. How're you feeling by the way?"
"As good as new," she said hurriedly, avoiding his keen gaze. "Good to go, in fact."
"Bullshit," he retorted softly, reaching out a tentative hand to smooth her hair over her face, lightly brushing the fading bruise on her cheek.
He saw her close her eyes at his touch and wondered if she felt as affected by that innocent contact as he did.
"Um...yeah, no, I mean, really, I'll be OK by tomorrow."
He gave her a smirk, then grabbed her hand and pulled her into the kitchen.
When she had told him she wanted a proper steak meal, she hadn't expected that it was exactly what he'd already prepared.
Dinner was hearty and incredibly tasty. Jack O'Neill had proven himself to be a man of many talents when he served just slightly charred meat from the grill outside their chalet, followed by the chocolate-cherry cake that he'd picked up at a bakery.
They sat on the deck chairs eating out of paper plates and plastic utensils as the rapidly cooling breeze blew through the cottage's open door.
At that moment in time, it was almost possible to believe that they were friends at an intimate dinner, not military fugitives who didn't know what tomorrow held.
"You know, I've never been so glad for a bed," she started, trying to make conversation in the silence that had descended when they started eating.
"I met someone at the shops the other day in town. At the hardware store," he said in reply, as though he'd not heard her previous statement, or had chosen to disregard it. "We got talking. Told me to call him Edwards. Left me a number to contact him too."
She sat up, and leaned closer, beseeching him wordlessly to continue.
"Runs a surveillance and private investigation business in his home office. Seems to know many people in the same trade," he paused, eyeing her carefully. Surely she knew where he was going with it?
She nodded slowly, but her eyes signalled her confusion. Only O'Neill could lead a conversation to where he wanted it to go.
"Said he knew one of the goons who came after us when I mentioned Robert Slate's name in passing. Apparently, Slate's his good pal. I told him I owed Slate a favour," Jack continued. "He laughed and told me many people owed him favours, then wished me luck, because Slate's got a disappearing act down to a 'T' Clearly he doesn't know that Slate's gone for good."
"Is Slate in the military?"
"That guy didn't say. It's possible. Or at least, Slate's got to be an AF consultant," Jack mused. "You could send, hell, any damned fool mercenary to do the job to cover your tracks, but for something so highly classified as this, they'd be stupid not to use highly-trained military or ex-military personnel to lead the mission."
He told her what Thompson had revealed a few days ago. "Edwards gave me a place where he would sometimes meet Slate. A makeshift office in a part of Norfolk that he used when he was around."
He handed her a crumpled piece of paper on which an address had been scribbled.
She read it, folded it and handed it back to him. "It's a potential hit, especially if Slate's in cahoots with Thomas Baker and Peter Vandenburg. Thinking of searching the place?"
"You read my mind," he replied lightly. The sheet of paper disappeared into his pocket as he took another bite of his steak.
"I nearly forgot about this, but did you find out anything about the car license plate number?"
"That was the easy bit, actually," he reassured her, "There are several registration loopholes that they've found in order to lead anyone who checks them out astray. Anyway, the long and short of it is, they're registered under a name that doesn't exist in the social security records."
She frowned. "But at least we've got names. However, tracing their names back to some kind of organisation or operation, especially if it's covert and classified would still be near impossible," she said thoughtfully, her expressive eyes lighting up in growing excitement. "Look, Colin Payner handed us Agent Kerry Johnson's contact…maybe, just maybe this is where she can provide some sort of link, maybe an organisation that they all belong to, or some anomalies in their service records, then we would have –"
"Ahh! Hate to put a dampener on, Carter, but don't get your hopes up. Yet."
She leant back in her chair and grinned towards the sky, feeling optimistic for the first time in many, many days. "I'm eager to get started."
"Carter, we started on this quite a while ago," he reminded her dryly.
"I know, I know," she replied dismissively, still buoyant with the progress they've made in those few minutes. "It just feels like there's finally a light at the end of the tunnel, you know?"
Jack had no reply to that. Part of him desperately wanted to believe her; a yet-unacknowledged part of him protested that she'd be out of his life sooner than he'd wanted, or cared to admit.
Carter was still talking. He snapped his head up and caught the end of her sentence.
"-too much time which would give us the option of splitting up," Sam suggested, "I could look up Kerry Johnson in D.C, while you go stake out Slate's office in Norfolk, then we could reconvene here. I'm nearly recovered, after all."
"Well, you see," he started slowly, wondering how he was going to explain it to her. "I think it's best that I go see Kerry personally. Alone."
The use of the CIA agent's first name didn't escape her. "So you do know her?"
Jack grimaced and never looked more ill at ease. "Yeah. We've got history."
"What kind of history?" She asked curiously, then hesitated. "Classified? And Tom Reese asked about some people called Sara and Charlie and I was wondering if they were ac-…"
Sudden, blinding pain. That thunderous gunshot that rang loud in his ears each time he heard Charlie's name. The uncontrollable bleeding, the way Charlie had flatlined…
He struggled to take a breath.
He needed an out…anything, anywhere.
"That's none of your fucking business, Carter," he snapped at her roughly. "Had never been, never will be."
Taken aback by his violent reaction, she tripped over her words in her haste to apologise. "But this…I..."
"Drop it!" He said sharply and stood up, walking to the edge of the balcony as he took a long swig of his beer.
Uncomfortable silence flared between them.
She looked at his back, then down briefly to conceal the hurt that struck her unexpectedly in the middle, more painful than her captor's punches had been.
Getting up, she picked up her empty plate and drink and said rather awkwardly, "Yeah. Well, I guess it's time to call it a night. Thanks for the great dinner. See you in the morning."
He glanced back at her as though he was about to say something, then changed his mind.
She hadn't looked back at him, having already turned to walk through the balcony doors.
He sighed heavily. "Good night, Carter."
The whispered plea was lost in the whistling of the cold wind.
Sam left O'Neill standing at the edge of the balcony contemplating the stars, reminding herself as she made her way to the bathroom that their purely professional relationship should, in no uncertain terms, stay as it had always been from its uneasy conception – purely professional.
How had it gone pear-shaped so fast?
But why had that mattered? What propelled the sudden, insatiable urge to get O'Neill to open up – and to her, no less?
In short, O'Neill's past dalliances and affiliations had no bearing on what they were doing now. She had no business prying, just as he had no right to her life experiences apart from what he had read in her file, unless someone decided to spill the beans in a fit of insanity.
Then why did she feel as though she had lost part of a burgeoning friendship?
She had opened up more than him, telling him her closely guarded secret of the college incident that had left her scarred on the night of the fire in North Platte, hoping for him to gain an insight into the Samantha Carter that her military file had omitted, perhaps even hoping that he'd see a different person than the one he'd conditioned to kill at the start of his mission.
In retrospect, it was the stupidest thing she could have done.
O'Neill probably looked at her now like a guardian looked after his charge, in all probability feeling as though she needed his protection despite having attained the rank of Captain in the USAF and all the combat skills training that came with it.
Had she truly been that insecure? Ignoring the differences in their ages and experiences, failing to see just how he regarded her? Had she really thought that they were becoming friends after all they'd been through in those weeks?
The gross overestimation of the depth of his feelings made her cringe. Most likely he only saw her as a green officer with a huge feminist chip on her shoulder who needed reassurance in her own abilities. Or some sort of damsel whose reproductive organs were on the inside instead of the outside. Or god forbid, the sort that always needed rescuing when circumstances became dire because she couldn't handle what he could.
In any case, discovering who Samantha Carter was hadn't really mattered to O'Neill. Perhaps it should stay that way.
Anger and shame coursed through her; anger at the unexpected viciousness of O'Neill's cutting words, shame at her own weakness for capitulating to him and at her own needy manifestations of her deep-seated insecurities.
Flicking on the light switch in the bathroom, she went to the counter and splashed cold water onto her face, trying to erase the memory of the angry look on his face as she's asked the question that took down that mirage of everything that had seemed good between them.
She'd been nothing but stupid when it came to men with a lunatic fringe. O'Neill certainly dipped his foot frequently enough in that particular pond and her ex-fiancé Jonas Hansen came a close second. And because she thought that she could fix them, she would, as a psychiatrist long ago had warned her, always be treading down the path of destructive relationships.
O'Neill sure as hell needed fixing, she thought wearily. But she decided that particular job would pass her by this time.
Sam finished up in the bathroom and made her way to the bedroom, changing mechanically into her nightclothes. As her head hit the pillow, she sleepily decided that O'Neill was going to get the soldier that he'd read about and most likely wanted.
Virginia Coast
4 October 1995
The autumn sun was high in the sky by the time Jack woke up, having stayed out watching the sea until the first rays of dawn shook him out of his racing thoughts.
He stumbled out of his bedroom, walked past the closed door of Carter's bedroom and headed for the bathroom, completely missing the note on the dining table.
The silence of the holiday home made him assume that Carter had probably gone for a walk.
It was good for her to get some air after being in bed for a few days, he reasoned, relishing the steaming hot water over his face and body.
Jack knew that he owed her an apology.
At her mention of Sara and Charlie, and to a lesser extent, Kerry Johnson last night, he'd felt the familiar, suffocating weight press against his chest, unable to control the forceful censure that he'd doled out on her. Overcome with the rush of conflicting and self-recriminating emotions that had only faded when sunrise was imminent, he found that he couldn't do anything else at that point without the numbing comfort of strong, aged whisky.
After that awkward, tense moment, Carter had left quickly and never looked back.
She had merely walked into a forbidden mine trap that he himself wasn't quite ready to confront just yet. Subject to her inquisitiveness, an annoying but useful facet that seemed to be inherent all scientists, he obviously hadn't held up too well under that scrutiny.
But above all, she hadn't deserved his disproportionate, verbally hostile outburst to what was a curious but innocent question. He should have seen it coming – but he didn't. The blame clearly lay more on his part than hers. The altercation with Carter wasn't her fault at all, but…she would take it like a good soldier, wouldn't she?
The continuing silence in the chalet made him frown when he emerged from the bathroom, sniffing the air that drifted in from the sea. There was no sign of Carter having eaten breakfast, or having brewed any coffee at all.
A flash of white caught his eye. He moved to the table and picked it up.
O'Neill,
Off to check out Slate's office in Norfolk. I'm taking the car.
Maybe you could pay Agent K. Johnson a visit in the meantime. Even without a car, I'm sure you'll find a way.
Figured this might be best.
Don't wait up tonight.
C
Curt, short, to the point.
After reading Carter's neat prints twice in growing disbelief, he slammed down the note on the table with considerable force.
Damn that woman!
She was that that would have been best…best for whom?
What the hell was she thinking, going to Slate's makeshift office on her own? The guy was killed when he shot his way through the warehouse where Carter was held, but it didn't mean he operated alone. Chances were that he didn't.
Then it dawned on him. The timing of her escape was entirely too convenient, especially after last night. Was it all some stupid, childish game of…manipulation and avoidance that women played when they were unhappy?
Suddenly furious with Carter's impulsiveness that could very well risk her life, he rushed to holster his gun, then took it out again to ensure there was a full magazine in it.
He came around the corner, looking for the car keys, then saw an empty spot where it had lain on the mantel the previous night, only to realise that Carter was really gone.
Jack swore viciously, running his hand through his hair in frustration.
If the beach house had given them a respectable distance from public scrutiny, it had also meant that a form of private transport was necessary to get anywhere near civilisation.
The solitary stretch of beach, while guaranteeing privacy, was at least twenty or thirty miles away from the city, and about fifteen miles to the nearest town where he bought their provisions. That meant too, that he was stranded till she got back.
What was there to do but hope that she'd return soon?
Norfolk, Virginia
4 October 1995
The first rays of the morning sun had illuminated the sea a beautiful golden by the time she crept out of the chalet, having seen O'Neill make his way into the bedroom about two hours prior.
Now Sam sat in the parked car down a side street that gave her a vantage point in observing who came and left Slate's office. Slate was dead, thanks to O'Neill's manoeuvrings in the old army barracks. It also meant that there was not much for her to do except to break into his makeshift office and ruffle through his papers – if there were going to be any at all.
It had been a long, agonising five hours since she'd left the coast, accompanied only by her racing thoughts and the blather of prime time radio as she sped downtown, unconsciously checking the rear view mirror at every turn she made.
But where it had seemed an excellent decision last night to distance herself physically and emotionally from O'Neill, that plan of hers to pay Slate's old office a visit alone was, in the harsh light of day, a foolish one that ran counter-intuitive to all her military training.
Sam shook her head to clear the gathering cobwebs of doubt.
They could work on their own for a while, she decided resolutely. To divide and conquer would be the best for the both of them: their solo efforts in reconnaissance and information gathering would be more efficient if they went their separate ways at times, perhaps even piece the whole puzzle together in half the time.
It would also lessen the risk of either of them – most likely her – crossing any personal boundaries. The unbidden memory of last night's awkwardness made her wince involuntarily.
Pushing that last thought out of her head, Sam got out of the car and made her way to the residence apartment block, slipping in through the front door smoothly as an unsuspecting old lady walked through it.
The heavy door slammed shut behind her. A musty yellow light bulb illuminated a long, dingy corridor that led to a flight of stairs.
Sam climbed up quickly to the third floor and shifted her gaze to the numbers on the top of the doors, moving down the row of them until she reached door 305. She smiled; her Swiss army knife made quick work of the lock and the door creaked open with minimal effort.
The inside of the apartment was unremarkably bare. Empty shelves and filing cabinets lining the wall had been cleaned out thoroughly, the furniture covered with white plastic sheets.
The whole office was frustratingly spotless and...recently abandoned. Whoever had thought to clean up after Slate's death had cleaned up well.
Yet another fruitless search.
It was hard to keep her shoulders straight with that bitterly disappointing realisation, as she slowly turned to leave.
A small object glinted golden in the left corner of the living room's makeshift office, having caught the dim light in the corridor as she swung the door open.
Still standing at the threshold of the door, Sam cocked her head to one side and frowned slightly.
Retracing her steps, she reached down and picked up a small, tarnished hexagonal object the size of a small pendant, turning it to rest in the palm of her hand.
Embossed into the metal, Medusa's head of malevolent snakes stared back at her.