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Runaway To Hell

Chapter Three

Keelah peeked through the window when she heard a car pull up. Teal'c had called her to let her know they were back and had been unsuccessful in finding Annika. She fully expected it to be him, but the sedan was unfamiliar to her. Nor did she recognize the man who got out of the car, dressed in a business suit. He obviously knew where he was going because he walked towards the house without pause. She pulled off the plastic gloves she'd been using to protect her hands while cleaning and hurried to the door. She'd been working off nervous energy, and had finished her and Teal'c's place an hour ago. She’d then moved on to the Jacksons’. She figured that domestic chores would be the last thing on Daniel's mind whether they had found Annika or not.

The man was startled when she opened the door before he had even knocked and was more surprised to see her rather than the homeowners. "Good afternoon." He gave her a smile even as he double checked the number on the side of the house confirming he was at the correct address. "My name is Alex Samseon, I'm looking for Annika Jackson."

You and everybody else, Keelah thought ruefully. From day one she had been warned about possible rogue NID agents scavenging for information about the SGC and its personnel, so it was with a touch or wariness that she asked, "What's this about?"

"I'm Mrs Jackson's attorney." He pulled out a business card from his top pocket. "If she's not home, then is Doctor Jackson in?"

Keelah studied the card with the logo of 'M, S & J Associates' embossed on it, with the man's name and contact details beneath. She recognized the logo from some of the paperwork in the study, so the company was legitimate. But then from what she understood, the NID was a sneaky and underhanded organization and wouldn't be above forging such things. She was debating what to do when she saw Teal'c's SUV pull in with Jack's pickup behind. "Daniel's just arriving now. If you can wait here." Keelah pulled the door closed then hurried across the yard, skipping over the fence.

Teal'c slid from behind the wheel, eyeing the stranger on the porch. "Who is that man?"

She held out the card to him though her gaze went directly to Daniel getting out from the passenger side. Pushed aside her concern of how haggard the archaeologist looked. "He says his name is Alex Samseon."

"Who?" Daniel blinked blankly at her, though the name rang a bell.

"He claims to be Annika's attorney."

Daniel literally felt himself snap. He was so worried and scared, frustrated and angry over the mystery of Annika's disappearance, of finding her just to have her slip through their fingers, of no explanations, no clues, that he was stretched beyond breaking point. And to have her attorney show up out of the blue, now of all times... There was no reason for him to be here, unless... A red film seemed to close over his vision. He wasn't aware of running across the drive and hurdling the fence, of sprinting across the lawn. He barely heard the thump of the attorney's body hitting the wall as he slammed him against it. "Where is she? Tell me where she is!"

Alex was startled by the ferocity and suddenness of Daniel's attack, feeling a hint of fear at the mad gleam in his eyes. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Tell me! Is she okay? Where is she?"

Keelah's voice had drifted to Jack as he opened his car door. He barely comprehended the word 'attorney' when Daniel had made his frenzied dash. "Crap!" In a second he was chasing after his best friend, Teal'c coming in from the side. "Daniel, let the nice lawyer go!" He tried to pull him away from the man, but it was like trying to budge a ton of steel.

"He knows where Annika is!"

Teal'c was also trying to remove Daniel's grip from the man now struggling for breath, but to no avail.

"Danny, think about it," Jack said as calmly as he could. "He can't possibly know where Casper is."

The words penetrated Daniel's distraught rage and he was filled with a sense of hopelessness. "But...but he has to know..." His grip went slack and Teal'c managed to pull Daniel away.

He staggered back, disorientated by the emotions bombarding him.

"T..."

"I have him, O’Neill." Teal'c gently supported his friend, leading him into the house.

Alex remained leaning against the wall, gasping for breath.

"Are you alright?" Sam asked, picking up his briefcase that had fallen to the porch.

Gingerly he nodded, his hand going up to his neck where Daniel's forearm had been pressed against his windpipe. "I'm guessing this is a bad time."

"Yeah, a little," Jack sighed.

"Can you tell me what's going on?"

Jack caught the emphasis. "Other than Annika's missing, which you probably already gathered, not really."

"Daniel's not usually like this," Sam said quietly. "He's just stretched beyond breaking point right now." She didn't want anyone, let alone a lawyer, to think attacking people was something Daniel did normally. "He's going crazy with worry."

"Why don't you come in?" Jack suggested.

Daniel looked up from the couch, more than a little shaken by what he had done. "I'm sorry. I have no excuse for my behavior."

"No harm done," Alex assured. "You didn't even tear my shirt, which I appreciate." He saw the skeptical look on the man's face. "Honest, I've received worse from husbands who have been served with divorce papers."

Daniel saw grey spots before his eyes at the word 'divorce' and battled to stop himself from passing out.

Alex immediately cursed himself as Daniel's face turned ashen and a heavy silence descended from the others. "Not that I'm here to do that. I've never seen a woman more happily married than Annika." His assurance seemed to pain the archaeologist more.

"Why don't you tell us why you're here?" Jack hurried the conversation along.

"I had some paperwork to drop off. I was going to mail it, but since I was in the area today for another client I thought I'd deliver it myself." He opened his case and pulled out a legal sized envelope.

When Daniel made no move to take it, Jack reached for it. Noted that it was quite thick. "That was mighty nice of you." There was a hint of question in his tone. Hand delivery wasn't something an attorney did.

"Actually I was hoping to talk Annika out of it. She took a heavy loss to liquidate so quickly, but there's a grace period for the sale so she may be able to recoup some of it."

"Sale?" Daniel asked listlessly. "Of what?"

Alex took in the man's blank look. "I see she didn't tell you." He sighed. "Two weeks ago she requested the immediate buy of precious stones. I had to go through three different wholesalers to get the amount she wanted by her deadline."

"How much did she want?" Sam asked.

"A mix of sizes and stones totaling a hundred thousand dollars."

Jack let out a low whistle.

Keelah tried to focus on the positive. "At least we know she's not starving."

"Yes, but we also know she planned everything." Daniel felt the bile rise in his throat. He lurched to his feet, swiping the envelope from Jack's hand. "Excuse me."

"Did Annika organize this by phone or in person?" Sam asked.

"Phone, but she picked up the stones herself."

"How did she seem to you?"

"Tense. Very different to how she normally is." Alex had been Annika's attorney since she had set up her cake business. Had advised her on how to invest her inheritance from her father and taken care of her stock options. It had shocked him how rash and stubbornly insistent she had been with this last transaction. "She wouldn't tell me why she wanted the stones, wouldn't let me talk her out of it. She was so insistent...said if I didn't help her that she'd go retail to buy them herself. I managed to convince her to let us handle the purchase. One of our associates specializes in those sorts of commodities and we got the best deal we could. There will be a hefty tax bill for the stock liquidation..." his voice drifted off, his gaze going to the study where Daniel had disappeared. "But I don't suppose anyone's concerned about that at the moment."

"Not really, no." Jack followed his gaze to the study.

Alex got to his feet. "I should be going."

"If you think of anything Annika may have said or done, no matter how bizarre or how small it seems to you, will you let us know?" Sam jotted down her and Jack's cell numbers then after a moment of consideration added General Hammond's direct line.

The attorney nodded tucking the scrap of paper into his pocket. "I will. I hope you find her soon."

A A A

"Were you able to get any information from the assassin before you killed him?" Annika asked, as they walked down the corridor. She couldn't help but admire the sleek smoothness of the design. It didn't take an expert to figure out the ship was of an advanced technology. If she had to hazard a guess, she'd place it alongside the Asgard, although there was a more personal feel to it due to holographic pictures decorating the walls.

"No, but we have a pretty good idea who hired him," Veta shrugged.

"Did you want me to try and confirm that for you?" She had no doubt that 'retribution' would be sought by her two hosts and she wouldn't try to talk them out of it. After all, she wasn't going to be here long. However call it a quirk of hers, she would prefer that their 'justice' be meted out to the correct party.

"You can do that?" Mahj'arc raised an eyebrow.

"The man who coined the phrase 'dead men tell no tales' didn't know any psychics."

"Why would you want to?"

"I didn't save your ass just to have someone else take a second crack at it." While the quips were automatic, they were said a little absently. There was something starting to nag at her the deeper they moved into the ship, that there was something else for her to do here. It was like the assassination attempt was just the catalyst to bring her on board, though she had no idea what the 'something' was. "I finish something once I start it."

"Fair enough." Mahj'arc shrugged. "Did you want to do it now or wait until later?"

Annika considered her body's normal response. A hired assassin would probably be right up there with the Goa'uld on her moral compass. She didn't see the point in eating only to have it come back up a few minutes after. "Now if possible."

The men did an about face and led her back the way they'd come beyond the room they'd held her in.

"Is it unusual for you to get visions of complete strangers?" Veta stopped at a set of automated doors. He raised his hand and for the first time Annika noticed a ring on his pinky finger with a clear stone in the shape of a pyramid. He pressed the stone into a tiny hole in the control panel and the door slid open.

Annika took a few deep breaths preparing herself, stepping into the room towards the body that was covered with a sheet. "No. I have been an unwitting voyeur of strangers lives for fifteen years." She glanced around the room that was similar in layout to the one she'd been held in. "Um...just to be sure," she pointed to a bowl like structure in the corner. "That is a wash basin that flushes to your version of a septic system, right?"

Mahj'arc nodded, though he raised an eyebrow at the plumbing query. "So what made you act on this one?"

She could see the question in his eyes, asking more than his words. From the visions she had received from touching Mahj'arc, she knew that they operated on the wrong side of the law. The real question he was asking was why she, who was obviously on the opposite end of the moral spectrum, was helping the seedier side. "With what my visions have shown me over the years...I've seen good people do bad things, and bad people do good things. You guys have done pretty nasty things but...there's a saying by my people, 'honor among thieves'. You have a code that you live by. I may not approve of it, but it's not my place to judge your life choices...and..."

When she drifted off, Mahj'arc prompted, "And?"

"And the vision I had of you was different to my usual run of the mill visions. I saw it as a movie, out of the blue. I wasn't touching anything. It was just suddenly there in crystal clear clarity. For me that's a rarity and I've learned that it's reserved for very special people." In her mind she was instantly transported back to the first time she had experienced that kind of vision; the day she had seen SG-1 in the same room together. A stab of pain lanced through her heart at just thinking of the team who had become her family. It took every ounce of her willpower to concentrate on the matter at hand. "Some visions just can't be ignored."

Annika lifted the sheet and stared down at the lifeless man's face. Slowly she placed her palm against the rough stubble of his cheek. For a moment she saw nothing, then flashes began to flicker across her vision. One by one she was shown fragments of the man's kills. She knew that he had been a hired gun, but she hadn't realized just how cold and calculating he was. There was no regret for any of his actions; every assassination was just a job. People's lives were delegated to a number. Numbers twenty and twenty-one paid for the upgrade on his transport vessel, number thirty allowed him to purchase an investment property. On and on the kills continued and a shudder ran through her. It was just as well that she hadn't known this before going to the planet. How lucky had she been to pull off her rescue given the assassin's experience? The numbers in her head jumped to number fifty-one, and though she couldn't make out faces, she knew instinctively that she was witnessing the meeting for Mahj'arc's attempt. A single word flashed over the blurred figures. "It's the brother of who you think it is."

"Brother? I wouldn't have thought that runt would have had the guts," Veta murmured to his friend, then hastily stepped aside as Annika lurched away from the body and dove for the sink.

The two friends watched uneasily as she threw up what little contents she had in her stomach. When she eventually stopped, Veta hesitantly spoke. "I take it that's normal for you?"

She nodded, wiping the side of her mouth with the hand that hadn't touched the body. "When I touch the essence of someone morally opposite to me." She studied the basin looking for the version of the tap or flush. "Where are the controls on this?"

The security guard waved a hand in front of a blue tile to the side of the basin. A faucet emerged from the wall and a steady stream of water spilled out.

She rinsed the bowl and then splashed some water on her face. Wordlessly Mahj'arc handed her a hand towel from a compartment concealed in the wall and after drying her face and hands, she once again pulled out the vanilla oil. Only then did she turn to look at their concerned faces. "I'm fine," she assured. "Out of curiosity, what are you going to do with the body?"

"I thought you could see where the bodies are buried," Veta lightly teased. His expression was one of perplexity, as though he didn't know what to make of her.

"We were thinking of sending a message with this one." Mahj'arc shrugged, taking the damp hand towel she had slung over her shoulder. "Maybe beaming him right into the culprit's bedroom."

"How very Mafia of you," Annika drawled, though she knew they wouldn't understand the Earth reference. As the towel slid off her shoulder other images began to flash behind her eyes. "Don't do it."

"Oh?"

"There will be something traceable to you...prominent family..." She raised confused eyes to the men. "Something will be leaked to the investigating officer who can't be bribed...the code of silence you have going for you will be broken." When she saw the men nod in understanding she added, "Um...dispose of it in your...er...usual way."

Slowly Mahj'arc nodded. "Are you sure you're alright?"

"Yep." Annika finished rubbing the oil into her palms and the last of the negative energy dispersed. "Now wasn't there talk of a meal?"

"Yeah, sure." Mahj'arc gestured for her to go first, darting a look at Veta. He was pretty sure his friend's bemused expression matched his own.

Veta shrugged and followed her out. "Lady, you are a strange one."

Annika gave him a wry grin. "That's what I call an understatement."

A A A

Daniel tossed the envelope to the desk, trying to fight off the anger he was feeling at Annika for just leaving without explanation, anger at himself for not seeing the signs. Had he been so wrapped up in his work that he had missed how unhappy she was? But she had been happy! It was true that last week she had been a little withdrawn, but there’d been no indication that she was unhappy. If anything she had been more clingy than normal and had spent as much time as possible with him. And her love had been stronger than ever through their bond. Their lovemaking had been as intense and fulfilling as ever. They hadn't had a fight. Hadn't even had a difference of opinion. Her running off just made no sense whatsoever. He didn't understand, and that was what was tearing him up.

He knew she still loved him. In the couple of times she had let the block of their bond slip, her love had hit him so hard and fast it had made him gasp. And it had felt stronger than ever before. He thumped the desk in frustration. Please! I just need a reason!

He hit the desk so hard that the stack of papers tipped over. With a sigh he began gathering them up. Became distracted when he noticed a leather-bound book that didn't belong with the ledgers and receipts of her cake business. He picked it up, flicking through the pages. The back half was blank, but the first part was filled with Annika's handwriting. He scanned the first entry and realized it was the 'dream journal' she'd been keeping for the last two months. Fought down another burst of anger. She'd hidden it here amongst the papers of the business she'd given up, a place that he would never think to look. Did she think that he would read it if she left it out in the open? The hurt that knifed through him at her lack of trust in him swamped the anger.

He weighed the book in his hands. Would there be clues inside to where she had gone? Had she had some sort of plan? Would there be a reason? He shoved the moral issue aside about reading the journal. Under normal circumstances he'd never consider doing such a thing. However, everything about Annika running away was wrong. It was more than his confused breaking heart telling him that. Like Jack had said, they had missed some huge vital clue. Perhaps her journal would nudge them down the right path. Vowing to apologize to Annika for doing this when they eventually found her, he reopened the journal to the first page.

The first few entries were simple descriptions of her nightmares with a few random thoughts. He stopped when he came to an entry that was a lot longer than the others.

Daniel felt a shiver run down his spine. How could he have missed the self-doubt, the torment? When had she started hating herself like that? Using him? Since when was seeking comfort from me, her husband, a crime? Who else was she supposed to turn to? There was more to their lovemaking than just pleasure. It was all about giving and taking and sharing, whether it be physical or emotional. Peeping Tom? What in the world? She'd never viewed her ability to see auras in that way.

"Danny, you okay?" Jack asked from the doorway. His friend looked pale and what could only be described as horrified.

"You have to see this." He swallowed, holding up the journal. "These are not my wife's thoughts."

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