Chasing The Wind

Chasing the Wind

Chapter Eight

“Jack, can we just go back to my place to talk about this? I just don’t feel comfortable in Hammond’s front yard,” she smiled her trademark smile at Jack and tucked her head toward her chest. “Please.”

“As long as you promise to answer.” Jack’s look belied his fear. But Sam still heard the anxiety in his voice.

She took his hand after he backed the truck out of Hammond’s drive and pulled into traffic. He pulled her fingers to his lips and softly kissed her fingers.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

Farrity slammed his office door behind him and dropped with a thud into his chair. Swinging the chair around and pushing his feet under his desk, he breathed a hard breath and ran his fingers through his hair. He’d really made a mistake this time.

The files he’d searched belonged to two very important people, people he would never want to mess with if the ass chewing he just received was any indication of their importance. ‘

'A review.’  They were reviewing him, deciding if they would keep him here or not. Ten years he’d been working for the FBI and not once had he been reprimanded. Not once. But it seemed that searching these two people’s files had already made it to the top of the FBI, even before he had time to report it himself. It seemed the trace on their files ran to the top of the military.

Damn Shanahan! Didn’t the damn fool have a clue to the ties these people had or did he care? Shanahan had been acting strange lately, since his wife left him actually.

He cursed himself again. He should have known better. As soon as he reasoned he was hacking into an Air Force Major’s file that had been scrubbed without permission, he should have aborted, reported to his boss and not tried to search the Colonel’s file. But the truth was he had been fascinated with her file. It wasn’t often that he came across such even in his line of work. It had intrigued him as to exactly what Shanahan was on to not realizing until he’d called him back with the info that this was personal for his long time friend.

Now he would probably be busted down to a beginning rank if he didn’t lose his job completely. A hard learned lesson for him but one he wouldn’t forget. Damn Shanahan.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0

General Hammond reached for the phone by his bedside as it woke him from another short nap. It seemed that tonight was going to be a busy one. He had only been back in bed a short time after his two officers left.

“Hammond,” he barked into the phone.

“This is Barkley,” his voice was as commanding as Hammond’s and he wasn’t taking any time for pleasantries. “It seems there’s been a breach in security. Some idiot FBI agent ran a search into O’Neill’s and Carter’s files. Don’t know the reason. Yet. I’ll get back to you as soon as I know. Have them be ready for anything that could come from this.”

“Will do. Thanks.” Hammond slammed the phone down cursing under his breath. His gut instinct, which had saved him on so many occasions, told him that this had something to do with what had already happened tonight. Now how the hell could the President’s staff already have wind of this? If that was it and he almost hoped that was the case and not something worse.

He picked up the phone and dialed.

“O’Neill.”

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

Pete moved from the table with little grace. The anger spread across his face and was reflected in his movements. He stalked to the cashier and threw a ten dollar bill on the counter. “Just give the rest to the waitress.” His voice gave away his anger.

“Sir, is everything okay?” The manager asked. Pete turned around and stalked out of the diner not bothering to answer the manager.

“Well, wonder what’s up his ass?” The manager asked no one particular.

Pete picked up his phone and dialed a number that he had looked up earlier. He was sure the General would want to hear what he had to say.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

“Sit Rep.” Hammond barked into the phone. He was sitting at his kitchen table drinking coffee having given up on sleeping tonight. The voice on the other end of the phone was not one he expected or recognized.

“Is this General Hammond?” Pete asked realizing that man on the other end was waiting for a particular phone call, just not his.

“Who’s calling?” As usual the General took charge with little effort. On some level Pete realized he really didn’t want to do this, but it was already in motion and he just couldn’t stop.

“General you don’t know me, but I’ve been.. …dating Sam… Samantha Carter. Tonight I found out that she and her CO are having an affair. I know the military regulations don’t allow for such, so I thought… I thought you should know.”

“You didn’t say who you are.” Hammond demanded really ticked off that this man wanted to hurt two of the most important people in his life.

“Pete… Pete Shanahan. If… uh…if you need me to testify please feel free to call me. I’m with the Denver Police. Actually I’m a detective.” Pete said, pleased with himself that he had busted them. ‘After all, unfaithfulness and breaking military regulations should be condemned. Right?’ He thought.

“Detective Shanahan. Yes, Major Carter said as much. Now, let me get this straight. You ask…” Hammond stopped to look at the notes he’d written down the last time Barkley called. “….FBI agent David Farrity to break security and give you information on two high level Air Force Officers. Is that correct?”

Pete felt his heart thump in his chest. How the hell?…. Dave wouldn’t have reported this.. No way. Something was up…He snapped his phone shut. Now what?

General Hammond placed his third call to his second in less than forty five minutes.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

They sitting on her couch waiting when his cell phone rang and he talked for several minutes before Jack yelled, “That son of a bitch!” as he snapped his phone shut.

“Sir? What is it? Who? I thought you were talking to the General.” Sam questioned a worried look on her face.

“Oh, I was. It’s that sorry Shanahan. He had a friend of his, an FBI agent run a search on our files.” He turned to look at her, “Sir? What’s with the sir? I thought we had worked through that.”

“You mean… Pete?…” She completely ignored the reference to his honorific. She couldn’t imagine that Pete would do that. Or why.

“That’s exactly what I mean. Man, Carter! He’s a winner. I’m really surprised you agreed to go out with him more than once.” Jack took one look at her face and realized he’d said more than he should have. It wasn’t her fault.

“I’m sorry, Sam. I didn’t mean to sound like this is your fault.” He pulled her to him and hugged her tight. “I’m… just mad. That jerk!”

Sam didn’t say anything. He had hurt her feelings. Pete wasn’t anything like this on their dates. In fact he was so completely opposite that it was hard for her to believe any of this. Her instincts about people had never been great, but never this far off. It was true that she’d lived in her own little world much of her life. She’d always been too smart and too young to fit in with her classmates, even in college she was four or five years younger than ninety nine point nine percent of them.

Sam had always been sort of a loner until she joined the air force and there she felt more like she belonged than she ever had, but she was still so much smarter than most of them that she only opened her self up to a hand full of people. Most of them were the people that had originally worked on the Stargate project in the early to mid nineties before O’Neill took the first team to Abydos. She’d made her first true friends in those early years, Catherine Langford being one of them.

As she thought about things, maybe she did make a mistake. It hadn’t always been so easy for her to trust people, especially after Hanson. But Sam had true friendships now people who truly loved her and people who truly respected her not only for her amazing intelligence and abilities but as a person, a sweet compassionate caring person.

She’d let down a lot of her barriers after becoming a member of SG1. The fact that each of them would give the other their lives and had proven it time and again and the Colonel’s trust that she could always make miracles out of disaster gave her a new image of herself. She wasn’t the same person that she’d been after her mom’s death.

No now she was more like the Sam before that one event that had changed her so drastically. Now she felt loved and cared for and needed by her friends and even some of her colleagues. This new image of herself had finally given Sam the courage to look for individual happiness. True, buried deep in her heart she’d always had hopes that it would be with the Colonel, but after the events on the Prometheus and his visit to her in the infirmary, her ideal of life with him had been trampled down so hard that she’d let herself believe it was impossible. Until now.

But it still didn’t change the fact that he’d just made her mad and now she didn’t feel like burying her anger. There had been many times that Major Sam Carter had to bury her anger at Colonel Jack O’Neill, but she didn’t intend to start doing that same thing in a personal relationship with Jack. She wanted this to last, and she knew that the only way it would was for them to be completely honest with each other. No holding back anything.

“Jack, you’re such an ass! Sometimes you make me want to hit you!”

He pulled away from her enough to see the hurt and anger in her eyes. “Well, you know that. It’s not like I’ve changed suddenly.” He smirked at her smugly. “So if you want to hit me then hit me. As long as it’s Samantha who is doing the hitting and not Major Carter, then I have no problem.”

He smiled again. “In fact, I’m sure it won’t be the last time that ‘Samantha’ will want to hit me.” But that thought brought a quick flicker of fear to his eyes and was evident in his voice, “Will it?” This was so new to Jack. He’d never been too good with relationships either and he didn’t want to end this one before it really started.

He could always affect her mood and usually change her mind. This was no exception. How could she stay mad at such an arrogant but sweet man, especially this one, whom she loved with all her heart?

“No, I’m sure you’ll continue to piss me off!” Her eyes glared at him.

“Just as long as you let me ‘keep’ doing it.” The doubt in his eyes was clearly begging her not to hold his attitude against him. “You know how fast I can fly hot, Sam.”

“Yeah, I do. It’s just that you can say and do some pretty hurtful things, Jack. Even if I do know you really don’t mean it. You’ve said it. It hurts just the same.”

“I’m sorry, Sam. Really sorry. I never meant it to sound like I thought any of this was your fault. I’m… I guess… I was jealous of him anyway. So, for him to do this… Something to hurt you…,”

“I know it’s him you’re mad at, but Jack…”

“I know, Sam. Don’t say it.” He found her lips and like ointment to a burn it soothed her hurt. She loved him and she knew him. He could be so sarcastic at time and sometimes he could fly hot really fast, but she’d always loved his wit and his quick reactions had saved their collective asses more than once. With Jack O’Neill you took the good with the bad, but she knew that too. It had never stopped her from loving him.

“Getting back to the matter, what did he say about Pete? What has he done exactly?” She asked still close enough to him to feel his body against hers.

“Seems he’s got a good friend in the FBI. Seems the friend ran a search into our files. The brass thought at first it was someone trying to infiltrate SG1 or SGC security. But they traced the source to a David Farrity within minutes of the breach. Seems the guy didn’t even bother to cover his trail. Guess that made them realize his statement was true.” Jack finished his brief recollection of Hammond’s report to him.

“Pete had a friend break into our military files?” She couldn’t believe it. “Why?”

“Don’t know. Farrity seemed to think he had a personal interest in the ‘woman’ as he put it.”

“Oh hell! What was he thinking? Why would he investigate me? Us? What was he looking for? You think he could be working for someone else?”

“Hammond said the agent who interrogated Farrity didn’t think so. He kept saying that Shanahan was interested in the woman. At first he thought the request was for a case, but the brass checked out his cases and they couldn’t find any kind of link. Seems Farrity was right. It was a personal interest for Shanahan. Farrity has checked out people before for him. He might lose his job. Pete… Well, Hammond’s got people checking him out now. They’ll find out for sure if it more than personal for him.”

Jack paused before adding. “The other thing is that Pete called Hammond and told him about us.”

“God! No. Why would he do that? What did he tell him?”

“No much, seems when Hammond confronted him with Farrity, Pete hung up the phone. Only thing he told Hammond was that we’re having an affair.” Jack watched as every emotion she was feeling displayed across her face. He knew she’d hate to be outed, but like this was the worst. And she still had not answered his question. A slight panic surged through Jack.