Stargate Aschen

Chapter 5 - Mistaken Identity

“Ugh.” Sam groaned against a stinging headache, and pressed her palms against her eyes. Drowsy, she turned over on her belly and buried her face in the pillow. The stinging smell of damp mold hit her nostrils.

Nausea turned her stomach. She jerked her head back and opened her eyes to look around. Shadowy darkness, broken by thin streaks of light. A dusty floor. Humid air. Where was she?

Brushing her hand through her hair, she lifted herself on her elbows. A rotten, yellowed mattress served as a bed, and an even filthier blanket covered her body. As her vision cleared, more details jumped out at her. Pieces of hay, wooden booths at the sides. A barn.

Oh God. She’d been at a forest bar, looking for a resistance contact. And then some bastard had drugged her, and carried her off. Her stomach clenched.

Drugged. What if he had…

She threw the blanket off. Some of the tension lifted from her chest. She was still wearing the same clothes she’d worn yesterday. No bruises or marks. At least he hadn’t raped her. Yet. On the other hand, if he intended on such a thing, maybe it would have been better if it happened while she was unconscious.

Wincing, Sam rolled off the mattress. Pain pierced her head. Foul tasting dryness filled her mouth. Water. She needed water. She looked around. There was no water here.

Okay, change in plan then. She needed to find a way out of here. If it was a barn, then it was on a farm, and farms usually had some kind of drinking water. She crawled over to the doors and pulled herself up on shaky legs. The world still spun, but maybe if she gave it a couple of minutes, she’d recover without water.

She tried opening the barn door. Locked. Of course. O’Neill—if that was his actual name—certainly wouldn’t leave her in an open barn.

She glanced at one of the windows covered in so much dirt the outside was barely recognizable. Her hands touched the metal bars set into the wood in front of the window frame. She tried shaking them lose with both hands. Nothing. Damn.

She hit her fist against the wall and rested her forehead against the metal. Then her gaze lifted to the hayloft. Most barns had an access door up there to shovel the hay out. Those doors were usually unlocked. Perfect.

She climbed the ladder to the upper level and crawled onto the second floor. Pieces of straw and hay stuck on her clothes and poked uncomfortably into her skin. A number of hay cubes blocked the way to the back wall, but it shouldn’t be hard to climb over them. She had to get behind them to reach the access door.

“Don’t waste your time. It’s sealed shut.”

Sam’s heart sank. Wincing, she turned to peek down from the hayloft. Jack O’Neill stood in the middle of the barn, his dark eyes twinkling, his hands buried in the pockets of his dark green khakis.

He was a good-looking guy. How hadn’t she noticed that the night before? Why on Earth did it matter? He’d drugged and abducted her. The previous night was no more than a blur. Bastard. He had seemed like an honorable person last night, but apparently she’d been wrong in that assessment. Better to be prepared for anything.

She sneaked a glance at the barn door. Open. O’Neill was still blocking it, though, so she needed to distract him first. “What do you want from me?”

He smirked and folded his arms, his gaze locking with hers. “Why don’t you come back down here and we’ll talk.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed. Her gaze dropped to his hips. A knife at the right side of his belt, a gun at his left. Oh boy, the man didn’t even bother to hide his weapons. Yeah, she was dealing with a criminal here. Best case scenario he would be a smuggler, worst case scenario, a murderer or slave trader.