Yankee in the wind, p.2
Yankee in the Wind, page 2
“You know who I am! For fuck’s sake, I helped you break into Langley only a week ago.”
“Yeah, and maybe you had a reason for helping me, but you sure as shit aren’t Yankee.” Fox reached the first floor and now stood alongside the other man.
Jack looked the stranger up and down. Had they met before?
“I told you I’m Yankee, and that’s the truth. I was part of Stargate, just like you.” He tipped his chin toward the stranger. “And I’m assuming you’re too. You’re a precognitive, just like I am. I can sense it.”
The stranger nodded. “You’re right about that. But that doesn’t mean you’re a friendly. Or that you are who you say you are. You look nothing like Yankee.”
Suddenly it clicked. “The list.” He looked at Fox. “You looked at my photo on the list that you stole from the CIA.”
Fox gave a quick nod. “Yeah, and turns out, you don’t match Yankee’s photo. Sure, you’re his size, his hair color, eye color, you know, the usual stuff, and you’re a precognitive, but you’re not him.”
“There’s a reason why I don’t look like the photo Henry Sheppard had of me.”
“Of course there is,” the stranger said sarcastically.
“I underwent plastic surgery to—”
“No wonder you’re a pretty boy,” the stranger interrupted, his tone revealing that he didn’t believe a single word. “Why didn’t we think of that?”
“It’s true. You want to see the surgery scars?”
Fox and the stranger exchanged a look. “Wouldn’t prove anything.”
“Scott,” Fox said to the man next to him, “how about running his face through the cranio-facial measurement program?”
“Scott?” Jack repeated, staring at the man next to Fox. “You wouldn’t by any chance be Scott Thompson?”
Scott lifted his chin. “What’s it to you?”
“I thought your mug looked familiar. Scott fucking Thompson! I think I owe you an ass-whooping for costing me first place in the cross-country survival test at the academy.”
“And how would I have done that?”
“By lacing my gear with sugar water so a bunch of bees chased me. I had nine bee stings. Do you have any idea how much bee stings itch?” Jack growled.
Suddenly Scott smirked, then looked at Fox, while he put his gun back into his holster. “He’s the real deal. Jack was a totally competitive asshole. He needed to be taken down a notch.”
Jack walked closer to the two former CIA agents. Without warning, he landed a right hook under Scott’s chin. “And you always thought you were better than the rest of us.”
Scott rubbed his chin but didn’t strike back. “Fair enough. It wasn’t exactly my finest hour.”
“Guess we’re even,” Jack said and offered his hand in greeting. “Nice to see that you survived.”
Scott shook his hand. “Code name’s Ace. Glad you did too. We need somebody with your competitive streak.”
“Now that the introductions are out of the way, what am I doing at a rehab center?” Jack asked.
“This was Henry Sheppard’s old house. Let me show you around,” Ace said and put a hand on Jack’s shoulder.
3
Ace and Fox led Jack through the house, the ground floor of which consisted of various offices and meeting rooms, storage rooms, and a large kitchen and dining room.
“Did you buy Sheppard’s house?” Jack asked.
“Buy?” Ace said, shaking his head. “I inherited it. I grew up here.”
For a moment, Jack let the news sink in. “So the rumors were true. You were the kid Sheppard adopted.”
“Yes.” There was pride and pain in his voice.
Ace hadn’t only lost his mentor but also his father.
“Then there’s one thing I don’t get. How can you live here, just a stone’s throw away from whoever betrayed the Stargate program and killed your father? How are you still alive?”
“With a little legal wrangling,” Ace said. “I couldn’t claim my inheritance after he was murdered. I’m sure they were waiting for me to come back here to kill me. I stayed away for three years. Before I came back here, I set up several shell corporations, all in foreign countries, and sold the property to one of them, then had that corporation sell it to the next, and so on, until it was impossible for anybody to follow the ownership trail.”
“So you still own it, just not in your name,” Jack said. “So why the rehab front?”
“I wanted to make sure that none of the neighbors got suspicious about the comings and goings here. For all the neighbors know, this is a very exclusive facility, and people entering the house at odd hours are thought to be celebrities wanting to guard their privacy.”
Fox chimed in. “I’ve only been here a few days, but I’m impressed with the setup. And it works better than I thought it would when Ace first told me.”
“When did all that happen?” Jack asked, addressing Fox. “A week ago you didn’t have anybody but me to help you break into Langley. Why did Ace not help us?”
“I would have, had I known what hare-brained idea you guys came up with. Breaking into Langley!” Ace shook his head.
Jack jerked his thumb toward Fox. “Not my idea. This joker here thought it was a great idea.”
“Hey, it worked,” Fox said with a smirk.
“Could have just as well gone the other way,” Jack said.
“Well, luckily it didn’t,” Ace said. “Because not only was I able to track down Fox because of it, we now also have a list of the former CIA agents involved in the Stargate program.”
Ace opened the door to another room and ushered everybody inside. Jack stepped into the large computer room which seemed to be the nerve center of the building. There were no windows, and the walls had an odd shade of dark gray to them, but the room wasn’t dark. Lots of bright lights illuminated the space.
Jack must have stared at the walls, because Fox said, “It’s a special paint. It shields the room and its equipment from being eavesdropped on.”
“Hey, guys.”
Jack pivoted and saw the woman who’d let him into the house come up from under one of the computer consoles, a few computer cables in her hand.
“So, I guess that means the new guy is kosher?” she asked.
“Jack, meet Phoebe. She’s my fiancée,” Ace said.
Jack raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t expected his fellow precognitive to have a private life. “Nice to meet you, Phoebe.” Involuntarily, his gaze drifted to her belly again. Yes, she was definitely pregnant, though he had no idea how far along she was.
“You can stop staring now, Jack,” Ace said from next to him.
Jack lifted his hands in a show of surrender. “Sorry if I stared, it’s just… ahm… I’m surprised.”
Phoebe chuckled. “Yeah, that makes two of us. And if we don’t find the people who’re coming after the Stargate agents in the next four months, I’m gonna have to give birth to this baby out of wedlock.”
Jack cast a look at Ace but didn’t say anything.
Ace held his gaze. “We can’t exactly get married while people are after us. It’s too risky. If anybody found the marriage license, they would have a way of tracking us.”
“Makes sense,” Jack said, even though he kept his mouth shut so as not to say what he really thought: that it was foolish to be in a serious relationship and bring a child into this world while being hunted by the people who killed Henry Sheppard and sent his agents running for their lives.
But he also knew that Fox was in a relationship too. And a serious one at that. Jack had met Michelle only a week earlier. “Is Michelle here too?”
Fox nodded. “Yeah. Where is she, Phoebe?”
“Somewhere in the attic. It’s something about a line she has to run to bypass whatever… so that the servers run faster,” Phoebe replied. “You know I don’t speak tech.”
“Somebody looking for me?”
Jack recognized Michelle’s voice immediately. He looked over his shoulder and saw her enter the room. Her dark clothes were dusty, and there was a cobweb in her hair.
“Oh, hey, Yankee, you made it,” she said, while Fox plucked the cobweb out of her hair. “Ew! The attic is so dusty. I hope that was the last time I have to go up there.”
“I would’ve done it, if you’d told me,” Fox said.
“Nah, it’s not a problem. You had other things to do.” She looked at Jack. “Is anybody hungry?”
Several replied in the affirmative.
“Okay, Phoebe and I will throw something together in the kitchen, and let you guys get on with it,” Michelle said.
“Thanks, babe,” Fox said.
When the two women left the room and shut the door behind them, Jack tipped his chin toward Ace and Fox. “So you guys all live here? Like in a commune?”
“Definitely not,” Fox said.
“Only Phoebe and I live here,” Ace replied. “On the second floor. But there are several guest rooms, in case Fox and Michelle can’t go home for whatever reason. If you need a place to crash, you can stay here.”
Jack shook his head. “I don’t wanna cramp your style. I’ve got a secure place in D.C. It’s not luxurious like here, but it’s safe.”
Ace motioned to a large desk, and they sat down around it. “Well then, let’s figure out what to do next.”
Meanwhile Fox pulled a laptop closer and logged in. Moments later, he’d pulled up a document and sent it to a larger screen on the wall.
Ace pointed to it. “This is the list Fox managed to get off the servers at Langley. These are the details on thirty-two Stargate agents. We can take several off the list: the three of us, as well as Zulu and Echo.”
“Yeah, Echo is dead,” Jack said with regret.
Fox nodded. “Yeah, you said he went bad? I filled Ace in on what you told me last week. And that he gave you the credentials for Sheppard’s ghost login, which enabled me to steal this list.”
“Unfortunately that’s all I’ve got on him. How did Zulu die?” Jack asked.
“Zulu’s alive,” Ace said. “He volunteered to go to the West Coast to find some of the men on this list. We’re in contact, and he sends us regular updates on what he finds. He has leads on three agents that may be hiding somewhere in California and Oregon: Delta, Polo, and Whiskey.”
Jack looked at the large screen. Each name had a colored dot next to it. “Red for dead? Green for the ones whose location you have?”
Fox nodded. “Yep. Blue for the ones Zulu has leads on.”
“Assuming Zulu finds the three he’s got leads on, that leaves twenty-four to find,” Jack said. “Let’s go through them. Perhaps I recognize some of them.”
Ace cleared his throat. “Yeah, I’m afraid that my father made a mistake when he decided that the Stargate agents shouldn’t know each other. But that doesn’t mean that all of them are strangers to us. We all had to undergo regular CIA training.” He pointed to Jack. “Just like you and I were at Camp Peary at the same time, others were too.”
Fox nodded eagerly and scrolled through the list. “Ace and I already went through the list several times. The guys we recognized from either The Farm or other places, are marked in yellow. They will be easier to find, because we know them, we know their habits, and in some cases bits about their background and families.”
“That still leaves a whole bunch of them,” Jack said. He pointed to the top of the list. “Show them to me individually, photos and names.”
Slowly, Fox scrolled through the list. Next to each photo was the real name and code name of the agent, as well as any special skills. Jack looked at each photo, let each name sink in, trying to recall any memories of the person.
“Next,” he said, and every minute or two, he repeated the word.
“Not many left,” Ace said, disappointment evident in his voice.
He couldn’t blame the guy. Looking for somebody you knew nothing about, and who didn’t want to be found, was worse than looking for a needle in a haystack. It was looking for a straw in a haystack.
Jack looked at the next photo and the name next to it.
Code Name: River
Name: Thomas Reed
He jumped up and pointed at the screen. “That’s Thomas Reed. We were in the military together, before I joined the CIA. I had no idea Sheppard recruited him too.”
“You knew him but didn’t know he had the same gift as you?” Ace asked.
“I always felt the telltale tingling sensation at my nape when we were in the military together, but back then I didn’t know what it meant. And Thomas and I never talked about our premonitions. I guess neither of us wanted to come across as weird or batshit crazy. But it does explain why he was able to get out of the line of fire so many times when we were fighting insurgents abroad. He always called it a sixth sense.” He took a breath. “I know how to find him.”
4
Wearing a white lab coat, Lilly sat behind her desk in her tiny office separated from the laboratory she ran at Delta Labs. She had four research assistants working for her, assisting with her current project to synthesize an anti-viral component for a new strain of a Kunjin virus that caused encephalitis. She was poring over the data on her computer, trying to figure out why the protein in the component wasn’t stable enough to last longer than twenty-four hours, when her cell phone rang.
She glanced at the display. Unknown caller, it said. She answered it. “Hello?”
“Miss Davis? Miss Lilly Davis?” the man on the other end of the line asked.
“Yes, this is she.”
If this was a sales call, she was ready to disconnect the call in an instant.
“This is Henry Sheppard. You left a voicemail for me.”
Instantly, Lilly was fully focused on the call, her lab work forgotten. “Mr. Sheppard, thank you for calling me back. I wanted to talk to you about my cousin, Thomas Reed. I understand he worked for you?” At least that was her best guess. She lowered her voice, and added with a whisper, “For the CIA.”
She glanced into the lab, but none of her assistants was close enough to the open office door to overhear her conversation.
“I can neither confirm nor deny your statement,” Sheppard said evasively.
“I found his ID,” she pressed on. “I have questions.”
“What kind of questions?”
“How he died, and why he was cremated.”
“I’m afraid that information is classified, Miss Davis.”
“So he did work for the CIA?”
Sheppard cleared his throat. “I can’t give you any information about Thomas Reed.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a matter of national security.”
“At least tell me what he died of. I tried to find his death certificate, but it appears none was ever sent to his father. I need to see the death certificate.”
“Miss Davis, I suggest you let this go. Your cousin is dead, and nothing good will come of you sticking your nose into government business.”
“This is not government business. This is about my family. My cousin is dead, and he was cremated against his wishes. I think I’m owed an explanation.”
There was a pause, and Lilly wondered if Sheppard had hung up on her.
“Mr. Sheppard?”
“Your cousin died during a training exercise. It was a tragic accident.”
She needed to know more. “What happened?”
“The details are classified. I’ve already told you more than I should.”
“And his death certificate? Do you have it?”
“I’m afraid that’s outside of my area of responsibility. I’m sorry for your loss, Miss Davis. Have a good day.”
He disconnected the call, before she could say anything else.
Frustrated, she tossed her cell phone on the desk. “Damn it!”
She wasn’t satisfied with the answers Sheppard had given her. A training exercise? That could mean anything. Besides, it wasn’t consistent with what Deja had mentioned—that an infectious disease might have been the cause. In either case, it didn’t tell her how Thomas had died, and why he was cremated. She needed to find his death certificate. It would give her at least his cause of death, and also where he’d died.
Lilly did a quick Google search to find the information for the DC Vital Records Division. She called the number for records requests. A recording played.
“You have reached DC Vital Records Division. Your wait time is forty-five minutes. If you want to request a document, please visit our website at dchealth.dc.gov/vital-records and fill in the request form together with the applicable fee, proof of identity, and proof of relationship to the person whose record you are requesting. A copy of the record will be sent to you within four weeks. Thank you for contacting DC Vital Records Division.”
Lilly disconnected the call. “Four weeks? Are you kidding me?” she ground out.
Not having a choice, she saved the link to the online form. She would fill it out after work and find whatever supporting documentation she needed to upload with it. She looked at the folder she’d put together. It contained everything she had on Thomas’s death. She leafed through it once more, looking at everything with fresh eyes. There was a cremation certificate. She looked at it more closely. It was issued by a funeral home named Peaceful Rest not too far from the laboratory.
Lilly glanced at the clock. It was almost midday. She took off her lab coat and grabbed the file and her handbag. As she walked out of her office, she said to one of her lab technicians, “Andrew, I’m taking a long lunch.”
Andrew looked up from his work. “See you later.”
Outside, she walked across the small parking lot attached to the four-story building where Delta Labs was located and headed for the parking garage. She preferred parking in the five-story garage because it meant her car wouldn’t feel like a sauna in the summer months. Lilly jumped in her car and drove to the funeral home. She parked in the large parking lot. There was no cemetery attached to the funeral home. She knew with certainty that the cemetery where Thomas’s ashes had been laid to rest had a funeral home attached to it, even though she hadn’t actually visited his grave yet. There hadn’t been time since her return. So why had Thomas been cremated at Peaceful Rest and not at the funeral home associated with the cemetery where his ashes had been interred? Why not do everything at the same place?
“Yeah, and maybe you had a reason for helping me, but you sure as shit aren’t Yankee.” Fox reached the first floor and now stood alongside the other man.
Jack looked the stranger up and down. Had they met before?
“I told you I’m Yankee, and that’s the truth. I was part of Stargate, just like you.” He tipped his chin toward the stranger. “And I’m assuming you’re too. You’re a precognitive, just like I am. I can sense it.”
The stranger nodded. “You’re right about that. But that doesn’t mean you’re a friendly. Or that you are who you say you are. You look nothing like Yankee.”
Suddenly it clicked. “The list.” He looked at Fox. “You looked at my photo on the list that you stole from the CIA.”
Fox gave a quick nod. “Yeah, and turns out, you don’t match Yankee’s photo. Sure, you’re his size, his hair color, eye color, you know, the usual stuff, and you’re a precognitive, but you’re not him.”
“There’s a reason why I don’t look like the photo Henry Sheppard had of me.”
“Of course there is,” the stranger said sarcastically.
“I underwent plastic surgery to—”
“No wonder you’re a pretty boy,” the stranger interrupted, his tone revealing that he didn’t believe a single word. “Why didn’t we think of that?”
“It’s true. You want to see the surgery scars?”
Fox and the stranger exchanged a look. “Wouldn’t prove anything.”
“Scott,” Fox said to the man next to him, “how about running his face through the cranio-facial measurement program?”
“Scott?” Jack repeated, staring at the man next to Fox. “You wouldn’t by any chance be Scott Thompson?”
Scott lifted his chin. “What’s it to you?”
“I thought your mug looked familiar. Scott fucking Thompson! I think I owe you an ass-whooping for costing me first place in the cross-country survival test at the academy.”
“And how would I have done that?”
“By lacing my gear with sugar water so a bunch of bees chased me. I had nine bee stings. Do you have any idea how much bee stings itch?” Jack growled.
Suddenly Scott smirked, then looked at Fox, while he put his gun back into his holster. “He’s the real deal. Jack was a totally competitive asshole. He needed to be taken down a notch.”
Jack walked closer to the two former CIA agents. Without warning, he landed a right hook under Scott’s chin. “And you always thought you were better than the rest of us.”
Scott rubbed his chin but didn’t strike back. “Fair enough. It wasn’t exactly my finest hour.”
“Guess we’re even,” Jack said and offered his hand in greeting. “Nice to see that you survived.”
Scott shook his hand. “Code name’s Ace. Glad you did too. We need somebody with your competitive streak.”
“Now that the introductions are out of the way, what am I doing at a rehab center?” Jack asked.
“This was Henry Sheppard’s old house. Let me show you around,” Ace said and put a hand on Jack’s shoulder.
3
Ace and Fox led Jack through the house, the ground floor of which consisted of various offices and meeting rooms, storage rooms, and a large kitchen and dining room.
“Did you buy Sheppard’s house?” Jack asked.
“Buy?” Ace said, shaking his head. “I inherited it. I grew up here.”
For a moment, Jack let the news sink in. “So the rumors were true. You were the kid Sheppard adopted.”
“Yes.” There was pride and pain in his voice.
Ace hadn’t only lost his mentor but also his father.
“Then there’s one thing I don’t get. How can you live here, just a stone’s throw away from whoever betrayed the Stargate program and killed your father? How are you still alive?”
“With a little legal wrangling,” Ace said. “I couldn’t claim my inheritance after he was murdered. I’m sure they were waiting for me to come back here to kill me. I stayed away for three years. Before I came back here, I set up several shell corporations, all in foreign countries, and sold the property to one of them, then had that corporation sell it to the next, and so on, until it was impossible for anybody to follow the ownership trail.”
“So you still own it, just not in your name,” Jack said. “So why the rehab front?”
“I wanted to make sure that none of the neighbors got suspicious about the comings and goings here. For all the neighbors know, this is a very exclusive facility, and people entering the house at odd hours are thought to be celebrities wanting to guard their privacy.”
Fox chimed in. “I’ve only been here a few days, but I’m impressed with the setup. And it works better than I thought it would when Ace first told me.”
“When did all that happen?” Jack asked, addressing Fox. “A week ago you didn’t have anybody but me to help you break into Langley. Why did Ace not help us?”
“I would have, had I known what hare-brained idea you guys came up with. Breaking into Langley!” Ace shook his head.
Jack jerked his thumb toward Fox. “Not my idea. This joker here thought it was a great idea.”
“Hey, it worked,” Fox said with a smirk.
“Could have just as well gone the other way,” Jack said.
“Well, luckily it didn’t,” Ace said. “Because not only was I able to track down Fox because of it, we now also have a list of the former CIA agents involved in the Stargate program.”
Ace opened the door to another room and ushered everybody inside. Jack stepped into the large computer room which seemed to be the nerve center of the building. There were no windows, and the walls had an odd shade of dark gray to them, but the room wasn’t dark. Lots of bright lights illuminated the space.
Jack must have stared at the walls, because Fox said, “It’s a special paint. It shields the room and its equipment from being eavesdropped on.”
“Hey, guys.”
Jack pivoted and saw the woman who’d let him into the house come up from under one of the computer consoles, a few computer cables in her hand.
“So, I guess that means the new guy is kosher?” she asked.
“Jack, meet Phoebe. She’s my fiancée,” Ace said.
Jack raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t expected his fellow precognitive to have a private life. “Nice to meet you, Phoebe.” Involuntarily, his gaze drifted to her belly again. Yes, she was definitely pregnant, though he had no idea how far along she was.
“You can stop staring now, Jack,” Ace said from next to him.
Jack lifted his hands in a show of surrender. “Sorry if I stared, it’s just… ahm… I’m surprised.”
Phoebe chuckled. “Yeah, that makes two of us. And if we don’t find the people who’re coming after the Stargate agents in the next four months, I’m gonna have to give birth to this baby out of wedlock.”
Jack cast a look at Ace but didn’t say anything.
Ace held his gaze. “We can’t exactly get married while people are after us. It’s too risky. If anybody found the marriage license, they would have a way of tracking us.”
“Makes sense,” Jack said, even though he kept his mouth shut so as not to say what he really thought: that it was foolish to be in a serious relationship and bring a child into this world while being hunted by the people who killed Henry Sheppard and sent his agents running for their lives.
But he also knew that Fox was in a relationship too. And a serious one at that. Jack had met Michelle only a week earlier. “Is Michelle here too?”
Fox nodded. “Yeah. Where is she, Phoebe?”
“Somewhere in the attic. It’s something about a line she has to run to bypass whatever… so that the servers run faster,” Phoebe replied. “You know I don’t speak tech.”
“Somebody looking for me?”
Jack recognized Michelle’s voice immediately. He looked over his shoulder and saw her enter the room. Her dark clothes were dusty, and there was a cobweb in her hair.
“Oh, hey, Yankee, you made it,” she said, while Fox plucked the cobweb out of her hair. “Ew! The attic is so dusty. I hope that was the last time I have to go up there.”
“I would’ve done it, if you’d told me,” Fox said.
“Nah, it’s not a problem. You had other things to do.” She looked at Jack. “Is anybody hungry?”
Several replied in the affirmative.
“Okay, Phoebe and I will throw something together in the kitchen, and let you guys get on with it,” Michelle said.
“Thanks, babe,” Fox said.
When the two women left the room and shut the door behind them, Jack tipped his chin toward Ace and Fox. “So you guys all live here? Like in a commune?”
“Definitely not,” Fox said.
“Only Phoebe and I live here,” Ace replied. “On the second floor. But there are several guest rooms, in case Fox and Michelle can’t go home for whatever reason. If you need a place to crash, you can stay here.”
Jack shook his head. “I don’t wanna cramp your style. I’ve got a secure place in D.C. It’s not luxurious like here, but it’s safe.”
Ace motioned to a large desk, and they sat down around it. “Well then, let’s figure out what to do next.”
Meanwhile Fox pulled a laptop closer and logged in. Moments later, he’d pulled up a document and sent it to a larger screen on the wall.
Ace pointed to it. “This is the list Fox managed to get off the servers at Langley. These are the details on thirty-two Stargate agents. We can take several off the list: the three of us, as well as Zulu and Echo.”
“Yeah, Echo is dead,” Jack said with regret.
Fox nodded. “Yeah, you said he went bad? I filled Ace in on what you told me last week. And that he gave you the credentials for Sheppard’s ghost login, which enabled me to steal this list.”
“Unfortunately that’s all I’ve got on him. How did Zulu die?” Jack asked.
“Zulu’s alive,” Ace said. “He volunteered to go to the West Coast to find some of the men on this list. We’re in contact, and he sends us regular updates on what he finds. He has leads on three agents that may be hiding somewhere in California and Oregon: Delta, Polo, and Whiskey.”
Jack looked at the large screen. Each name had a colored dot next to it. “Red for dead? Green for the ones whose location you have?”
Fox nodded. “Yep. Blue for the ones Zulu has leads on.”
“Assuming Zulu finds the three he’s got leads on, that leaves twenty-four to find,” Jack said. “Let’s go through them. Perhaps I recognize some of them.”
Ace cleared his throat. “Yeah, I’m afraid that my father made a mistake when he decided that the Stargate agents shouldn’t know each other. But that doesn’t mean that all of them are strangers to us. We all had to undergo regular CIA training.” He pointed to Jack. “Just like you and I were at Camp Peary at the same time, others were too.”
Fox nodded eagerly and scrolled through the list. “Ace and I already went through the list several times. The guys we recognized from either The Farm or other places, are marked in yellow. They will be easier to find, because we know them, we know their habits, and in some cases bits about their background and families.”
“That still leaves a whole bunch of them,” Jack said. He pointed to the top of the list. “Show them to me individually, photos and names.”
Slowly, Fox scrolled through the list. Next to each photo was the real name and code name of the agent, as well as any special skills. Jack looked at each photo, let each name sink in, trying to recall any memories of the person.
“Next,” he said, and every minute or two, he repeated the word.
“Not many left,” Ace said, disappointment evident in his voice.
He couldn’t blame the guy. Looking for somebody you knew nothing about, and who didn’t want to be found, was worse than looking for a needle in a haystack. It was looking for a straw in a haystack.
Jack looked at the next photo and the name next to it.
Code Name: River
Name: Thomas Reed
He jumped up and pointed at the screen. “That’s Thomas Reed. We were in the military together, before I joined the CIA. I had no idea Sheppard recruited him too.”
“You knew him but didn’t know he had the same gift as you?” Ace asked.
“I always felt the telltale tingling sensation at my nape when we were in the military together, but back then I didn’t know what it meant. And Thomas and I never talked about our premonitions. I guess neither of us wanted to come across as weird or batshit crazy. But it does explain why he was able to get out of the line of fire so many times when we were fighting insurgents abroad. He always called it a sixth sense.” He took a breath. “I know how to find him.”
4
Wearing a white lab coat, Lilly sat behind her desk in her tiny office separated from the laboratory she ran at Delta Labs. She had four research assistants working for her, assisting with her current project to synthesize an anti-viral component for a new strain of a Kunjin virus that caused encephalitis. She was poring over the data on her computer, trying to figure out why the protein in the component wasn’t stable enough to last longer than twenty-four hours, when her cell phone rang.
She glanced at the display. Unknown caller, it said. She answered it. “Hello?”
“Miss Davis? Miss Lilly Davis?” the man on the other end of the line asked.
“Yes, this is she.”
If this was a sales call, she was ready to disconnect the call in an instant.
“This is Henry Sheppard. You left a voicemail for me.”
Instantly, Lilly was fully focused on the call, her lab work forgotten. “Mr. Sheppard, thank you for calling me back. I wanted to talk to you about my cousin, Thomas Reed. I understand he worked for you?” At least that was her best guess. She lowered her voice, and added with a whisper, “For the CIA.”
She glanced into the lab, but none of her assistants was close enough to the open office door to overhear her conversation.
“I can neither confirm nor deny your statement,” Sheppard said evasively.
“I found his ID,” she pressed on. “I have questions.”
“What kind of questions?”
“How he died, and why he was cremated.”
“I’m afraid that information is classified, Miss Davis.”
“So he did work for the CIA?”
Sheppard cleared his throat. “I can’t give you any information about Thomas Reed.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a matter of national security.”
“At least tell me what he died of. I tried to find his death certificate, but it appears none was ever sent to his father. I need to see the death certificate.”
“Miss Davis, I suggest you let this go. Your cousin is dead, and nothing good will come of you sticking your nose into government business.”
“This is not government business. This is about my family. My cousin is dead, and he was cremated against his wishes. I think I’m owed an explanation.”
There was a pause, and Lilly wondered if Sheppard had hung up on her.
“Mr. Sheppard?”
“Your cousin died during a training exercise. It was a tragic accident.”
She needed to know more. “What happened?”
“The details are classified. I’ve already told you more than I should.”
“And his death certificate? Do you have it?”
“I’m afraid that’s outside of my area of responsibility. I’m sorry for your loss, Miss Davis. Have a good day.”
He disconnected the call, before she could say anything else.
Frustrated, she tossed her cell phone on the desk. “Damn it!”
She wasn’t satisfied with the answers Sheppard had given her. A training exercise? That could mean anything. Besides, it wasn’t consistent with what Deja had mentioned—that an infectious disease might have been the cause. In either case, it didn’t tell her how Thomas had died, and why he was cremated. She needed to find his death certificate. It would give her at least his cause of death, and also where he’d died.
Lilly did a quick Google search to find the information for the DC Vital Records Division. She called the number for records requests. A recording played.
“You have reached DC Vital Records Division. Your wait time is forty-five minutes. If you want to request a document, please visit our website at dchealth.dc.gov/vital-records and fill in the request form together with the applicable fee, proof of identity, and proof of relationship to the person whose record you are requesting. A copy of the record will be sent to you within four weeks. Thank you for contacting DC Vital Records Division.”
Lilly disconnected the call. “Four weeks? Are you kidding me?” she ground out.
Not having a choice, she saved the link to the online form. She would fill it out after work and find whatever supporting documentation she needed to upload with it. She looked at the folder she’d put together. It contained everything she had on Thomas’s death. She leafed through it once more, looking at everything with fresh eyes. There was a cremation certificate. She looked at it more closely. It was issued by a funeral home named Peaceful Rest not too far from the laboratory.
Lilly glanced at the clock. It was almost midday. She took off her lab coat and grabbed the file and her handbag. As she walked out of her office, she said to one of her lab technicians, “Andrew, I’m taking a long lunch.”
Andrew looked up from his work. “See you later.”
Outside, she walked across the small parking lot attached to the four-story building where Delta Labs was located and headed for the parking garage. She preferred parking in the five-story garage because it meant her car wouldn’t feel like a sauna in the summer months. Lilly jumped in her car and drove to the funeral home. She parked in the large parking lot. There was no cemetery attached to the funeral home. She knew with certainty that the cemetery where Thomas’s ashes had been laid to rest had a funeral home attached to it, even though she hadn’t actually visited his grave yet. There hadn’t been time since her return. So why had Thomas been cremated at Peaceful Rest and not at the funeral home associated with the cemetery where his ashes had been interred? Why not do everything at the same place?
