Page 29 of Yankee in the Wind

“Hi, Michelle, nice to meet you.” Lilly shook her hand.

“The guys said you were up here going through clothes,” Michelle said.

“Yeah,” Phoebe said, “Lilly can’t go home, so she needs a few things. She wears size 7 ½ shoes. What’s your size?”

“Sorry, I’m a six. Let’s order you a few pairs of shoes,” Michelle suggested, and already pulled out her cell phone and started typing on it. “Let’s get you some tennis shoes, some sandals…”

She looked at Lilly’s shoes which were pumps she wore to work, but which by now made her feet hurt.

“Yeah, you probably don’t want anything too dressy. I always vote for sensible shoes, just in case you’ve gotta run.” Michelle and Phoebe exchanged a look.

“I agree,” Phoebe said.

“Okay,” Lilly said. “Let me give you my credit card for the order.”

She dug into her handbag, but Michelle put her hand on her arm to stop her.

“You might as well forget that you have a credit card. You can’t use it anymore, or somebody will track you down.”

“But then how, I mean, what am I gonna do for money?”

“I’ll take care of it,” Michelle said.

“But I can’t just take your money.”

Michelle smirked. “Oh, it’s not my money.”

Lilly stared at her, confused. “Then whose money is it?”

“Some Russian oligarchs’ or that of some other rich people who’ve lost track of how much they have,” Michelle said lightly. “I rotate things around so nobody gets wind of what I’m doing.”

“How?”

“I’m a hacker. It’s really pretty simple when you know what to do.” She shrugged.

“And it’s a godsend,” Phoebe said. “Otherwise Scott and I wouldn’t be able to maintain this house for very long. We were pretty broke until about a week ago, when we found Nick and Michelle. The house belongs to Scott, though it’s not in his name so that his enemies can’t find him, but it’s not like either one of us can hold down a job, not while Scott’s on the run. And we had to spend quite a bit on beefing up security here. The place was deserted for years after his father was murdered.”

“His father? Was he in the CIA too?”

“Yes, he ran the program Scott, Nick, and Jack were in.”

“Are you saying Henry Sheppard was Scott’s father?”

Phoebe nodded. “His adoptive father.”

No wonder Jack had been so certain that the man Lilly had spoken to on the phone hadn’t been Henry Sheppard.

Lilly let out a breath. “This is all so overwhelming.”

Phoebe gave her a kind smile. “How about we make some tea and have a snack, and we’ll fill you in on everything you need to know?”

“That sounds perfect,” Lilly replied.

14

In the nerve center of the mansion, the computer room with the dark gray paint, Jack filled in Ace and Fox about everything he’d discovered in his search for Thomas Reed, starting with his visit to River’s father in the nursing home and the old man’s odd ramblings, his premonition about Lilly’s would-be assassination, and ending with the hit-and-run death of Dr. Amy Price.

“Fuck!” Ace cursed. “That doctor definitely knew something our enemies don’t want us to find. There must be a report or something that she wrote down before she issued the death certificate. There should be something in her files.”