Page 36 of Yankee in the Wind

“Let’s bag it,” Ace agreed and pulled a box of ammunition from his bag and emptied the ammo into the bag. “This’ll have to do.”

“Careful,” Lilly warned, “don’t get stung.”

Ace used a tissue to scoop the microdrone into the little box and closed it.

“Let’s get outta here,” Jack said.

“Wait,” Lilly said and looked closer at the spot where the microdrone had been. The dust underneath it looked to be darker than its surroundings. “Something spilled here. It’s dry now, but maybe I can analyze it to see what it was.” She looked up at Jack and Ace. “Do either of you have a piece of plastic and something I can scoop this up with?”

Jack dug into his pockets, while Ace started rifling through his bag.

“Will a chewing gum wrapper do?” Jack asked.

“It’ll have to,” she said and took the chewing gum stick from him, unwrapped it, and then carefully scooped the dark dust onto the foil, using Jack’s knife. Then she wrapped it securely and put it into the ammo box.

On the way to the SUV, Jack touched Lilly’s arm and she looked at him.

“Well spotted,” he praised her.

“See? It’s good to have me around.”

He grinned. “In more ways than one.”

His words made her pulse tick up a bit. They were a good team, not just when it came to sex. And Jack had proven tonight that he valued her input.

17

When they arrived back at the mansion, Fox was waiting for them with news. He ushered them into the computer room. Jack was eager to hear what he’d found.

“So, after you guys told me that the warehouse was empty,” Fox began and pointed to the large monitor on the wall which depicted a graph, “I looked into the building to see who owned it. I didn’t get far. The owner was clearly a shell corporation.”

“Sucks,” Jack said.

“Yeah, but then I thought all that equipment in there would have used a lot of energy, so I hacked into the servers of Dominion Virginia Power, which provides electricity to that area. And look at this.” He pointed to the wall.

“What are we looking at?” Ace asked.

“This graph represents the monthly power usage of that warehouse over the last six months. Pretty high, particularly in the month of Thomas’s death. And then two months later, the usage drops to zero.”

“They moved out,” Jack concluded.

“Exactly. But here’s the interesting thing,” Fox said and used the mouse to show a different view. “This is the daily usage for the month when Thomas died.”

All thirty bars looked to be of similar height except for two. One was about double the height, the next one more than quadruple.

“What happened there?” Lilly asked.

“A huge power spike, and if we can believe the date of death on Thomas’s death certificate, then the spikes occurred the day before he died and the day of his death.”

Jack stared at the graph, then back at Fox. “You think Thomas was there on the days the power spiked?”

“It’s possible,” Fox said.

Lilly pointed to the screen. “Can you also see on which day the power usage dropped to zero?”

Fox shot her an approving look. “So we can see when they moved out? Yep.” He switched to the next screen. “There it is. They disconnected all the equipment on the 28th of last month. We have to assume that they moved the equipment the same day or the next.”

Jack let out a breath. This was good information. “Now all we need is to check all traffic cameras in the area to see where they moved the equipment to.”