Page 4 of Yankee in the Wind

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.