Daniel Sousa glanced up as he heard the familiar sound of high heels clicking slow and steady down the wooden floors of the bullpen; Peggy was walking between the desks with the daily stack of files and reports piled on one arm, distributing them around to the other Agents. He leant casually back in his chair as she reached his station. "Morning," he said simply, smiling at her.
"Good morning," she replied automatically, casting a distracted smile of her own his way as she handed him a few files.
"Thanks," he said easily, taking them from her and stacking them on his desk. He glanced up at her once more, wanting to make conversation while she was here. "Did Krezminsky ask you to cover his shift yet?" he asked, since Ray had been pestering anyone and everyone to cover his shift that evening since he was supposed to be taking his girl to a show and had double-booked himself- Daniel was working that night as well, and he couldn't help but hope that Peggy would end up on the shift with him despite the impropriety of a woman working such late hours.
Peggy grimaced slightly. "I highly doubt the Chief will allow a woman to take nights," she said, her British voice clipped and mildly disgruntled. She then glanced down the bullpen, towards Thompson's empty desk. "Is Agent Thompson in yet?" she wanted to know.
"Yeah, he and Krezminsky are in with the Chief putting some profiles together," Sousa replied, assuming that she had some reports for him as well.
Peggy made a non-committal noise in response and cast him another distracted smile before continuing on to her own station, settling down behind her desk and starting to get to work on her data-analysis for the day.
Daniel, meanwhile, looked down at the files she had delivered to him and started to sort through them; some minutes later he reached a report from the registration office and opened it. He instantly sucked in a shocked breath at the neatly typed words on the report and quickly got to his feet, hefting his crutch as he headed towards the Chief's office. Well aware that he was interrupting the conversation taking place inside but knowing that they would want to hear the news, he hovered in the doorway. "Ran the number plate we pulled from the Roxxon debris," he said, catching the attention of Chief, Thompson, and Krezminsky, who were busy putting together a pin-board of information. "Belongs to Howard Stark."
There was a beat of silence, during which he noticed Thompson sending a deep frown his way.
"I found that," Krezminsky reminded them all unnecessarily, sounding slightly smug as he perched on the filing cabinet behind the Chief's desk.
"Boss, Howard Stark was on the lam when Roxxon went under," Daniel continued, almost thinking that the find was too good to be true. "Do we really think he would risk his freedom to blow it up – or in?" he amended, remembering the unusual explosion and debris pattern.
"Somebody was driving that car, I wanna know who," Dooley said bluntly, spreading his hands slightly.
"Let me take Carter," Thompson said abruptly, making everyone turn to look at him; he was leaning against the wall with his arms folded across his chest.
Dooley twisted in his chair to give him a highly sceptical look. "What?" he questioned, staring at him incredulously.
Thompson shrugged slightly. "She mentioned something the other day about wanting to see Stark's vault," he said casually, still leaning against the wall. "Get an idea of how someone – or Stark – broke in and took everything." He pushed himself away from the wall, straightening up to address the Chief. "Technically it's a crime scene that we haven't even looked at yet," he reminded them, sticking his hands in his pockets. "She can play the detective and look at the scene while I question the staff - two birds, one stone and all that."
There was a brief silence, then Dooley slowly nodded his agreement. "Not a bad idea, and it gets her out from under our feet," he allowed, gesturing for him to go. Thompson nodded once, a brief jerk of his head, and left the office.
Daniel huffed slightly, tapping the file in question against his leg as Thompson brushed passed him. "Guess I'll keep hunting the blond," he said slowly, feeling slightly irked that Thompson was the one who got to go out into the field with Peggy when Krezminsky had been the one to find the number plate and he had done the legwork to run the plates.
"Did you pull any prints from the stapler?" Dooley wanted to know, turning his attention to him; all of the team had been frustrated when the pictures from the nightclub had turned up negative, with not one clear shot of the woman's face.
"Yeah, and the safe door," Daniel replied, glancing down at the file on the numberplate that he still held in his hand. "They're with the Bureau of Identification now, so hopefully they'll get back to me later today."
Peggy was sat at her desk looking over the reports that had been foisted on her by other Agents too lazy to do their own desk-work when Agent Thompson emerged from the Chief's office. "Carter, with me," he said simply, gesturing quickly for her to join him as he headed for his own station. She stared at him for a moment while he picked up his hat and jacket from the back of his chair; seeing that she had made no immediate motion to move, he snapped his fingers impatiently at her and jerked his head towards the elevator. "Come on, hop to it."
Resigning herself to whatever it was that he wanted of her, she gathered her own jacket and handbag and followed him to the elevator. "Where are we going?" she asked as the doors opened and they stepped inside.
"Krezminsky pulled a licence plate out of the Roxxon debris and you will never guess who it belongs to," he said with an air of exaggerated disbelief, followed by shooting a darkly scowling look her way. "You said Stark wasn't your partner. I'm sticking my neck out here, I don't appreciate being lied to," he told her severely, frowning deeply at her from beneath the low brim of his hat.
"I didn't lie," Peggy told him honestly, knowing that the discovery of the licence plate would prove problematic for both her investigation and Mr Jarvis. "I'm not working directly with Howard."
"Then who was driving that car?" Thompson asked, clearly unimpressed.
"I am sure you will figure it out soon enough," she replied primly as the elevator opened in the lobby and they both headed for the doors. She assumed that they were on their way to question Howard's staff, which was the logical next step once the plate had been found, and only hoped that Mr Jarvis didn't panic when SSR Agents turned up on his doorstep.
He shook his head, looking slightly disgusted. "I can't believe this, I should never have agreed to this plan of yours," he said as they approached his sleek, grey car, which was parked on the curb outside the building.
Peggy gave him a long, cool look, irked by his arrogance and the dismissive curl to his mouth. "You think I'm a secretary," Peggy said simply, staring at him. "Better at filing reports and bringing lunches than I ever could be on a case."
Thompson held open the passenger side door for her, standing pointedly beside it and waiting for her to get in the car. "The thought had crossed my mind," he admitted unrepentantly.
She stepped forward, yanking on the car door slightly so that he was no longer holding it for her. "Well I think you're a sexist, misogynistic soldier," she said coldly; normally she would not get so riled by her co-workers words, but the fact that Jack had agreed to help her with her investigation and was now pulling back at the first sign of a bump in the road had her slightly infuriated. "A relic of the war who, while probably fairly skilled in heavy artillery, driving a tank, and leadership, has absolutely no idea how post-war espionage works."
He was scowling deeply at her, his forehead creased into lines. "Watch your tone, Carter," he said warningly.
She was uncowed by both his voice and expression. "During the war Howard worked on both Project Rebirth and the A-bomb – and now his weapons have been stolen by the Russians, who have been pushing boundaries against the Allies since VE day, and he is enemy number one in the US," she surmised plainly, stepping forward so that they were face to face as they argued. "Tell me, do you really think any of that is a coincidence?"
"You know I don't," he snapped back instantly.
"Then stop focusing on who my partner is and look at the bigger picture," she ordered in a tone that brooked no refusal, before smoothly ducking her head to enter his car, leaving him standing alone on the curb as her door slammed behind her.
There was a long pause, and then the drivers side opened and Thompson folded himself in behind the wheel. He was still scowling fiercely as he started the engine. The silence dragged on as they pulled out into the New York traffic and she could feel the tension rolling off Jack in waves.
"I assume we are going to question Howard's staff," Peggy said in a calm, neutral voice – it was something of a peace offering, she supposed. She had said her piece and now wanted to continue on with the day and the case with as little bickering as possible.
"Well," Thompson said, drawling his words though they still contained a bite of anger in them. "You did say you wanted a look at the vault, figured I'd give you a ride."
Peggy didn't reply; she had been itching to look at the vault since Brannis had confessed to taking the weapons, hoping that she would have a better idea of a trail to follow if she knew how he had broken in. She had considered going straight out to Howard's primary residence that morning but had decided to go into the office first instead of simply going AWOL for a few hours; Thompson may have decided to work with her on this (excepting the minor spat on the curb several minutes ago) but he was determined to be in charge of the case she didn't trust him not to go to the Chief if she didn't give the appearance of towing his line.
The drive out to Howard's sprawling residence was a quiet and tense one, with jack shooting her covert glances every few minutes. By the time they pulled up onto the paved driveway, with Thompson eyeing some of the more expensive and ostentatious cars also parked up, he seemed to have recovered from his anger and the arrogant, lazy air that he often held about him was back. She followed him as he headed straight to the front door, hammering on it with more force than was necessary – then even harder when there was no instant reply.
Mr Jarvis opened the door – his look chagrin at the overly-zealous knocking quickly turned to alarm as he saw her standing behind Thompson, though he smoothed his features into an impressively stoic mask. "Good morning, can I help you?" he asked them politely, glancing at her once again.
"Morning," Jack said, touching the brim of his hat and reaching into his jacket pocket to pull out his badge, meanwhile Peggy remained silent. "Agents Thompson and Carter with the SSR."
There was a slight pause. "If you're looking for Mr Stark I'm afraid he is indefinitely unavailable," Mr Jarvis said, still clearly trying to make sense of Peggy's presence there.
"We're well aware of that, Mr Jarvis," Thompson replied, his tone a mixture of amused and threatening. He rocked forward on his toes slightly, lazily shoving his hands in his trouser pockets. "Tell me, did you misplace anything recently?" he wanted to know.
"Well yes, I did lose a fountain pen on Fifth Avenue," Jarvis said, visibly brightening up and looking optimistic – it would have been almost convincing if he hadn't shot another glance in Peggy's direction.
Thompson's mouth quirked into a smile. "How about the bumper of a fleet master, anything like that?" he asked in a dry, cocky voice.
Jarvis tilted his head slightly. "Just the bumper?" he checked knowingly. "I wish you had found the whole thing. I reported it stolen several days ago, Detective Davis in the 19th precinct was very helpful."
Jack huffed slightly in wry amusement; he turned to look at Peggy with his hands still buried in his pockets. "Filing a stolen car report ... Clever," he allowed, cocking an eyebrow at her.
"Yes, I thought so," she agreed, knowing that there was no point in concealing the fact that the car wasn't actually stolen. She turned back to Mr Jarvis, whose face was crumpled into a frown of confusion as he looked between the two of them. "May we come in, Mr Jarvis?" she asked politely.
He simply parted his lips, looking somewhat thrown. "There is no need to look like a rabbit caught in the headlights," she told him sternly, walking passed him and into the foyer, followed by Jack. "Believe it or not, Thompson is actually helping me with this case."
"Oh," Mr Jarvis replied, blinking rapidly. "... When you say helping -"
"I mean actually helping," Peggy clarified, hoping that this would be the case – it was one thing to sit in a pub with a drink and agree to look at things from her perspective, it would be quite another for him to be out in the field with her making different calls than he was used to.
"So this is your secret partner," Thompson said, sounding unimpressed as he looked Jarvis up and down as they lingered in the entry-way. He removed his hat and held it in one hand, using it to gesture between the two of them. "And your non-direct line of communication to Stark."
"I did say you would find out soon enough," Peggy reminded him primly, standing with one ankle crossed behind the other. "I assume the stolen car report will be enough to placate Dooley."
Thompson grimaced, a deep crease between his brows. "That bumper was found at a major crime scene," he reminded her. "Unless we can prove that Stark's vault actually was broken into and work the angle that the car was stolen to set up Stark, Chief'll expect me to bring him in for further questioning." His gaze drifted over to Jarvis once more, his grimace deepening to a full scowl. "... Which I'm half-inclined to do anyway since he probably has at least some idea of where his boss is."
"I have already been questioned several times by detectives pertaining to the Congress investigation," Jarvis said smoothly, his bearing cool and calm.
Jack's answering smile was dangerous. "Yeah, well their methods of interrogation are a little different to mine," he said quietly, the threat implicit in his voice.
"Thompson," Peggy said sternly, warning him off; he looked at her and shrugged slightly, which she decided to take as an agreement on his part to play nice. She then turned back to Howard's butler. "The vault, Mr Jarvis?" she said pointedly, wanting to get started before more manly posturing took place.
It was Mr Jarvis's turn to look her up and down, taking in her fitted skirt and heels before glancing at Jack's immaculate suit. "I'm afraid neither you or Mr Thompson are really dressed for it, Miss Carter," he said apologetically, making Peggy glance down at her clothes.
"Agent," Thompson corrected coldly, still scowling deeply. "Agent Thompson and Agent Carter."
There was a long pause. "Quite so," Jarvis allowed, deferring to him and eventually gesturing towards the stairs. "If you will follow me, the vault is this way."
They headed towards the stairs, descending down into the basement of the sprawling residence. "Mr Stark will not appreciate you bringing another person onto the team, especially someone he does not know," Jarvis said quietly to her as they reached the corridor containing the thick and unwieldy looking vault door.
"I didn't exactly have much choice in the matter," Peggy said honestly, then stopped to examine the thick metal of the door and the dial that acted as a lock. "This doesn't look like it was compromised," she pointed out, seeing no sign of forced entry.
"That's because it wasn't," Mr Jarvis said as he fiddled with the lock, twisting the dial several times in an elaborate combination. "Our thief didn't exactly walk the items out of the front door."
"Then how did they get out?" she asked.
"See for yourself," Jarvis replied, finishing the combination and hauling the door open with impressive strength.
The inside of the vault was revealed; everything had been cleared out and there was a large hole in the floor, going down at least ten feet and into the sewers below. Peggy walked in slowly, her heels clicking as she circled the hole, examining it carefully. "The night of the break in did you hear anything?" she questioned, knowing that the sound and vibration of the drilling would have been colossal.
"No, there was a monstrous storm that knocked out the power and alarms for over two hours," Jarvis reported, lingering by the open vault door while Jack crouched at the edge of the hole, frowning in contemplation. "Not that I would have heard a thing, I'm afraid the sultry combination of candlelight and rain always puts me out like a baby."
"You're quite the guard dog," Peggy said mildly, still examining the vault.
"Security is not in my purview," he reminded her, making her smile slightly at his insistence.
"Nah, you're just the fall guy," Thompson put in dryly as he straightened up, implying that Howard had set him up to take the blame – which, considering how dangerous the discovery of the license plate could prove to be, might not be far from the truth.
Ignoring him, Peggy whistled low and long – the echoes could be heard all the way though the tunnels below, suggesting that they were extensive. Knowing that they would have to descend into the tunnel in order to get an idea of where Brannis went with the weapons, she turned to face Mr Jarvis once more. "We'll need torches and climbing equipment," she told him simply, then glanced at Thompson. "I assume that you're armed," she added.
He gave her a bored look and flashed his gun, which was holstered at his side and concealed by his suit jacket.
Mr Jarvis looked somewhat shocked. "You're not suggesting -"
"I didn't just come here to stare at a hole in the floor, Mr Jarvis," she said brusquely, wanting to get started. "Torches and climbing equipment?" she reiterated firmly. "Or do we have to return to the SSR?"
Jarvis blinked once, then deferred to her wishes. "I'll see what I can do," he agreed, inclining his head at her slightly before leaving the two of them alone in the vault.
"He seems like a real pill," Thompson drawled once he had gone, walking around the vault and examining the empty shelves.
"He is somewhat new to espionage," Peggy replied, in no humour to defend Mr Jarvis any further.
There was a beat of silence in which Thompson picked up a loose bit of rubble left over from the drilling and dropped it into the hole. It fell for a second or two, landing with a plink into the shallow water in the tunnel. "You know, he's right in saying that you ain't exactly dressed for this," he pointed out dryly, gesturing at her clothing and shoes with his hat as his gaze flicked boldly down her body.
"I assure you, I have been in far worse positions in even less appropriate footwear, so you needn't concern yourself with me," she told him, annoyed at the way his eyes seemed to be lingering on the hem of her skirt. "In the meantime, check for fingerprints," she ordered him, passing him the small kit that she always carried in her handbag, their fingers brushing as he took it. "We have Brannis's body, so if we can link him to this crime-scene then it will go a long way to clearing Howard's name."
"Let's get one thing straight here," Thompson said firmly, opening the kit to examine the sprays and powders it contained. "I am not trying to 'clear Stark's name,'" he said, the mild disgust in his voice putting clear quotation marks around the words. "I am trying to find the covert organisation that stole several highly dangerous and volatile weapons."
"Yes, thank you for that clarification," Peggy said bitingly, growing increasingly annoyed at his posturing and insistence on being in charge after she had been the one to remind him to focus on who had stolen the weapons as opposed to Howard.
There was a brief silence, during which Thompson strolled over to the empty shelves, a deep crease between his brows as he contemplated where best to search for fingerprints.
"So what exactly is going on between you and Stark?" he asked dryly as he started on the first of the powders, not looking at her. Peggy made a faint noise of confusion and he glanced over his shoulder at her. "You clearly know your way around his place, you're friendly with the help and you're sticking your neck on the line to get him out of a tight spot," he added, summing up his impression so far.
"Normally I would say that my relationship with Howard – or any other man - was absolutely none of your business," she said firmly, in a tone that brooked no argument, then sighed and rolled her eyes slightly. "But since we are going to be working together for the foreseeable future to clear his name, I anticipate that this question will be raised more than once if I do not clarify things now," she added, knowing that he probably wouldn't let this go. "Howard and I are very old friends, nothing more. Are you satisfied?"
Thompson shrugged slightly, indicating that he didn't particularly care.
There was another silence, while Peggy examined the pattern of the drilling around the hole as Thompson lifted several fingerprints, frowning at them. "Find anything?" she asked after a while.
He nodded. "You do realise that these prints are likely Stark's, right?" he reminded her unnecessarily.
"Try the floor," she suggested. "Brannis might have hauled himself up."
She watched him work for a moment, crouched down at the edge of the hole as he fiddled with the powders and sprays - then he raised his brows. "Looks like we've got ourselves nearly a compete palm print," he reported, holding the lifted print up to the light and frowning at it. "Different from the others."
"Let's hope it's our man," Peggy said, feeling optimistic for the first time since Jack had snapped his fingers and ordered her to follow him.
Stark's butler arrived with the torches and climbing equipment some minutes later and they lost no time attaching the ropes to a hook that they suspended from the main light fixture in the vault. Jack removed his jacket and watched as Peggy shrugged the harness on over her pretty and delicate fitted shirt, tightening the straps with deft fingers before competently starting on the climbing knots, needing no instruction.
"You've done this before," he observed as they stood right in front of each other to attach the shared ropes to the hooks on their harnesses.
"Tell me, Agent Thompson, are you under the impression that all I did during the war was typing and filing?" she asked in a clipped voice, not looking at him as she finished her harness and fed some excess rope over to one side, ready before him.
He pressed his lips together, frowning as he finally fastened his last clip, which had been giving him some trouble. "I know you saw some action, but -"
He was cut off as Peggy suddenly hauled on the rope with impressive strength and swung them out over the hole. His hands shot to grasp the rope, taken by surprise; their feet were dangling and their bodies were just shy of being pressed together.
"Whenever you're ready, Mr Jarvis," she said calmly, casting a glance up to the butler, who was acting as their spotter.
Jack pondered her words as they were slowly lowered down into the tunnels beneath the vault. He'd read her file when she had first transferred to the NY branch of the SSR (she was pretty and he had been curious) but had scoffed slightly in disbelief at the contents and list of qualifications accredited to her: expert marksman, highly proficient in hand-to-hand combat, code-breaking, espionage, tactics, fluent in Russian and German with passable French, basic aviation skills but no official qualification, and an academic background in both politics and science. On paper she looked highly competent – but he had never been able to align the Agent on paper to the woman who strolled around the office in tightly fitted skirts, red lips, and pretty heels, answering their requests for coffee and reports in an alluring British voice.
He'd never tried.
But, seeing her in the field now – having argued with her earlier out side of the SSR - he couldn't help but notice a difference in her bearing to how she was at the office. She was still wearing the fitted skirt, the red lipstick and those ridiculous shoes even in this damp and rubble-filled tunnel, but she was doggedly determined and confident.
And he started to wonder just how much of her file was actually true.
As he was slightly taller, he touched down on the tunnel floor a second before her and instinctively reached out to put his hands on her hips to steady her as she found her feet. She brushed off his hands, scarcely noticing them, and was already busy unhooking herself. He did the same, flicking on his torch to look around the tunnel. He frowned, reaching out to touch the wall. "Drilling certainly started from down here," he observed, making note of the pattern in the stone.
"Our investigators found an open manhole cover five blocks away, they assume the thief came up there," Mr Jarvis called helpfully down to them, peering out over the edge of the hole.
"Seems open and shut case, Carter," he said, wondering what else she was hoping to find down here beside the print. "Thief drilled up, stole the goods, used the manhole as an exit."
"Carrying hundreds of pounds of equipment packed into unwieldy crates?" Peggy retorted, still examining the tunnel with her torch and sounding sceptical as she reached out and lightly touched the faint, dirty residue of the waterline on the wall. "Forgive me for saying that seems unlikely."
"... Point," Jack allowed fairly, grimacing in annoyance. He looked around once more. "They would need to know the schematics of the building as well, they didn't just drill up at random and luck out on hitting the vault," he said, mostly just talking aloud to himself.
He felt the beam of Peggy's torch on his face. "Precisely," she agreed, sounding surprised that he had suggested such a thing. "Therefore they must have seen the vault from the inside prior to the break in." She turned her gaze upwards and raised her voice. "You said it rained that night," she said pointedly up to Jarvis, the question evident in her voice.
"It was a positive deluge," he called back to her.
Following her train of thought, he looked down at the small trickle of water, which was barely two inches deep in the very middle of the channel. "You're thinking storm water?" he questioned, knowing that New York still used its sewers to run off storm water. "Would it be deep enough?"
"Look at the waterline, easily deep enough for a raft," she replied, directing his gaze to the smudgy line she had been examining, which sat about three feet high on the tunnel walls, indicating where the water had recently been up to. "All Brannis needed was a rainy forecast, a schematic of the building, and he could float his stolen treasure all the way to the sea."
As she spoke they both directed their torches to the faint trickle beneath them, noting the direction the water was flowing in, and then slowly raised the beams so that they were illuminating the dark tunnel ahead. "That way," Jack said, surprised (and reluctantly impressed) by how much she had managed to deduce from the crime-scene.
"Let's go," she agreed, evidently determined.
"I'll just wait here, shall I?" Jarvis called down to them.
Peggy stepped back so that she was looking up into the vault once more. "You can make yourself useful and devise a list of everyone Howard has entertained here in the … oh, let's say three months prior to the break in that we can use as potential suspects," she told him him firmly. "If this doesn't prove fruitful then you need to give the appearance of cooperating with the SSR as much as possible so that the stolen car report is believable."
Jarvis sounded flustered. "You do realise that this list will be rather extensive," he warned her. "Mr Stark had a rigorous social calendar and his, ah, personal relationships were -"
"Just do it," she ordered in a tone that brooked no refusal.
Jack, meanwhile, was already a dozen or so yards down the tunnel, following the direction of the water. The tunnel they were following was joined by several others at various points so, using a small stone that he'd picked up, he made sure to mark the turns that they made as they followed the water so as not to get lost. It was dark and dank, and several of the other tunnels interjecting theirs had a foul reek to them.
It was perhaps twenty minutes later that the water started to get deeper, until it was covering the whole bottom of the tunnel as opposed to just the channel in the middle and licking at their feet; he was aware that he would have a hell of a job polishing his shoes that night, if they weren't completely destroyed, that is. "Aren't you worried about ruining your shoes?" he asked her as they walked, his voice echoing strangely in the tunnels.
"I assure you, Agent Thompson, there is no need to fill the silence with inane babble," she replied, sounding unimpressed as their steps splashed in the muddy water. "Apprehending a Russian organisation with a penchant for stealing highly volatile and dangerous weapons is far more important than my footwear."
He bit his tongue to hide a smile, amused at her tenaciousness. He couldn't help but be reminded of the last girl he had gone out on a date with and subsequently draw a comparison between the two; she had caught her heel on the pavement and cried when it had been all scuffed up. He hadn't asked her out again. Peggy, in contrast, was striding confidently through the muck with mud splatters decorating the backs of her calves, never once losing her footing even in those ridiculous shoes of hers.
They heard the sound of a fog-horn up ahead and, glancing at each other, hastened forwards. Their path was blocked by a grill, with narrow beams of sunlight from outside slicing in. Peggy pulled the panels forward, opening the grill so that they could see beyond.
"It's the harbour," he observed, already knowing that the storm water ran off into the sea. He frowned slightly as they examined the boats moored up; it was very likely that their trail would end here, the boat the weapons had no doubt been loaded on to would probably be long gone, though perhaps they could access harbour records and find out what boats had been moored the night of the break in -
"Look there," Peggy said suddenly, interrupting his train of thought as she handed him the small pair of binoculars that she'd had pressed to her face and smiling slightly.
Following where she had indicated to look, he saw a rickety and old looking boat tied to the docks some distance away. "Is that -?" he started to say, staring at the peeling paint that decorated the sides of the hull.
"Mr Brannis's symbol," she confirmed, sounding highly pleased with herself.
Jack lowered the binoculars, leaning one hand against the open grill. "... Hot damn," he said simply, impressed in spite of himself.
Next up: recovering the weapons …
Also, I'd like to point out that this story is going to diverge more from the original plot of the TV series (aside from a few major plot points), it's not just a retelling with more Jack – this is all setting up for the story :)
Thanks to #CravingHoneydukes for betaing, and thank you all for your awesome reviews!