Once a Hero

by Jan Thompson

  Jake supposed that made it all better and hid the fact that Molyneux’s people could stab his neck with a needle under the noses of all the FBI agents in the coffee shop that day.

  Someday he’d have enough evidence to get his paycheck back.

  Meanwhile, he had to keep working on taking down Molyneux, even if the entire Bureau had given up on her. Jake was thankful that when the FBI door slammed in his face, that God opened another door for him.

  Helen said that Earl and Hugo were her most trusted investigators at Hu Knows, Inc. Hugo was still in Brussels and on another case. Earl had gone to Athens, Greece, for a company meeting with Helen Hu, who hadn’t left Europe since her marriage to Reuben Costa.

  Since Earl was taking their corporate jet back to Savannah, Helen had suggested that Jake fly home with him. Halfway over the Atlantic, Earl asked to be on the project. The airplane refueled in Atlanta, and off the duo went across the country.

  Jake welcomed Earl’s help. After all, he needed all the assistance he could get without involving any of his friends still in the Bureau.

  Yes, he knew about the FBI mole. However, he didn’t think it was going affect this situation.

  Would it?

  Chapter Two

  Beatrice Glynn blamed jet lag for keeping her awake at three in the morning on the west coast—six in the morning in Charleston, where she would have been just waking up to the first cup of coffee that her brother made for her every morning whenever she went to see him.

  Instead here she was, waiting for the Ghost of Christmas Past to appear at the next table in the uncrowded brand new twenty-four-hour café overlooking San Francisco Bay.

  Beatrice wondered how her brother was doing these couple of days she had been away, flying back and forth between Europe and North America. He had told her never to call whenever she was out and about, hunting for treasures connected to the Amber Room.

  Her brother was even more paranoid than she.

  Yeah, Benjamin was just as paranoid as Dad when he had been alive. Dad would still be alive had Molyneux not killed him a few years after Dad obtained asylum in the United States and ended up in the witness protection program as a single father of two kids.

  Beatrice was eight years old when Dad died without a body to bury.

  She found out later that Dad hadn’t been a hero she had thought he was. While nurturing a career as a treasure hunter, in reality Dad was a thief and a partner in crime of Molyneux. Of course, it was all hearsay.

  Truth be told, Beatrice hardly remembered the lost years. She was only five years old when she was whisked to the USA and told they would have new names. No longer the Wright family, they would henceforth be the Glynn family. Benjamin was ten, and his story about the event grew more intense and sinister over the years.

  I can’t blame him.

  Beatrice suspected that if she had been ten years old watching her own father be executed, she could be traumatized the rest of her life too. In spite of their loving foster parents, the emotional trauma would remain.

  No wonder Benjamin was a recluse now and hadn’t left the house for as long as Beatrice could remember. He worked from home, had groceries delivered to him, and stayed away from public.

  As for Beatrice, she had taken the opposite direction. Whether she favored her father or a mother she never knew was beside the matter. The point was that she realized she couldn’t be hiding away in a mansion, however nice it was, forever.

  Someone had to bring the fight back to Molyneux.

  Both she and her brother lived with the fact that any day now, Molyneux would come after them to finish the job she started thirty years prior.

  And when she came, Beatrice would be waiting for her.

  In fact, rather than let Molyneux find her way to the Glynn siblings, Beatrice was determined to set a trap for the queen rat.

  And it had everything to do with the Amber Room.

  Ever since she graduated with a doctorate degree in history, with concentration in World War II, Beatrice had set her mind on a race to find the remaining panels of the lost Amber Room before Molyneux did. Then she could dangle the artifact in front of the terrorist and somehow deliver him to the authorities.

  How exactly would she do that last part?

  Well, she hadn’t figured it out entirely yet although she’d get there soon.

  First, she had to put the remaining puzzle together.

  Her contact had notified her that the quarry had left France for San Francisco by way of Mexico. This was the same woman who had tried to meet the FBI Special Agent in Cannes some six months prior.

  As if taunting death, Philomena Caddock seemed to be attempting to contact the agent again. Had she found the key to the music box that was supposed to be hidden in a forest somewhere?

  And how did Philomena come upon such a crucial piece of information?

  Had she gotten it from Dad back when she worked as a nanny and found her way into Dad’s bedroom in England? They had carried on for several years before Mom found out about the affair, ending their already fractured marriage.

  Being forever branded as the homewrecker wasn’t enough for Philomena? Now she revealed herself to be a thief as well, stealing things from Dad that probably hadn’t rightfully belonged to him.

  No wonder Molyneux wanted her dead.

  Everyone wanted Philomena dead.

  Foot traffic was light at this hour of the night compared to six hours before when Beatrice and her team had eaten dinner in the back of a van going up and down Fisherman’s Wharf. Raynelle Dryden and Kenichi were simply happy they weren’t the ones showing their faces to citywide public security cameras placed all over San Francisco.

  Sitting in the van monitoring the situation was a boring task. Yet Beatrice wouldn’t have been a successful treasure hunter if not for those two. She kept giving them a raise every year, with bonuses at Christmas.

  It had been Kenichi who had told Beatrice about the Crete discovery. One single panel from the Amber Room had been buried in a woman’s crypt. When the panel was returned to the Russian curators of the Catherine Palace, Beatrice and Kenichi did some research that led them to an FBI mole who revealed that an agent named Jake Kessler had been deep undercover in Molyneux’s organization.

  The agent was hard to track. He was like a shadow in the night.

  However, the wedding of his friend, private investigator Helen Hu, wasn’t as secret. It was all over the news because Helen’s mother had been convicted of an old crime, also related to the Amber Room.

  One thing led to another, and Beatrice and her team had followed Helen Hu and her new husband, Reuben Costa, as they made their way to Paris, where they met up with FBI Special Agent Jake Kessler.

  Kenichi and Raynelle tracked Helen and Reuben online, while Beatrice followed Kessler to Cannes. So did Molyneux.

  Beatrice prayed that Molyneux had not followed Philomena to San Francisco.

  Still gathering her weapons, Beatrice was not ready to fight Molyneux right now.

  However, the meeting was tonight, like it or not.

  Dressed as a server, Raynelle had done the work of sneaking into the busy café during its peak hours, and assigning Beatrice to the table next to Jake Kessler and Philomena, who had made a reservation under the name of Chisolm Wright—which had thrown Beatrice off for a moment.

  Chisolm Wright had been Dad’s real name when the family was still living in England. When they approved his asylum application, he came over to the States as Thomas Peterson. His son, Eugene, became Benjamin, and his daughter, Amber, became Amberlyn and then later, Beatrice after Dad died when they were yet again adopted by a wealthy family in Charleston.

  While Dad was still alive, he forbade them all to speak of their adoptive mother. Beatrice often wondered what had happened to Imogen Wright, a woman of French descent studying in England and meeting her treasure hunter husband at Oxford.

  To this day, no one knew where she had vanished to.

  And now, aft
er twenty-five years, someone had called on Dad’s old name.

  Why did Philomena ask the FBI agent to reserve a table for two under Chisolm Wright? The meeting had to be about Dad’s dealings with Molyneux. How much did Philomena know?

  Beatrice was there to find out.

  Perhaps she might even discover what had happened to Mom. Had she died? Had Molyneux or Philomena killed her?

  A wig and a face mask were all it took for Beatrice to subvert the facial recognition cameras outside and inside the café. In fact, it was a requirement all over the city to wear a mask—or face covering—to restaurants and public places, a new normal borne out of a recent virus pandemic.

  Ironically, it was going to make it hard for Beatrice to recognize Philomena.

  Except for the scar across her left eyebrow—a gift from Molyneux in Cannes. Beatrice remembered watching Philomena escape. They lost track of her after that.

  However, she was back on a beautiful night in San Francisco.

  A server came to refill Beatrice’s glass of water.

  She had been sitting alone for a while, playing with her phone. Clearly Philomena and FBI agent were late.

  How did Philomena elude the authorities for twenty-five years?

  Well, how did Molyneux?

  Why hadn’t the two met and dealt with each other in all those years? More unsolved puzzles there.

  Beatrice felt no pity for those two women. For one thing, Molyneux had killed so many people that she would never leave prison—if she made it into prison. Numerous government agencies in North America and Europe were after her.

  The server returned. “Would you like something else, ma’am?”

  “May I have the dessert menu?” Beatrice felt like she had to blend in. Most of the people in the café were eating something.

  “Certainly, ma’am. I’ll be right back.”

  At 3:28 a.m. there was still no sign of anyone.

  Beatrice’s shoulders began to hurt a little. Sore muscles here and there. She had slept poorly in the Gulfstream, besotted with worries about the project to take down Molyneux.

  Once in San Francisco, she and her team had booked a hotel room and rented a work van. Then they ate meals in town, got takeouts, went to the gas station.

  She had left an enormous trail for FBI Special Agent Jake Kessler.

  To wit, if anything happened to her—should Molyneux decide to come after her—she had left enough footprints for Kessler to exonerate her or at least bring closure to her case in the event that it turned into a homicide.

  She wouldn’t put it past Molyneux to do whatever she could to be the first person to get to the rest of the Amber Room.

  The server returned and Beatrice kept it simple with a slice of chocolate cake with ice cream on top. When it arrived, she nearly forgot what she was there to do.

  “That looks delicious.”

  The voice was calm, friendly, and distinctly male.

  Beatrice looked up, her fork in midair.

  “Such a tiny slice.” It was all she could think of to say.

  Jake Kessler smiled.

  A nice voice that went with a disarming smile.

  They finally met, but Kessler would never know that she knew who he was long before today.

  He had gotten a haircut since Cannes, though that had been six months prior. Those scars on his forehead and left cheek were healing nicely.

  Beatrice wanted to ask about his ribs, which Molyneux’s men had broken, but that would give her away to both the FBI and to Molyneux.

  She wasn’t sure which one was worse.

  Regardless, she was glad that he was still alive.

  Her anonymous tip to Helen Hu’s personal cell phone had been a knee-jerk reaction. Beatrice could not let a fellow human being die in the ocean when she knew where Molyneux had taken him. The sudden storm was something else. She was surprised that Molyneux had escaped in a helicopter before the fishing boat capsized.

  Thank God Helen and her team had reached him in time.

  Even though Kessler didn’t know Beatrice, she had made him her insurance.

  The man sat down without another word.

  Just as well. Beatrice did not want to say anything that would give away who she was.

  Quietly, she scanned the room. By a dark window, Raynelle was eating salad and reading a book. Presumably she had finished her work as a server in an earlier shift. A former CIA operative, Raynelle Dryden was a coup for Beatrice.

  Officially, Raynelle was her bodyguard due to some previous death threats. Unofficially, Raynelle’s job was to assist Beatrice in finding the rest of the lost Amber Room. That was Kenichi’s job too.

  Around them, several other tables were occupied, but the people generally looked like customers.

  The stage was set.

  All they needed now was the woman of the hour to make a grand entrance.

  Chapter Three

  Jake Kessler hadn’t meant to make small talk with the woman at the next table, but when he saw that chocolate cake, he almost asked for a bite.

  Ridiculous, I know.

  There was something familiar about that woman, and he thought she looked almost like someone he had been hunting for the last several years.

  Then again, he must have been exhausted to think that a random stranger in the middle of the night could somehow be related to Molyneux.

  Everyone looked like her after a while.

  He couldn’t shake her face from his mind. The big brown eyes, the braids, the dagger in her grip, slicing his muscles from his thigh, the moment he wished God would let him die…

  His hands began to shake as he quickly sat down at his table, his back against the wall. That way, he could see the entire dining room.

  He opened the menu in front of him to distract himself from the past, which kept resurfacing in his mind.

  Six months old now.

  Maybe the bureau was right to put him on suspension. There was no way his mind was in the right place right now to do this undercover work.

  Yet the informant had called him out of the blue to apologize for Cannes. And she wanted to meet again. This time in San Francisco. Why, though?

  Jake hadn’t been authorized to conduct this meeting. He was suspended, remember? But he decided not to tell the informant.

  Flying under the radar meant that he had no backups, no protection. And yes, as soon as he started recording the conversation at this table, he could kiss his FBI badge and career goodbye forever.

  So long. It’s been nice.

  He could go to work for Helen Hu. She had been asking him when he was going to quit the Bureau. However, he wasn’t sure if he wanted to work for a fiery, feisty person for more than just a few months—although Helen was the only one who had come to his rescue when he was trapped in the overturned fishing boat off the coast of France.

  Who had been the anonymous caller with the timely tip of his whereabouts? Why had she called Helen instead of the Cannes police?

  A woman of mystery.

  Jake wondered if she was the informant herself.

  Jake drew deep breaths to calm his nerves, but all he smelled was fresh bread passing by him on a tray. His mind wandered to buttering a piece of toast, putting a dollop of strawberry jam on it, and eating it slowly while watching the sun set across a lake.

  He closed his eyes.

  “Hello.” A woman’s voice interrupted his imagined calm.

  She sat down across from him at the small table.

  Philomena Wright, also known as Philomena Caddock, was in her sixties with short black hair combed neatly and tucked behind her ears. Simple earrings made of gold—or something golden—caught Jake’s eyes because they were like two dangling keys.

  She did not glance to the left or right.

  Customers started to leave around them. The woman at the next table kept eating her chocolate cake. When she asked for a glass of milk from the server, Jake almost leaned toward her and say, “I would too.”

&n
bsp; But he stopped his wandering mind. Why would a stranger draw his focus away from the matter at hand?

  Thank God that Earl was somewhere in the room. Jake slowly looked over Philomena’s shoulder and spotted him at a far table, earbuds at the ready to listen to their conversation.

  “Take two, huh?” Philomena said.

  Jake supposed she was referring to Cannes. He nodded.

  “This is all I have for you.” She opened her palm, showing him an amber brooch. “From my late husband.”

  “And?” Jake suddenly felt it was a mistake to meet this crazy woman.

  “There’s a story behind this brooch,” the woman said. “Find the story, find the room.”

  Suddenly Philomena’s eyes turned toward the woman at the next table, her eyes widening.

  Jake glanced at the woman, now staring at her phone, seemingly oblivious to Philomena’s stares.

  What is going on?

  A new server came to refill their water. “Would you like some coffee?”

  “Yes. Two creams,” Philomena said.

  “Black for me,” Jake added.

  The stranger at the next table put away her phone and got up. She walked toward her server and pressed a couple of bills in his palm. The server was thanking her profusely when another server bumped into them, spilling liquid all over her blouse. Soda, it looked like.

  Jake shook his head. He turned toward Philomena. “I need more than this brooch.”

  He opened a clean paper napkin and wrapped the brooch in it without touching it with his hand.

  “I have nothing more to tell you, except that I regret everything I ever did in my life.” Her arms were crossed, as if belying her own words. “If Chisolm were here today, he’ll vouch for me. Unfortunately, he’s gone and I have nothing left of him but that brooch.”

  “What you wanted to talk about was so far in the past that I’m not sure it’s relevant for today,” Jake said quietly.

  Philomena waited for the server to pour her a hot cup of coffee. After the server left, she still didn’t speak. Slowly, she sipped the cup of coffee.

  Jake wanted to drink his own coffee black, but decided to ask for cream. He stirred in a small drop into his coffee the color of night and dark days ahead,