Once a Hero

by Jan Thompson

  “Do you know where the two-amber brooch is?” Beatrice asked. When Oswald’s face changed slightly, she continued talking. “I see you do. I told you I’m her rival. I will split it with you.”

  Oswald pointed to Jake. “You forgot your boyfriend.”

  “You made mincemeat out of him. You think he’ll live? So let’s discuss our business transaction here. Do you want a share or not?”

  Oswald turned to Jake. “She’s cold. My kind of gal.”

  Jake winced. Gritted his teeth.

  “I have the three-amber brooch in my right pocket,” Beatrice said. “I can’t reach it since my hands are tied. I need some assistance.”

  “Let me help.” John Doe was quick on his toes. He took off his glove and reached into Beatrice’s pocket, moving in an excruciatingly slow manner.

  It made Jake’s blood boil.

  Beatrice remained calm, as if a snake was crawling over her.

  John Doe produced the brooch.

  Under the lamp, it looked like the same brooch that Philomena had tried to give Jake at the café in San Francisco before she was murdered by coffee.

  Did this confirm that Beatrice or her team had stolen the brooch off Jake’s table?

  “I could take this from you and kill you and keep everything to myself and my team,” Oswald said.

  “If you ask me to choose between my life and the Amber Room, I would tell you that I’d rather live. I value my life more than all the treasures on Earth.”

  “Oh so philosophical.” John Doe stood awfully close to Beatrice.

  “I’m being realistic.”

  “You are so unlike your mother, then. She’s idealistic, not realistic.” Oswald thumbed the three-amber brooch.

  “Be careful,” Beatrice said. “She’ll cut off your head like a praying mantis.”

  Oswald laughed. “And you wouldn’t?”

  “I told you we’re not related. Otherwise why would she want to kill me? Would a mother kill her own child?”

  Barring insanity, Jake thought.

  He was impressed that Beatrice had put Oswald at ease. Maybe she had taken acting classes in college.

  Oswald put the three-amber brooch in his vest pocket. “You talk a good talk, lady, but you’re still going on the chopper.”

  Jake listened but could not hear any helicopter blades. All was quiet beyond the sound of nature and impending doom.

  Regardless, he did not want Beatrice to go.

  “Before we go…” Oswald smiled. “You made a deal with Molyneux.”

  Beatrice looked stunned. “What deal?”

  “Which deal, you mean?” Oswald extended his palm toward John Doe. The latter handed him the dagger. “You get to have that cup of tea with Molyneux if you kill Grady here—also known as Jake Kessler.”

  Beatrice’s knees went weak. John Doe held her up by her arm.

  “Just take this pointy end and push it into his chest.”

  “No.” Beatrice shook her head.

  “The deal is sealed. The chopper comes and you go.”

  Jake tried to read Beatrice’s face, but in the waning light he couldn’t make out what she might be thinking.

  Somewhere, he heard a distant sound of…drones?

  Sure enough, two drones appeared above them.

  “This is the Eureka Bay Police!” The loud voice came through the loudspeakers attached to the drones.

  Oswald cursed.

  “You’re surrounded. Put down your weapons!”

  Oswald and his people held on to their weapons. Jake noticed movement around him. He was surrounded by two of Oswald’s men.

  Beatrice turned to him. “Stay down, Jake!”

  Her mouth opened as if to say more, but she seemed to hesitate.

  Jake hugged the ground and covered his head with his free arm. He heard someone.

  “How now brown cow!” Kenichi yelled in a strained—and pained—voice.

  Then Jake heard an explosion. When it was over, he looked up to find Oswald splattered on the driveway, his torso and head gone. Two or three other people were also down on the driveway with him.

  Blood and body matter were everywhere.

  The remainder of Oswald’s militia slowly placed their weapons on the ground and put their hands in the air in front of the drones.

  Jake dragged his body on his hip and good leg toward Beatrice, still crouched down on the concrete driveway. He called her name softly.

  She looked up. Her hands were still tied up.

  Before Jake could reach her, a much louder explosion rocked the property. Part of the roof flew over Jake and Beatrice and landed on the driveway and the grass front yard.

  The heat nearly seared Jake’s entire back. He turned to see what had happened, and found the entire cabin engulfed in flames.

  He glanced over at Beatrice to see her reaction.

  Her face looked stunned.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Word would get back to Molyneux that Oswald was dead. She would regroup and retaliate fast. She had a reputation to keep.

  That and many other things percolated through Beatrice’s mind as she walked down the hallway of the Eureka hospital to find Raynelle and Kenichi. They both were treated as outpatients because their injuries were not life threatening.

  Yeah, how to get a step ahead of Molyneux?

  Her team had been decimated.

  Kenichi had a broken leg.

  Raynelle’s arm was still broken.

  Earl was still hospitalized for his internal injuries.

  Their other new temporary addition to the team, Jake, required extensive stitches on his thigh, busted lips, and a gash on his forehead.

  None of them was in any position to fly out there to Europe, track down Molyneux, and knock on her door.

  Beatrice herself had bruises from the van wreck. Beyond that, everyone else had taken hits for her. She had somehow managed to talk her way out of serious injuries.

  That scared her.

  She had heard it told that many things in a person’s life were ingrained by the age of five. That had been the age when her parents broke up and Dad had to flee England with his kids. Could it be possible that Molyneux—as Imogen Wright—had imprinted into Beatrice some of her undesirable ways?

  The cabin was gone and along with it, all potential clues to the whereabouts of the Amber Room. Then again, if Dad had the clues all along, he would have found the Amber Room by now, right?

  With the cabin destroyed, Beatrice had no hope of going back there to sift through what might be potentially Dad’s belongings and keepsakes.

  Oh well. She’d sort all that out later.

  For now, she had to attend to the well-being of her two loyal employees, and pay for their hospital bills. She also wanted to drop in to see how Jake was doing, but there would be no time to wait for him if the doctors decided he had to stay overnight at the hospital.

  They had to return to San Francisco as soon as possible to fly out. She might have to drop off Raynelle and Kenichi in Charleston to rest and recuperate.

  Benjamin could send some of his people to Eureka to inventory the cabin.

  Hmm… Benjamin.

  Perhaps she could persuade Benjamin to leave his Charleston mansion and help her finish the project. She texted him as she walked down the hallway.

  Benjamin: Nope. You come home right now and we’ll discuss what’s next.

  Beatrice: Come on, Ben. No time to lose.

  Benjamin: Do you have the map?

  Beatrice: No. Missing one brooch.

  Benjamin: I’ve already lost a father. I don’t want to lose my sister too. Come home.

  He could not be persuaded. Benjamin went on to say that all his resources would be hers when they made their next move.

  Sigh.

  She must have walked down the wrong section of the hospital. She could not find Kenichi or Raynelle. Where were they?

  She texted both of them.

  Kenichi told her where to go. All th
e way to the other end of the small hospital.

  When she arrived, Beatrice could hear Kenichi laughing. When she entered the room, all three of them were there, including Jake sitting up in bed in a hospital gown. He seemed to be in the middle of telling a story, something about his Quantico training days.

  Beatrice could not see his thigh where the stab wounds were. His forehead and lips also had stitches on them.

  Would be hard to kiss…

  Beatrice caught herself. She cleared her throat.

  “Hey.” Jake extended his arm.

  Instinctively, Beatrice went to him, but did not touch his hand. “You cleaned up nicely.”

  Jake dropped his arm back on the bed. “I check out at four.”

  “So quickly?”

  “No broken bones. Not too much. They cleaned my wounds and sewed them up. I’ll have scars on both thighs forever, but nothing too serious—unless my future girlfriend has an issue with it. My tetanus shot is up to date, so no worries there.”

  Beatrice nodded. “Thank God.”

  “Yeah. Thank God indeed. I’ll just need to pick up some antibiotics and Tylenol from the pharmacy and I’m out of here. As long as I don’t develop a fever next week or something.”

  “Good.”

  He turned pensive. “If you hadn’t talked to John Doe back at the cabin, stopped him from doing more damage, I might have lost a leg. Thank you.”

  “Don’t mention it.” Beatrice turned to Kenichi and Raynelle. “You two make quite a pair. One broken arm and one broken leg.”

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t do more,” Raynelle said.

  “I knew you’d say that. Don’t. We did the best we could given the circumstances.” Beatrice drew a deep breath, hoping she wouldn’t cry over Dad again. “We keep moving forward. By the way, I talked to Benjamin. He wants us to go home.”

  “May I come along?” Jake asked.

  “What about your partner upstairs? When are they releasing him?” Beatrice didn’t want to invite him to continue the mission with her without a contract for him to sign. She hadn’t thought about liabilities, compensations, and all the other things that would make him a permanent member of her team.

  “In a couple of days.”

  “Don’t you want to stay with him?”

  “Nah. Helen is letting him fly first class home as soon as he can, but Earl seems to think he needs to stay here a bit longer. He has some internal damages to his stomach from the gunshot wound.”

  “I’m sorry.” Beatrice meant it.

  “He’ll recover. As for me, I think I can keep going, like you said just now.”

  “I meant my team would keep going forward.”

  “Am I not on your team? I wore the plumber’s shirt, didn’t I? We’re practically friends. Or maybe more than friends.”

  He said it so casually that Beatrice wondered what he was thinking.

  “I could sweeten the deal,” Jake said. “Helen is offering a jet to fly to Europe.”

  “We have our own.”

  “Don’t you want to save on fuel cost? Let someone else pay for it?”

  “My jet, my schedule.”

  “Okay. Makes sense.” Jake seemed to be in deep thought. “What about access to data?”

  “What kind of data?”

  “Helen has a team who have been tracking Molyneux for a couple of years. We could combine forces.”

  Beatrice waited for her people to comment.

  Raynelle was nonchalant.

  All Kenichi did was widen his eyes.

  “You got something to say about it?” Beatrice asked.

  “I don’t want to sway your decision, but I want to see what Helen has in their tracking system,” Kenichi said. “They hunt for treasure too sometimes.”

  Beatrice turned to Jake. “Would Helen allow us access to the system or is she just sending us reports of her findings?”

  Jake moved his leg and winced. “Well, I’m non-tech, so she just sends me stuff. But I’m sure we can talk about access.”

  “Even limited access is fine,” Kenichi said. “We can reciprocate at whatever level she offers.”

  “Benjamin’s computer database is off limits,” Beatrice reminded everyone. “Besides we’re already reciprocating if we let Jake here get a ride with us.”

  Jake cheered.

  “I’ve rented a sleeper coach, and it’ll be here after lunch.”

  “I can’t leave without my equipment from the van,” Kenichi said. “They towed the van. I’m going to need some help carrying stuff.”

  “We’ll stop,” Beatrice said. “They also have our suitcases and whatever else we left in the van.”

  Beatrice made a mental checklist of the things they would need to do in San Francisco before they boarded the Gulfstream. For instance, she would have to stop at the bank to retrieve the three-amber brooch from their temporary safe-deposit box.

  Speaking of which…

  “Where’s the one-amber brooch?” Beatrice asked Jake.

  “Well, the price of that is team membership.”

  “You drive a hard bargain. Yet we’re nowhere without the two-amber brooch. Where do you think it is?”

  “Maybe if we combine Helen’s system with Kenichi’s system, we could find that brooch,” Jake replied. “Perhaps the reason we haven’t found it in the last three years was that we didn’t have enough resources to do so on our own.”

  “You also make a good point.”

  “I aim to please.” Jake winced again.

  “Tell you what, Agent Kessler. Why don’t we let you rest until it’s time for you to check out? Meanwhile, we’re going to the tow truck company to get our stuff. Be ready to sign a contract when we come back for you.”

  “A contract for what?”

  “Liability. I don’t want to be responsible for your well-being or lack thereof. That’s Helen’s problem. We’re working together in this collaborative effort and that is all.”

  “Together. I like that word.”

  So do I.

  But Beatrice wouldn’t say it aloud.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  By the time the rental entertainer coach left Eureka for San Francisco, it was past Beatrice’s bedtime, but she could not keep her eyes closed. Three hours of tossing and turning later, she was still wide awake.

  They’d be in San Francisco in a couple of hours.

  She had her own bunk bed across from Raynelle, who slept like a quiet baby. Adjacent to them, no sound came from the rest of the sleeper coach where Jake and Kenichi were.

  In the quiet of the night—except for the sound of the vehicle moving—Beatrice ran through the events of the day before, and blinked away a tear.

  Dad’s cabin—if it had been really his—was completely destroyed by the firebomb. None of Oswald’s militia confessed to setting it. The arson investigator had not completed her investigation.

  For all practical purposes, there was nothing left for them to comb through in Eureka.

  Except the old leather pouch she had picked up from what she assumed to be Dad’s office.

  It had an old golden key and postcard of San Francisco in it. What did they mean?

  She had sent Benjamin a photograph of both items. He told her to run through the database—something she planned to do once onboard the Gulfstream.

  Maybe it made sense for her to return to Charleston. She needed Benjamin’s knowledge of antiquities right now.

  Nonetheless, they had to go back to San Francisco to pick up the brooches and the Gulfstream. She had offered to give Earl and Jake a free flight to Charleston. The two could then get a ride back to Savannah—unless Jake stayed on in her team.

  Earl was still at the hospital. He would check out the next day. He had asked the hospital to send his records over to Savannah Memorial, where he expected to do the next surgery on his stomach. The poor dude had much damage from the gunshots in the forest.

  Fortunately for him, every bullet missed his spine.

  And he
r employer and friend, Helen Hu, told her she’d fly him home in first class.

  As for Jake, he had tried not to show pain, but Beatrice saw that he had a hard time walking fast. She wondered if he could keep up with her on the next leg of their adventure.

  Together.

  She closed her eyes and recalled the moment he reached out to her. He nearly touched her just before Dad’s house exploded in a fireball.

  Beatrice tossed aside the thin blanket in her bunk bed. She found her flip-flops and made her way to the bathroom at the end of the tour bus, passing by more bunk beds with curtains drawn.

  She splashed warm—almost hot—water on her face and brushed her teeth.

  Even before she reached the small galley kitchen that separated the sleeping quarters from the dining and sitting area, she smelled fresh coffee. Someone else was awake.

  “Good morning.” Jake looked up from his iPad.

  “Morning? More like the middle of the night. You up early?”

  “I had two hours of sleep.”

  “I had none.”

  “Have some coffee. I ground the beans myself.”

  “No, thanks. I want to go back to bed as soon as I feel sleepy. Caffeine will keep me awake past my ability to stay awake.”

  “Isn’t that the whole purpose?” Jake offered her a seat across the table.

  Beatrice opted for a bottle of mineral water from the refrigerator.

  “What are you working on?” Beatrice noticed the five o’clock shadow on his chin. He looked cute that way, but she preferred clean-shaven men.

  “Making a list of everything we know and everything we don’t know.”

  “Everything we don’t know? From the beginning of time to the end of time?”

  “Aren’t you the genius.” Jake laughed. “Sorry. I’m not in a very good mood because I didn’t get enough sleep and I can’t figure out why we’re constantly behind Molyneux.”

  “You’re thinking that the three years you were with her organization would have afforded you some sort of hidden cards.”

  Jake nodded. “Unfortunately, I have nothing and we’re back to square one.”

  “We have nothing. We’re in this together, aren’t we?”

  “Yeah, you keep saying that but are we really being transparent with each other?” Jake asked.