Once a Hero

by Jan Thompson

  Jake reached for her arm. “Are you my nurse practitioner now?”

  At the green light, Beatrice went straight through instead of turning right. The nice British lady on the phone told her to turn around.

  “Airport is that way, isn’t it?” Jake remembered their first trip there this morning on the coach.

  “I think we’re being followed.”

  Jake peeked at the side rearview mirror. “That black truck?”

  “It’s been right behind us since we left the bank.”

  “Then it’s too obvious.”

  “I wish Ken and Ray were a hundred percent well. I could use them right now.”

  “What about me? I’m here.” Jake realized he wasn’t of much help with a bad leg. “I’m sorry I’m no use until my leg heals.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short. Not every battle requires a sword. In some cases, it’s a battle of the mind.” Beatrice glanced in her rearview mirror. “Is the truck still there?”

  “It’s gone.” Jake was happy to report that. “It veered off.”

  “Oh. Maybe I was mistaken.” She still gripped the steering wheel. She leaned forward.

  “It’s okay to be careful.”

  “To be honest, I’m freaked out right now. If Ken and Ray were here, I’d worry less. I pay them to drive and shoot.” She laughed nervously.

  “You and your team…”

  “What?”

  “…are a mystery to me.”

  “So are you, Mr. Kessler.”

  “Let’s dispense with the Mr. and Mrs.—oops, a slip of the tongue. I meant Mr. and Miss.”

  Beatrice seemed to mull over what he had said. “Matthew 12:34 says, ‘for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.’ I wonder if it was really a faux pas.”

  “Please don’t read too much into it.” Even as he spoke it, Jake knew that his feelings for Beatrice were getting stronger by the hour as they spent more time together.

  He prayed that it wasn’t a fleeting feeling. A crush of some sort. After all, she was a woman of mystery who suddenly showed up after twenty-five years of hiding, rescued him several times, and then confessed that she was indeed the daughter of the infamous treasure hunter, Chisolm Wright, as well as the world’s most wanted criminal, Molyneux.

  How could any one person be so unfortunate?

  And yet there were two of them: Beatrice and her older brother.

  In the three years that Jake had infiltrated Molyneux’s organization and rose through the ranks, he had never once heard Molyneux or the people close to her mention her adopted children. What he knew, he had learned from Helen Hu’s sleuthing ability. Court documents provided the rest. How Helen had obtained those files, he could not begin to ask.

  In the driver’s seat, Beatrice drew a deep breath and her shoulders relaxed. She lifted a hand away from the steering wheel to wipe sweat off her forehead.

  Jake saw how much her hand trembled. He reached out to hold it.

  “I can’t drive with one hand,” Beatrice said.

  “Cruise control?”

  “Never used it in my life.” She pointed to the highway sign. “The airport is up ahead. We’ll be out of here soon.”

  “I can’t wait for this entire nightmare to be over.” Jake looked out the window.

  “And I can’t wait to go home. I haven’t seen my brother in six months…” Her words tapered off, as if saying more would be to give away secrets.

  “Tell me about your brother,” Jake said. “Maybe if we talk about happy things, it will get our minds off what happened today.”

  “My brother is paranoid times a thousand.” She laughed. “That about sums him up.”

  “You love him very much. I can tell.”

  Beatrice nodded. “We’ve been through a lot together. He was adopted when he was two years old, and when he was five, I joined the family.”

  “I’m gathering you had happy days.”

  “Well, they left us some old DVDs of our park days, field trips, vacations, and holidays. Do you still remember DVDs?”

  “Yes. And CDs.”

  “Ha. Those too. Yeah, they left us DVDs of the first five years of my life in the Wright household. Turned out that Mom and Dad quarreled a lot away from our presence. Whenever they were with us, we were always happy, especially when they were filming us to make the memory DVDs.”

  “Did your brother have his special events recorded before you were born?”

  “Yeah. He was a very pampered only child for five years.”

  “I have four brothers and one sister,” Jake said. “I have no idea what it means to be an only child.”

  “Six kids, huh?” Beatrice parked the car. “You’ll have to tell me more about your family sometime.”

  “Over dinner, perhaps?” Jake asked. No regrets.

  “Perhaps.” Beatrice got out of the car and closed the door. “However, at this time, my immediate problems are more than I can handle.”

  Jake limped alongside Beatrice as they walked to the aircraft hangar. “If there’s anything I can do for you, let me know.”

  “You can pray for all of us, Jake.”

  Prayer.

  That should have crossed his mind first, Jake thought. Yet it hadn’t. All he had thought of was physically helping Beatrice himself.

  She needed as much spiritual help as she did physical—although all help came from God above.

  Jake felt bad that he hadn’t been a spiritual encourager to Beatrice. What if God had placed him there for such a time as this? Perhaps Beatrice needed reminders that God was still sovereign over all her troubles?

  Quietly, Jake asked God to forgive him.

  “Amen,” he whispered after he finished his quick prayer.

  “Pardon?” Beatrice asked. “Did you say something?”

  “I was thinking that every bit of help we get is from God.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Psalm 121:1-2 comes to mind. ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.’ I’ve tried to memorize this verse.”

  “Thank you for the reminder that God is my provider. I need to hear that today.”

  “Same here.”

  “I need to read my Bible more,” she added, without explaining further.

  “Me too, Beatrice. Me too.”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Benjamin’s face became increasingly redder onscreen as Beatrice explained what had happened outside the San Francisco bank. “What on earth, Bee?”

  It sounded like the beginning of a rant, so it was best to let him start and finish, even though Beatrice had heard it all.

  I don’t want to lose my baby sister.

  Benjamin was only five years older than her, but ever since they had been abandoned by both adoptive parents—one could say they had been abandoned twice at that point—Benjamin had felt a heavy responsibility for his sister.

  “You keep getting in harm’s way.” On the other side of the videoconference call, Benjamin leaned forward on his favorite couch and stared into the camera.

  Oddly enough, his voice softened. “I know you two had to get the brooches from two different banks, but you could at least have some protection. I should have sent someone.”

  “It’s not your fault.” Beatrice was surprised that her brother blamed himself. “I didn’t fill you in enough to make it your fault.”

  “I could have figured it out.”

  “Yeah?”

  “There was plenty of time. You had to wait for that FBI dude to check out of the hospital. It took another five hours to drive from Eureka to San Francisco. I could have flown someone there on commercial to meet you, regardless of what your situation was.”

  It was all true, but it was too late now. “What’s done is done, as they say. Maybe you can send some extra personnel to meet us in Paris, considering that Ken has a broken leg and Ray a broken arm.”

  Beatrice could have made the orde
r for additional security herself, since she owned part of Glynn, Inc. However, Benjamin had been cooped up in the mansion for years, unable to set foot outside their property line. This would give him something to do. Make him feel useful.

  “Okay. I’ll send Ansel and his team.”

  “Thank you. Of course, we don’t know if the brooch box will end up in Paris, but meeting there will get us closer to wherever we need to go.” Beatrice leaned back in her office chair.

  She was feeling tired, like she needed a nap or something, but she wasn’t going to rest until the plane took off. There was a slight delay as they waited for the extra food the flight attendant had ordered for them.

  “I was reviewing your report on what happened in Eureka,” Benjamin said. “Maybe you shouldn’t have told them who you are.”

  Beatrice knew what he was referring to. “They were going to hurt Jake.”

  “You felt you had to stall.”

  Beatrice nodded.

  “You felt sorry for him because they had tortured him six months ago.”

  Beatrice nodded again, and then realized what Benjamin was driving at.

  “You felt this and that. It was all feelings, Bee.”

  That was another big difference between the two siblings. Benjamin was all head and no heart. Beatrice ran the risk of being all heart and…no head?

  She was sure she had made each decision in California rationally.

  “I should’ve stopped you from tracking Helen Hu and the FBI.” Benjamin grunted. He did that when he regretted something big.

  “That’s how we discovered that the FBI has a mole, Ben. We’re doing them a favor.”

  “And that makes it all worthwhile for you?”

  Getting to know Jake was worthwhile, but she wouldn’t tell her brother that. It was early in their relationship—if there was one.

  “I told you before that you need to rein in your feelings. You crossed the line when you called Helen in Cannes.”

  “I couldn’t let Jake drown.”

  “Listen to yourself. You said earlier that you didn’t want them to hurt Jake. That’s twice that you went out of your way—way out—to rescue a man you don’t know.”

  Didn’t know.

  She didn’t want to correct him. It would invite more questions about her feelings for Jake.

  “If Dad were here, he’d probably say that we need to work on patience and not desperation,” Benjamin said.

  “Ben, you don’t know what he would say. It has been twenty-five years since we last saw him.”

  “My observation still stands. Are you desperate?”

  “No.”

  “Making yourself bait is not desperate?”

  Bait.

  An ugly word.

  “We have hidden for twenty-five years from Molyneux.” He would never call her Mom again. “If we’re patient, we’ll defeat her sooner or later. There’s no need to rush.”

  “Eureka was the closest we got to her,” Beatrice explained. “My best guess is that they didn’t know we were following Jake, and when they realized it, they had no idea who we were. We were sort of a ragtag group in a plumber van.”

  Beatrice admitted that giving herself away had accelerated the problem. She didn’t know whether her team had the wherewithal to handle the sudden turn of events.

  “Like they say, what’s done is done.” Benjamin threw up his hands in the air.

  Beatrice laughed.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “We’re repeating a phrase with dubious origin. Who are the they who said that first?”

  “Yeah. We say things we don’t understand fully. It could be a parody for all we know.” Benjamin drew a deep breath. “In any case, thank God that you’re alive.”

  “I’ll talk to you again before we reach Paris.”

  “I still can’t believe all the things that happened to you in the last couple of days,” Benjamin said. “Most of all, I can’t believe Ken rigged the brooch. It could’ve killed you if it had exploded in your pocket.”

  “We had to use the magic words to activate it.” Beatrice meant for it to be a joke, but neither of them laughed. Life and death were serious matters.

  “And then the brooch box. Whose idea was it to rig that?”

  “Well, it was my idea to make it a GPS, but it wasn’t an original idea. I had read about the Petros eggs that Helen and her mother uncovered. You remember that? They had GPS on them.”

  “Thereby destroying the value of the set of eggs.”

  “And saving the lives of Helen and her mother.”

  “So you think if it worked then, it would work now.”

  “No harm trying.”

  Benjamin made a face. “I should have been there with you to keep you safe.”

  “God kept us safe.”

  “I know, but I could have been part of the team on the ground.”

  “You can join us in Paris.”

  “Ah.” He looked disturbed, as though he had been asked to do the impossible. “I’ll try.”

  Even as he said it, Beatrice knew he wouldn’t go. Something had happened to him over the years. Something had made him stay home, away from the public, for so long.

  Beatrice wished she knew what had happened to Benjamin while she had been away at university.

  Who did this to my brother?

  Perhaps someday, Benjamin would tell his own story.

  Chapter Thirty

  After the meal carts were loaded onto the Gulfstream G650, the jet lifted off for Paris, which Beatrice had determined to be the best place for them to wait for the signal from the brooch box.

  Jake noticed that there were two flight attendants who took turns serving the meals and cleaning up afterwards. He assumed they had been properly vetted before being allowed on the private jet.

  Kenichi made a remark to him that Beatrice could have hired a cook for the kitchen onboard, but since everyone basically ate soup, sandwiches, or microwaved dinners on their flights around the world, Beatrice had saved the money.

  Jake couldn’t complain about the free ride and meals. When the flight attended took his order, he asked for a tray of cheese and crackers, figuring he’d eat lunch later—perhaps with Beatrice.

  She had gone to her private room to take a nap, leaving Jake bereft of her company. She had made him feel at ease, welcomed him into her team, as though they had been friends for a while.

  In the main cabin, he kicked off his shoes and reclined on the leather seat by the window. He sat alone in this space with his burner phone. Kenichi was in the conference room with his computers. Raynelle had disappeared somewhere.

  As Jake had stopped taking painkillers this morning, he felt the tight stitches in his thigh. He prayed for quick healing and for no infections to set in.

  He texted Earl via an encrypted virtual private network beyond the walls of the airplane. It would have been easier to chat with Earl if Jake had his iPad, but it was way over there in the sleeping quarters and he didn’t feel like limping there and back.

  As small dinky phone would have to do.

  Notwithstanding his injuries, Earl Young was living the life. Helen had sent a limousine to take him from the hospital to a small airport nearby. There, he would board a puddle jumper to San Francisco where he’d fly home to Savannah in first class.

  Jake thanked God that Earl was recovering from his gunshot wound to the gut. It seemed worse than it sounded, the way Earl described it.

  In spite of all that, his friend would live.

  Thank God.

  Sadly, Helen had removed Earl from the project. The next few weeks of his life would be spent hanging out on the beaches of Tybee Island, where he lived in an oceanfront cottage facing the Atlantic Ocean.

  Jake would be alone until Helen sent a new partner—if she did at all, and if the project lasted that long. He anticipated another two weeks with Beatrice.

  And then they would part ways.

  He prayed that he wouldn’t show poor skil
ls in front of her.

  He caught himself.

  He reminded himself that he should do his best for God rather than for a woman he barely knew…

  Whom he had kissed in the coach to San Francisco.

  What did Beatrice think about their moment together? Did the kiss mean anything to her?

  She hadn’t asked for more. That said something, didn’t it?

  In fact, since then, she had talked to him the same way she talked to Kenichi, as platonic friends.

  Jake wanted more.

  So much more.

  He could try to find out more about Beatrice. What she liked, disliked. Who her family was. Her brother, for example.

  At some time during the flight, they were scheduled do have an in-flight meeting with Benjamin Glynn. Jake looked forward to that even though he wasn’t sure what his own contributions were other than the one-amber brooch that Philomena had given him.

  That posed a dilemma. How could he prepare for a meeting he was unprepared for?

  He could check his email to see if Helen had anything for him. He scrolled through his email, and found a long rigamarole Helen had sent him hours before.

  As the plane cruised above the altitude above 40,000 feet, Jake pored over her notes about Chisolm Wright’s children. The information obtained by the FBI ended twenty-five years prior.

  On that note, he sent another encrypted email to his friend inside the bureau. He wanted to know if Stella Evans had found the mole.

  And he complained to himself about his phone again. The phone screen was small and he spent a lot of time scrolling through Helen’s meticulous notes. The ever-intrepid private investigator had found the rest of the missing Wright years.

  Jake pored over the photographs of Beatrice at the prom in high school with a date, her years in college and the master’s program, studying World War II history.

  He paid particular attention to her personal life, noting that she had never been married. She spent most of her career hunting for treasures lost in world wars.

  A career woman.

  And he, a career man.

  Jake had never married either. Pushing thirty-nine, he had spent most of his adult life in the employ of the FBI. At some point, he would like to settle down, but with whom? He’d have to trust God to provide the best partner in life for him.