by Jan Thompson
“No kidding.” Well, he took back his assumption.
“It means a lot to the heirs to see their family heirloom returned to their home.”
“So you risk life and limb for them.”
“It’s worth it.”
The afternoon sun shone in through the airplane window on Beatrice’s hair. In the sunlight, there were strawberry blonde strands among the brown in her hair. Her eyes were brown too. They were soft and kind. Gentle eyes.
Like she was the most fragile woman in the world.
And yet, Jake knew she wasn’t frail.
She had entered a giant forest at night to rescue him and Earl. It took a lot of bravery for her to risk her own life.
And then the dagger incident. She had distracted John Doe away from his plan. Jake was almost certain that if Beatrice hadn’t done that, he would have been dead by now, or at least badly wounded.
Jake finished his chicken pot pie. He sipped hot tea. “We’re very much alike in several ways.”
“Yeah?” Beatrice also finished her lunch.
“Uh-huh. We both like to help people. We’re happiest when we can truly help someone else.”
“That’s why you joined the FBI.” Beatrice pointed at him.
Jake nodded. “However, the last three years have been frustrating.”
“Because you couldn’t help the world.”
“Well, if you put it that way…”
“Maybe your goal was too lofty there. You wanted to take down Molyneux’s organization. It’s a formidable task.”
“Not to be done alone, I know. There are many people working together.” Jake sighed. “Still, it’s been fruitless.”
“Not altogether.” Beatrice smiled. “We met. We joined forces. We can do this.”
“With God’s help.” Jake didn’t mean to correct her or anything. He merely spoke what was in his heart. If it wasn’t for God, he wouldn’t be here today. And neither would Beatrice.
“Of course. And at the end of the day, God gets the credit.”
“Amen.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
In spite of feeling like she could use a nap after lunch, Beatrice decided to work in her office instead. It was her brother’s office, but he had never used it. In fact, it had been his idea that the family Gulfstream would function as a flying laboratory with enough tools to help her get to her objective.
The jet also came with a satellite-driven ultra-high-speed secure internet connection, which enabled them to be all over the internet while cruising by at forty thousand feet in the air.
While Kenichi was busy teaming up with Helen Hu’s hacker associates to track the fake brooch box and find other ways to uncover Molyneux’s actual physical location, Beatrice had started feeding the photograph of the golden key through their extensive worldwide database of old keys to narrow down its potential origin.
Thanks to Benjamin, they had access to many types of databases, from old doors to old roads to paintings to keys. Beatrice used to think they were trivial databases, but she had changed her mind after several successful matches in the past.
The jet was still flying over the United States, and somewhere at the back of her mind, Beatrice hoped to get a call from Benjamin asking to join the search party. If he did, they’d make a slight detour to Charleston to pick him up.
It would be a long shot, but a sister could wish.
Beatrice had been trying to get Benjamin to leave the house—even for coffee—but he had refused. For years he had been cooped up inside the sprawling ten thousand-acre estate. Walking about in the gardens wasn’t the same as leaving the gates and driving to town.
What was her brother afraid of?
All Beatrice could do was pray for Benjamin, for him to turn over his fears to God.
She looked up at her large monitor anchored to her table. Onscreen, thousands of keys appeared, one after another, an ultra-fast slide show with no ending.
“How could it be this hard to find a match?” Beatrice asked.
“I don’t know. You tell me.” Leaning against the door frame, Jake looked as though he needed more sleep.
“How as your nap?”
“Too short, but I didn’t want to miss out. What have you got?” He hobbled toward the desk.
Beatrice pointed to the screen. “Nothing yet. You missed nothing.”
“Do you have to sit here and stare at that?” Jake chuckled.
“Probably not, but I’m a bit anxious. We have nothing to go on at this moment, and we’re flying to Paris.”
“With no plan?”
“Well, we have a plan. It’s the getting-there we need to polish.” Beatrice knew that Molyneux was waiting for them. She wasn’t sure how it would end.
“Where’s the postcard?” Jake asked.
“On the side table over there.”
Beatrice watched Jake shuffle to the armchair. “How’s your leg?”
“It’s better than it looks.” Jake sat down. “I just don’t want to put too much pressure on it before we get to Molyneux so I don’t end up sitting out the championship match, you know?”
“Hope the stitches hold.”
“I think they are the heavy-duty kind.”
“Still, it seems to me that you need to take some time off to heal.” Beatrice hoped he didn’t misunderstand her concern.
“I should, but after this is over.” He flipped the postcard front and back and then checked the sides. “I don’t know much about postcards from the fifties, but are they usually made this thick?”
Beatrice went around the desk. “Maybe some were? I’ve seen postcards made of plastic and wood.”
“Maybe we should x-ray this.” Jake handed it to Beatrice.
When she took the postcard from him, their fingers met. Beatrice tried not to think about it, but the touch was another reminder that she felt attracted to him.
The way Jake looked at her made her think that the feeling was mutual.
But we have here a project between us.
Beatrice sighed.
“What’s the matter?” Jake asked.
She lifted the postcard to the reading light, seemingly ignoring him. It was perhaps best not to pursue this further. She had known him for a year, but he didn’t need to know that.
It all came to head six months prior when she had tracked him all the way to the ocean and called for help.
Perhaps she felt lonely. Treasure hunting could be a lonely business.
Jake tried again. “What’s on your mind?”
“This postcard might have an extra layer inside,” Beatrice said. “But what if I’m wrong? We’d ruin the postcard taking it apart.”
Slowly, Jake got up from the armchair. He touched her arm and then interlocked his fingers in hers.
The office door was still open, but Beatrice didn’t care. She liked the feel of his warm hand.
“Tell me what you were thinking just now when you sighed,” Jake almost whispered.
“Nothing important.” Not to the project, anyway.
After this, Jake would probably get his badge back and return to the FBI. Beatrice would continue her work.
“I’m listening,” Jake said.
“Are you prying?”
“I wouldn’t be if I thought there was nothing between us.”
There was something. But... Where would they go from here?
“Maybe there’s nothing between us,” Beatrice finally said.
“Do you believe that?”
She couldn’t reply.
“I didn’t think so. Otherwise you wouldn’t have let me hold your hand.”
Beatrice smiled. “That means a lot to you, I suppose.”
“I don’t usually go around holding people’s hands, if you must know.” Jake stepped closer. “Nor do I go around doing this...”
He leaned toward Beatrice and his lips found hers.
They stood there for a while.
Then Beatrice backed away. “We’d better x-ray the postc
ard in our mobile lab.”
Jake’s eyelids opened. “Back to work, I guess.”
“Yep. Back to work. We have to learn to draw some lines or we’ll never get anything done.”
“We’d get some things done, but they may not be work related.” Jake drew a deep breath. “Although relationships do take work.”
“A lot of work. Maybe more than we have time for.”
Jake shook his head. “We’ll find time. If God wants us to proceed, He’ll give us wisdom to find time for each other.”
“Let’s get the project done, and we’ll see where we go from there.” Beatrice sat down. The screen had gone to sleep. She tapped on the trackpad. The screen displayed a password box.
She quickly typed in her password.
The key search program was still running.
“How long is that going to take?” Jake asked.
“Maybe hours, maybe days.”
“So we’ll go to Paris and wait?”
Beatrice could not read his mind. His question could be taken in so many ways. She decided to take it at face value.
“We have a rental chateau outside Paris in which we can do some work.” She did not mention that Ansel’s team had probably arrived with tourist visas.
“A chateau,” Jake repeated.
“It’s not a vacation destination.”
“I know.”
“We may not go there if we can get all the information we need in flight.”
Jake seemed to study her. “You’re not afraid of Molyneux at all, are you?”
“Should I be?”
Jake shrugged. “She’s only the world’s deadliest criminal.”
“And my adoptive mother.”
“The ironies of life.”
“From time to time, I’m still sad that she killed Dad. However, my brother and I have had grief counseling. If I see her face to face, I would feel sorry for her. I was angry with her for a long time, but now I only feel pity for her.”
“And yet you want her to live.”
“In prison for the rest of her life, yes.” Beatrice spun in her chair and faced Jake. “Everyone deserves a second chance, even Molyneux.”
“You have a generous heart, but I can tell you that there are many governments who want her dead.”
“If she dies, she dies.”
Jake’s eyes widened and then his face softened. “If they recruit you to work for them, say no. Just say no.”
“What are you talking about?”
“If I were recruiting for the FBI, I would ask you to join us.” He hesitated. “However, I won’t because it’s a messy world where I work. I don’t want you to… I mean, I feel like you shouldn’t… Uh… I don’t know what I’m saying.”
“You’re trying to tell me what to do with my life.”
“I was just trying to…”
“Protect me from the big bad world?” Beatrice said it half in jest, but Jake didn’t laugh.
He looked deadly serious. “If I have the privilege to, I would guard you with my life.”
It was a heavy statement to hear.
And unexpected.
Surprisingly unexpected.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The meeting with Benjamin was postponed to give Beatrice and Jake time to peel back the layers on the postcard after the x-ray showed a hidden layer sandwiched between the front and back.
It was as though someone had meticulously sliced apart an original postcard, added an extra layer, and then glued everything back together again.
The middle layer was transparent, with a circuits drawn in thin gold. For all practical purposes it looked like a circuit board.
“A message in a bottle,” Beatrice declared as she held the exhibit for all to see. She had put it in a plastic bag so that her fingerprints didn’t get on the circuit board.
“Gimme.” Kenichi remained seated, surrounded by his laptops and monitors at one side of the conference room.
Beatrice walked around Jake and the conference room chairs to get to Kenichi.
He studied it. “I need more tools, and they’re in our big lab in Charleston. We don’t have the equipment onboard.”
A wall monitor showed that they were one hour outside Atlanta. They could reroute the flight to Charleston. “How long do you think you’ll need?”
Kenichi shrugged. “Never seen this before. Hours. Days. I don’t know.”
“Do we have days?” Beatrice wondered.
“We had years. What are a few more days?” Kenichi laughed.
The issue was more than going to the lab. Beatrice was concerned about taking Jake too close to home. What if he discovered where the Glynn Estate was? Benjamin would never forgive her for leading him to their hideaway.
Then again, they were only going to the laboratory right outside Charleston, next to a small museum that welcomed no outside visitors. That had been their front office for years. It was no secret.
Beatrice turned to Jake. “You okay with this?”
“I’d like to see your lab. What do you do there?”
“Research. Analysis. Basically, the nitty gritty details of treasure hunting.” She searched his eyes for any clue to what he was thinking.
He merely nodded. “I don’t think I’ve ever been to Charleston.”
“However, you do know where our lab is.”
“Of course. I know some things about you all that you might not think I know.”
Beatrice cocked her head to one side and put a hand on her waist. “Yeah? Like what?”
“Like…things.”
Beatrice nodded. “Okay. Someday you’ll tell me?”
“Over dinner, I will.”
“Did you just ask me out?” Right there, in front of Kenichi, who would probably report back to Benjamin?
“We already had lunch,” Jake said. “Dinner seems to be a natural progression.”
“Is it?” Beatrice called the pilot and told them they have to go Charleston instead of straight to Paris.
As she talked, she walked out of the conference room without looking back at Jake.
The Charleston pit stop turned into two days of waiting for new equipment to arrive so that Kenichi could read what was on the circuit board.
Since Beatrice didn’t invite Jake to her family home, he ended up at a hotel in downtown Charleston where he found himself doing nothing but resting and eating. Helen Hu had paid for the small but comfortable room with a balcony overlooking some tourist-infested market street with its outdoor cafés and horse-drawn carriages.
On the second morning of his rest and relaxation, Jake checked in on Earl, who was chilling out in a beach house on Tybee Island.
“I think yours is a better deal,” Jake said on FaceTime.
On the screen, Earl was reclining on a deck lounger, sunglasses over his eyes. Jake could hear the ocean behind the phone and every now and then, seabirds.
As for Jake, he was sitting on his bed, his back propped by a couple of pillows. Near the bed, the doors and windows opened to the blue morning sky over Charleston. He could hear the clip-clop of horses and smell them coming up the road.
“I earned it, my friend.” Earl pointed to his stomach. “I almost died.”
“You didn’t almost die.”
“Well, I still earned it.”
“Is Helen giving you some paperwork to do to keep you busy?” Jake asked.
“Paperwork? Are you kidding me? No.” Earl laughed. “What about you?”
“I’m supposed to stick close to my new friends, and try not to get shot.”
“Good assignment. Tell me what she’s like.”
“She who?”
“Beatrice Glynn.”
Ah. Where to begin? “There are still things I don’t know about her.”
“She at the same hotel?”
“No, actually. She didn’t say, but I’m assuming she goes home to where her brother lives. I don’t know where that place is.”
“I can dig around,” Earl of
fered.
“You’re on sick leave.”
“So? It beats paperwork.”
“All right. Keep it on the down low.”
“Sure thing. So she lives somewhere near Charleston. The others? That Ken dude and the Ninja woman?”
Jake shook his head. “I didn’t ask. I’m assuming they have their own places they go home to whenever they’re in town. This is their base of operation.”
“They have a museum or something?”
“Well, not exactly. It’s an office with a lab attached to it. They scan and x-ray artifacts, plus whatever else they do there. She gave me a brief tour, but it’s a lot to take in.”
“A lot? You’re saying it’s a big lab.”
“It’s more like a warehouse that they turned into a lab. There’s a storage area and she showed me some old music boxes—like from the nineteenth century—that they’re trying to restore. Parts and pieces everywhere.”
“Music boxes. Does she collect them?”
“She likes them, yes.” Jake adjusted a pillow behind his head. “That’s something new about her that I didn’t know. She says her brother collects puzzle boxes and she collects music boxes.”
“She didn’t show you any that work?”
“Nope. They’re probably at her house somewhere.” Jake was curious about where she lived, but he knew he wasn’t ready to go that far yet.
For now, he was getting to know Beatrice, and they were at a good pace.
“While I have you on the phone, Helen has a secret project coming up in a few weeks,” Earl said. “I might be well enough to resume work, but might you be interested?”
Jake knew right away that the answer was no. “I don’t know, Earl. I’m in transition, but my goal is to return to the bureau.”
“A career agent. You think they’d take you back?”
“If God wants me back there, I’ll be back. If not, Helen has offered me a permanent position.”
“We have great benefits.” Earl panned his phone around so that Jake could see the panoramic view of the sand and surf.
“Wow.”
“I know, right. All paid for.”
“You had to get shot to earn that view.”
Earl nodded. “Perks of working for Helen, is all I can say.”
“Speaking of houses and cottages, did you ever find out who died in that lake cabin I told you about?” Jake asked. “The one outside Eureka?”
