Once a Hero

by Jan Thompson

She just wanted to go home.

  She knocked on the door.

  Miss Pistol opened it from the other side.

  The hallway and walls were all made of stone. They were quite impressive.

  “Is this where Molly has been staying all this time we couldn’t find her?” Beatrice asked as she was escorted by Miss Pistol and two armed guards down the hallway to tea with the queen of death.

  “This is a rental,” Miss Pistol said.

  “Thank you for the information.”

  Miss Pistol pursed her lips. Perhaps she had spoken too much.

  A rental castle. Interesting.

  Beatrice wondered if it had modern conveniences like a cell tower nearby. She would need a phone to call home or for help. Did 911 work in this part of the world? She had never been to Poland in her life. Most of her searches for World War II artifacts were in Germany and France, though every now and then she expanded her location.

  Poland had been decimated in World War II, with the country losing its name and identity. Destroyed beyond recognition.

  Perhaps that was the irony of it. With few people looking this way, who was to say that the Amber Room looters had not decided to hide the remaining panels in plain sight?

  Then again, many believed the Amber Room had been destroyed in Königsberg during the war. If any panels or pieces of it remained, they would be highly sought after on the black market. Perhaps they might never be found or seen again.

  However, right now there was a more pressing matter.

  Beatrice wanted to be found alive. Would Benjamin and Jake know that she was here?

  Ten minutes later, Beatrice realized it didn’t matter. Molyneux was never in the castle. Tea time wasn’t happening.

  Miss Pistol had lied by omission. Never once did she deny what Beatrice had asked or assumed.

  Chapter Forty

  Molyneux was shorter than Beatrice remembered, but her eyes were more intense than Beatrice had seen over the live chat the week before. Her mannerism was aggressive and combative, and frankly, she scared Beatrice every time she opened her mouth.

  But she wanted tea.

  Did Beatrice dare to say she had changed her mind and preferred coffee these days?

  Did she want to die?

  Never in her life had Beatrice expected to die in an old unused church somewhere in Poland, but here she was.

  Standing there at the old wooden door leading to the small room where a wooden table filled up half the space, Beatrice waited for Molyneux to make the next move.

  It felt like chess.

  Except that no matter what Beatrice did, the guards around her wouldn’t let her get away with anything.

  She felt like a pawn.

  Then again, a pawn could take the queen.

  Molyneux turned away from her and looked at a painting hung on the wall. It probably didn’t come with the place because it showed a wedding scene with the couple kneeling at an altar, facing away from the audience.

  “You’d think that if we made our wedding vows before Almighty God, that he would at least keep it.” Molyneux’s voice was British with a faint accent.

  It sounded less intimidating when Molyneux spoke calmly instead of yelling all the time.

  Beatrice tried to recall the first five years of her life, but her mind drew a blank. All she could remember was that, back when she had been sweet Imogen Wright, Molyneux was gone a lot. Dad had been left to raise the two kids alone.

  One could say that being lonely might have driven Dad to adultery, perhaps?

  “We were a beautiful couple,” Molyneux added. “Thirty-five years ago.”

  Beatrice had nothing to say. She was no counselor. And Molyneux needed help. She had been divorced for twenty-five years—just before she tried to kill Dad for the first time—and she still talked about her wedding day today.

  Molyneux turned back toward Beatrice and smiled. “I have him back now, though, for one final time.”

  Perfect teeth and all. She could have been beautiful, Beatrice thought. Instead, that woman had turned into one of the ugliest terrorists the world had ever known.

  Beatrice wondered how many people Molyneux had killed.

  And yet, was salvation possible for such an evil person?

  Or was she beyond saving?

  Wait. Beatrice’s eyebrows rose. “What did you just say?”

  “It’s the way the world goes, sometimes.” Molyneux walked toward Beatrice. “I tried to kill him twice. Each time he’d sent a decoy.”

  “A decoy?” Beatrice’s jaw dropped. “Is Dad…”

  “He will be soon.” Molyneux motioned to her guards. “For now, he’s still useful to me.”

  “Am I useful to you?” Beatrice wished she hadn’t asked.

  “It depends if you’re your mother’s daughter or your father’s.” Molyneux touched Beatrice’s chin and lifted it slightly. “You have my eyes, but I didn’t give birth to you.”

  Beatrice didn’t know the answer either.

  “Don’t try to find your birth mother,” Molyneux continued.

  Beatrice’s heart raced.

  “She is dead.”

  Beatrice could hear her own heartbeat thumping in her chest.

  “Your father knows who she is.”

  “I thought both of you adopted me together?” Beatrice asked.

  “We did, but he found you first.”

  Interesting. Potentially Dad could tell Beatrice who her biological mother was. Beatrice recalled Jake asking whether she’d ever be interested in looking up her own genetics.

  Speaking of Jake, Beatrice hoped that he and Benjamin would try to find her. She felt that she was about to regret the plan she had set in motion that had somehow turned awry. Now she had to find the Trojan horse brooch box in the hope that Kenichi could locate it and come get her.

  Molyneux walked past her, and the whole entourage followed. “We’ll talk about family later. Right now, I need you to open the door.”

  “Open what door?”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Beatrice did not want to go down the stone stairs. Something smelled horrible and it wasn’t the guards on both sides of her.

  “Move!” Molyneux yelled into her ears.

  “No!” She stood her ground at the top of the stairs, hugging the stone wall to one side.

  She could see shadows as the flashlight danced down the stairs. At the bottom of the short flight of stairs, she saw stacks of skulls.

  “What is this place?” Beatrice barely got the words out.

  “They’re all dead. They won’t bite.” Molyneux motioned for her guards to take Beatrice down.

  They couldn’t carry her because the ceiling was too low. Two guards held each of her arms. They dragged her and gave her no room to fight. Her hiking boots thumped-thumped all the way down the stone treads.

  At the bottom of the stairs they dropped her to the ground, right in front of a wall of skulls.

  Beatrice screamed.

  “Tsk. Tsk,” a man’s voice said. “We agreed to leave the kids out of this, Imogen.”

  Dad?

  The flashlight wasn’t bright, but the man came out of the shadows, extending a hand toward Beatrice.

  His cheeks were chubby and his eyes were kind. He even had white hair. All he needed was as red suit for Beatrice to think it was Christmas.

  He helped her get up. On her feet, she was a foot shorter than the elderly man, who seemed to be in his seventies.

  “What would like to be called? Amber? Amberlyn? Beatrice?” he asked.

  Beatrice was too stunned to speak.

  She looked for familiarity, but she felt very distant from this man in front of her. It was like when she had looked at those photos on the mantel in his cabin before it burned down. There were memories there, but she felt no sorrow.

  It was a good thing she also felt no anger.

  “Nothing to say to your own father?” he asked.

  Beatrice opened her mouth, but no words came
out.

  She swallowed.

  Closed her eyes to release a small tear. She didn’t know what that tear was for.

  “Y-you were dead,” she finally said.

  “Dead to the world.” He laughed.

  “Why did you ghost us?” Twenty -ive years.

  “To keep you and your brother alive.” He pointed to Molyneux. “She was looking for you two. If I distract her, you can go live your own lives.”

  Molyneux shrugged. “Little did you know that both of them would be looking for me instead.”

  Dad laughed.

  Dad? Beatrice stared again. She couldn’t have imagined this moment in her life. She had been so focused on Molyneux, all the while expecting Dad to be dead, that she could not fathom seeing him alive now.

  And working with Molyneux.

  She frowned.

  “You frown like your brother,” Dad said.

  “Even though they’re not biologically related,” Molyneux said.

  Don’t talk about my brother.

  Beatrice didn’t want to endanger him. Oh, the dilemma. She knew that Benjamin could track her down, but wouldn’t that put him in danger?

  Kenichi and Raynelle would help, but to what extent? They were both recovering from injuries. There was no telling if they had been more injured at the lab a few days prior.

  Then there was Jake.

  Would Jake be able to track her down? Would he do whatever it would take?

  Beatrice missed him already, but right now she had to survive this to send an SOS.

  “What are we doing down here?” She braved herself to ask.

  “Did you bring the key?” Dad asked.

  “What key?” Beatrice had dismissed the golden key as a red herring. Now what? “The golden key?”

  Dad laughed. “No. The brooch box.”

  “The what?”

  Philomena had only tried to pawn off the brooches.

  “It’s missing a two-amber brooch,” Beatrice said.

  “I have that brooch. The other two brooches and the box, I have not,” Molyneux said.

  “Are you sure?” Beatrice asked. “As far as I know, your people robbed it from me when I came out of the bank in San Francisco. Remember?”

  “Her people.” Dad turned to Molyneux. “You didn’t.”

  “So you have the box, don’t you?” Beatrice asked, praying they did.

  Everyone waited for Molyneux to answer.

  “If you do have the box, then why do we even need Beatrice here?” Dad’s voice was deeper now.

  “We don’t need it anyway,” Molyneux said. “I say we blow it all up and start digging.”

  Dad laughed.

  It was similar to Benjamin’s laugh.

  How could that be possible?

  “Do you or do you not have the box?” Dad asked again.

  “Yes, but there was nothing there.”

  “The box is the key. The brooches are the buttons.” Dad made a big noisy sigh. “Tell me you still have them.”

  Molyneux nodded.

  “Where?”

  “Nearby.”

  Beatrice’s heart soared. There was hope for a rescue yet.

  That was, unless Molyneux figured out that the box was fake—before help arrived.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Covering the sides of her eyes with her palms, almost like blinders on a horse, so that she avoided seeing more skulls, Beatrice followed Dad—or someone who looked like photographs of him—through the tunnel into a carved-out cavern.

  It looked like a staging area to prepare bodies for burial.

  Beatrice did not want to be there at all. She prayed for deliverance.

  Even though Molyneux had gone to retrieve the brooch box that she believed to be real, Beatrice was not alone with Dad. Several guards stood watch around them. They didn’t speak much English, but Beatrice was confident they could understand anything she said to Dad.

  Well, what would she say to Dad?

  Let’s escape together?

  It seemed apparent to Beatrice that Dad was working for Molyneux. No one worked with her, so they must all work for her.

  “Why would you work for her?” Beatrice blurted.

  Dad sat down at the table and began poring over maps. “Somewhere in these catacombs, there is a door. That door can only be opened with a special key. Are you going to ask me what’s behind the door?”

  “I don’t know. And I don’t care at this point. I just want to go home.”

  “Where’s your sense of adventure?” Dad waved for her to sit down in an empty chair next to him. “All these years, you’ve developed a system. I’ve watched your excitement finding lost treasures—”

  “You what?” Beatrice sat down.

  “Think about it. How did the Glynns pay for cash for the Gulfstream and the mansion?”

  “They were venture capitalists.”

  Dad shook his head. “I sent them money.”

  “What?”

  “They will never tell you because I made them promise.”

  Beatrice didn’t want to believe him. “What did you pay for?”

  “Other than the jet and house, I made sure you graduated out of university without student loans.”

  “That’s considerate of you.” Beatrice didn’t buy it.

  “You might never know and they would never tell.”

  “Why are you telling me all this now?” Beatrice asked.

  “Because after this, we may never see each other again.” His voice was solemn. As if this was his last stand.

  “You’re ghosting us again? So what’s new?”

  “You’re angry.”

  “Why shouldn’t I be?” Beatrice folded her arms across her chest. "Twenty-five years. We thought you were dead for twenty-five long years.”

  “You were fine with your new adoptive parents. They took good care of you and raised you better than I could ever have done.”

  “Where did you go?” Beatrice sat back in the chair to distance herself from Dad.

  “Well, Philomena and I…”

  Beatrice made a face. “Your mistress.”

  “Your mother, Amber. Your mother.”

  “Wh-what?” Okay, this was too much for her. She wanted to throw up right then.

  Beatrice closed her eyes and prayed for calm. She told herself she hadn’t just heard what she heard.

  When she opened her eyes, Dad was smiling.

  “Who is my dad?” Beatrice asked.

  “I am.”

  “No…”

  “I thought you’d be happy to know you’re not an orphan.”

  “But you’re a crook, a thief, a criminal!”

  “Well, even criminals can have babies.” He shrugged.

  Beatrice slid off her chair and stepped away. She drew a deep breath but only choked on the dust. “Is there oxygen here?”

  “Recycled. You should be used to it since you fly a lot.”

  “Let me get this straight, Ben and I are your real kids.” Beatrice’s palm was on her head.

  “No. Just you.”

  “I’m your real daughter?” Beatrice’s eyes started to sting.

  “It’s not that bad.” Dad knitted his eyebrows together the way Benjamin sometimes did.

  “Your mannerisms are like Ben’s—or the other way around. So how could he not be your biological son?”

  “Because Imogen and I adopted him when we found out we couldn’t have kids,” Dad said.

  “Five years later, you adopted me. Does Molyneux know who my mother is?” She did not want to call her by her old name.

  “She didn’t know—at that time anyway.” Dad’s shoulders sagged. “She was gone a lot. We had been doing different things for years. Along the way, I met Philomena, a fellow treasure hunter. We were both looking for the remnants of the Amber Room. We hit it off. Next thing we knew, she was pregnant. I wanted the baby because it meant I wasn’t impotent.”

  Beatrice sat down. This was the story of her origins, as
bizarre as it might be.

  “She had you, gave you up for adoption. I persuaded Imogen that Eugene—your Ben—would be lonely without a sibling. We adopted you. Then I hired Philomena to be your nanny.”

  Beatrice felt numb. That was all. She did not feel anything else. She had only known her birth mother as her pretend nanny. How could any mother do that to their own children?

  Beatrice assumed that all the time, Molyneux hadn’t realized her then husband had hired the mother of the baby.

  “Remember your Bible story? Baby Moses floating down the river, the Pharaoh’s daughter adopting him, and hiring the baby’s real mother to nurse him?”

  Beatrice buried her face in her palms. “When did Molyneux find out?”

  “You were four years old. She found Philomena and me in bed. She hit the roof. She and Philomena had a big argument and the story came out.”

  “And you divorced.”

  “The end.”

  “Except here you are, working for your ex-wife against your own daughter.”

  Dad blinked. Something he wasn’t saying?

  Slowly, he answered her. “Business is business.”

  Beatrice felt he wasn’t telling the truth. Was he here to take down Molyneux in an undercover assignment or was he one of the unreformed criminals?

  If it was the former, it might explain why he had asked for the brooch box. How did he know about the fake box?

  “After your divorce, you took us to the States.” Beatrice wanted the rest of her family story. She had no idea how much time they had left.

  As soon as Molyneux found out the box was fake, it would be over for them.

  “I would’ve stayed in England, even though I still had my American passport. Imogen became Molyneux and put a price on our heads. I had to keep you and your brother safe.”

  “Somehow you got us into WITSEC with new names.”

  “Unfortunately, Philomena couldn’t come with us. I should have married her.” Dad wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “We worked on it for a few months to get her into the States via the southern border. I picked her up in the deserts of Texas. And we vanished.”

  “You left us.”

  “I put you in good hands. The Glynns needed money for their investments. I need two loving parents.”