Page 111 of Once a Hero

However, they were underground. There was no way the signal would work from here.

Beatrice prayed that the signal had worked upstairs when Molyneux’s people transported the box from wherever it came from to this unused church.

On the floor, Dad had placed a large piece of paper—a butcher paper—with lines crisscrossing it. At various intersections, he had placed the amber cabochons he had extracted from the two fake brooches and one real brooch. Surrounding the paper were assorted permanent markers and

A mix of natural and manufactured amber pieces.

Slowly, Beatrice sat down on the floor.

She had no idea how they were going to make this work. The only thing she could do was pray to God for wit to stall Molyneux until help arrived.

At the back of her mind, she wished that Dad was working undercover for some government entity with enough firepower to take out Molyneux. What if Dad were working for the Catherine Palace that currently housed a reproduced version of the Amber Room? Or the Russian Consulate?

Now would be the time to come and help us!

As Beatrice stared at the diagram Dad had drawn, she recalled seeing a familiar pattern at her Charleston laboratory office. The floor rug. A gift from a client.

Who could the client be? Had it been Dad?

“I’ve seen this pattern before,” Beatrice said.

Dad raised an eyebrow. He waited.

“Even if I have, I still don’t know what to do with it.”

“It flows,” Dad said. “Like a circuit board.”

Circuit board.

The fact that Dad even mentioned it made Beatrice suspect that he was the one who had taped the old leather pouch to the table in his California cabin in the woods.

Or did he?

“What do you know about the circuit board?” Beatrice asked.

“I’ve seen it before. Sometimes Philomena made jewelry out of old boards.”

Ah. Philomena must have played a bigger role than Beatrice expected.

The bad news was that Beatrice had handed the circuit board to Kenichi and Benjamin. She hadn’t paid enough attention to the board, and even if she had, she did not possess a photographic memory.

All she remembered was the pattern on the rug inside the lab office because she had walked over it for years.

She closed her eyes.

She couldn’t see the rug now.

She closed her eyes tighter. Placed her fingers on her forehead as if that could help her remember.

“You have a headache, girl?” Molyneux asked.

“No. I’m just thinking. Shhh.” Beatrice felt brave.

Slowly bits and pieces of the pattern on the rug appeared. She picked up a red marker from the pile of markers on the floor, and attempted to complete the pattern on the butcher paper taped to the floor with masking tape.

She hoped that whoever Benjamin sent would bring the circuit board and golden key. They might be useful.

It was odd that Dad would leave such an important piece of clue in the cabin, but fortuitous that Beatrice had picked it up when she did before the cabin burned down.

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