Page 131 of Once a Hero

“But none of them would have done it because they loved me that much.”

“Did you forget something?”

“What?”

“You saved my life in the redwood forest—and Earl’s life too. You confronted Molyneux to distract her from me.”

“All in a day’s work.”

Beatrice smiled. “We do make a good team.”

“Yes, we do.” Jake held the diamond ring. “Beatrice Glynn, will you marry me?”

She closed her eyes, said a quick and nervous prayer, but she already knew what her answer would be.

“Yes.”

And she extended her ring finger toward Jake, who happily placed the diamond ring there.

Beatrice pulled Jake to his feet, and they spent the next hour walking in the gardens as he kissed away her tears of joy.

Chapter Fifty-Two

Six months after Jake proposed to Beatrice on the porch of her family home, they invited fifty people to attend their small wedding in a nineteenth-century chapel in Charleston one fine Saturday afternoon in September.

Dad had entered the federal Witness Security Program for a second time, and they would never see him again in his lifetime. Beatrice often wondered if he thought of them at all. No doubt he’d carry on his new life the way he had always done: away from his children.

Perhaps he was watching the wedding ceremony. Perhaps not.

Probably the former, if Beatrice had to guess. She knew now that most of the fortune that Benjamin and she inherited had not come from the Glynns, the venture capitalists in their own rights. Instead, it had come from Chisolm Wright under the pseudonym of Thomas Peterson.

However, the government had not confiscated any of it because the money was legitimate. Apparently, Dad was quite the businessman and he had ended invested in whatever the Glynns had recommended. Whatever else Dad had done that was outside the law, that was where the penalty lay.

And that was where he was paying his penance.

Banished to WITSEC would keep Dad alive.

That was all Beatrice could ask for. She had been praying for the last six months that God would get a hold of Dad. Perhaps he would attend church or meet Christians who could tell him about how Jesus could cleanse him of his many sins and offer him forgiveness and the gift of eternal life.

Perhaps praying would be the best thing she could do for Dad.

And so Benjamin would have the honor of giving Beatrice away today. Her bridesmaid was a reluctant Raynelle who rarely wore dresses and gowns unless she was conducting an undercover operation.

Earl would be Jake’s best man. His four brothers, his groomsmen. They were excited to meet Beatrice and found her background fascinating. After she had given them the CliffNotes about her job as a treasure hunter, they all wanted to be one.

Ironically, she was leaving the high-flying adventure behind for a teaching job at a college in town. Jake would commute from wherever he went back to Charleston until they moved him to a local FBI field office.

No, she did not believe she would miss her old job.

It was Benjamin’s turn now. He seemed to have popped out of his cocoon after having to fly to Poland with Jake to rescue her. In fact, Beatrice heard through the grapevine that it had been Jake who invited Benjamin to go with him.

It would be nice to attend a real in-person church again for so many years of being on the road and catching podcasts on demand. The small church here had a women’s group that Beatrice could socialize with whenever Jake was out of town.

He was going to find a way to not travel so much anymore, but Beatrice told him that she needed time to adjust to her new adjunct professor job, so she’d be busy with work and prepping the curriculum during the school year.

They agreed to regroup next summer to figure out where they would go from there.

Jake was determined that when they had kids, he did not want to be an absentee father.

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