Page 85 of Once a Hero

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.

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