Slaying the Dragon (Deception Duet #2)

by T. K. Leigh

  “You left once without telling her!” I bellowed out. “For years, she was convinced you were dead! And now, when it appears as if you are the monster you swore you weren’t, you just get to cut your losses and walk away?! Without giving her an explanation?! What about the rest of us who have agreed to stand by your side and put our own necks on the line, regardless of what the physical evidence actually says?!”

  “Cut my losses?!” he shouted, his face flaming red, his nostrils flaring as he jumped up from his chair. His face was mere inches from mine, both of our breathing intense. “I’m losing everything by this decision, but I don’t care! By doing this, I’m giving Serafina her life back! A life that was better without me in it in the first place! But that doesn’t mean I’m ready to tarnish the few memories of me she has left! And I don’t want her last one to be of me saying goodbye!”

  He took a protracted breath and ran his hand over his face. Pulling back, he turned his gaze away from mine. His chin quivered as he struggled to fight back the tears that had formed in his eyes. “I want her to remember her father, the man who would do anything for her…not her father, the criminal. And I want my last memory of her to be one of joy, of smiles…not of tears and sorrow. Please, Tyler, I beg you to understand.”

  “But she’ll want to see you,” I said, lowering my voice. “Even after you turn yourself in, do you think she won’t do everything she can to visit you?”

  “She can’t. Please, keep her away. I can’t bear the thought of my little girl seeing me locked up in some prison. She doesn’t belong there. I can’t put her through that.”

  “You’re her family,” I offered, grasping at straws. “The only family she has left.”

  He shook his head and began to retreat toward the door. I wanted to stop him, to figure out some way to prove he wasn’t the man the world, maybe even he, thought he was.

  “I’m not her family. Maybe I was once upon a time, but not anymore. She has a new family now, but she’ll never be able to enjoy that new family if she’s still hung up on the last.” He pulled open the door, pausing briefly. Glancing over his shoulder, he said, “We will see each other again. I have faith the good Lord knows the truth and will make sure we eventually find our way back to each other.”

  He disappeared, leaving me stunned. I sank back into my chair, wondering how I was not only going to tell Mackenzie that her father had turned himself in, but also how I was going to keep her from visiting him. I knew it was impossible. Mackenzie was one of the most stubborn women I’d ever met, and she would do everything she could to see her father. I could just picture her eyes when she went to wherever he was being held to visit and he refused to see her. I hated to admit it, but I understood. If I were in his shoes, I would have done the same thing for the exact same reasons.

  “I’ve got something.” Eli came barreling into the office, breathless, snapping me out of my thoughts.

  “What is it?” I waved him in, trying to adjust my composure so he couldn’t see I was unnerved.

  “Boris Ranko… I tracked him down. He was up in Brownsville, which I found to be suspicious, considering how close it is to us. Anyway, I did a bit of research on him and found out he’s not exactly a Serbian drug runner anymore. He was, but fell out of his boss’ good graces. Seeing as he’s not here legally, I may have threatened deportation. Once I did that, he began to sing like a fucking canary in a coal mine.” He leaned back, a satisfied smile on his face.

  “What did you find out?” I asked, on the edge of my seat.

  “Viktor Popovic… That’s our man.”

  I furrowed my brow, confused. “It can’t be. I heard Galloway’s story about what happened in Bosnia. He said Viktor and his wife both died the night they tried to rescue her.”

  Eli shook his head, his smile growing wider. “It appears he didn’t. Yes, he was shot, but he survived. Several months later, Popovic entered the United States and was granted asylum. After that, he disappeared. No credit cards. No bank accounts. Nothing.”

  “So he’s still alive?”

  Eli nodded. “Ranko insisted he was, said he was supposed to meet him at an address in South Padre later this afternoon. I tried to see if Popovic changed his name when he arrived here and that’s why I couldn’t find any information about him when I ran it, but Ranko insisted his name was Viktor.”

  “And where is Ranko now?”

  “Handcuffed in the back of the car.”

  I sighed, leaning back in my chair. “I wish there was something more. This doesn’t really prove anything. It’s just another piece in this convoluted puzzle that keeps getting bigger and more confusing the deeper we dig. We still have nothing conclusive to prove that anyone other than Mackenzie’s father was responsible for everything. Hell, I don’t even see a motive for this Viktor to want to set Galloway up!”

  “I do,” Eli insisted.

  “What?”

  “Revenge.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, getting up and pacing my office. “It’s a stretch. Do you have a photo of what this Viktor looks like so we know who we’re dealing with?”

  He scrolled through his cell phone. “The only photo was from when he first came here nearly thirty years ago, so you’ll need to use your imagination and picture him as a man in his fifties.”

  I took the phone from him and scanned the grainy photo from the immigration database, imagining what this man would look like after having aged several decades. He had dark hair and gray eyes. They were haunting and I couldn’t help but feel as if I knew those eyes. I continued to study the photo, mentally adding a few wrinkles on his face, graying his hair…

  Time stood still as the photo transitioned from a man in his twenties to one in his fifties. It all became clear and dread coursed through me.

  “Fuck,” I hissed, shoving Eli’s phone back at him.

  “What is it?” he yelled after me as I ran out of the office.

  “I know exactly who that is!” I responded, my phone up to my ear, anxious for Mackenzie to pick up.

  Mackenzie

  MY EYES FLUTTERED OPEN, scanning my surroundings. I was somewhere I didn’t recognize. It looked like a beach rental that hadn’t been used in months, maybe years. A thin layer of dust had settled on the modest furniture in the living room, the only light coming from the setting sun filtering through the rips in the curtains. And sitting across from me in that musty living room was the man I thought I trusted, sharpening a long blade.

  “Richard,” I hissed, my eyes narrowing on him as I fought against the rope he had tied around my hands, securing me to an uncomfortable chair. I tried to ignore the pain in my head from where he had knocked me out with the barrel of his gun. Everything about him seemed different. His gray eyes that once made him seem distinguished and prominent now made him appear malevolent and sinister.

  “Ah, look who’s finally awake,” he said in an Eastern European accent, taking me by surprise. My pulse raced, venom pooling in my veins at how easily I had fallen into his trap… How easily we all had.

  “What are you doing?”

  “What does it look like I’m doing?” he asked maliciously, his hooded eyes staring at me.

  “Sharpening a knife,” I quietly responded, a chill spreading through me.

  “What a rather astute observation.”

  “What are you planning on doing with that?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

  “I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise.” His lips turned up at the corners. “One of my biggest pet peeves is when someone tells me how a movie’s going to end, completely ruining it for me. It makes me…” He shook his head, a wild look about him. “Hell, it makes me really just want to…kill someone.” The vein in his neck engorged, he pressed the blade into his finger and blood seeped out of it.

  I swallowed hard, trying to fight back the bile forming in my throat.

  “Well, I think it’s sharp enough, don’t you, Serafina?”

  I cringed at his use of my rea
l name, feeling utterly stupid for not seeing all the signs earlier. Now that he was sitting here, it all made sense. I flashed back to the night of the wedding, remembering how brooding and quiet Richard had been. It was in stark contrast to the man I knew him to be. The entire night, he had been studying my father, his eyes trained on him.

  “So it was you all along, wasn’t it? You killed my mother and Charlie? You’re the one who set my father up to take the fall for all those crimes?”

  “Yes…and no,” he said, getting up and stalking toward where I sat with my arms tied behind my back. “Yes, I killed your mother, Charlie, and quite a few other people. However, I didn’t set your father up.”

  “So Mr. Mills did that?” I asked, wishing it wasn’t true. I didn’t want to believe the man who had been like a second father to me would do something so hateful to his neighbor and best friend.

  “More or less, with a little bit of my urging.”

  “Why?”

  “Because your father had it coming to him!” he growled. I flinched, the fierceness in his eyes and voice making my hands grow clammy. “He was no hero. He didn’t deserve to live when so many other people…true heroes, people who didn’t cower in the face of death…had been taken. I was simply correcting the natural order of things!”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, wanting to keep him talking for as long as possible.

  “He did nothing! My wife, Irena, was tied to a fucking tree!”

  I gasped, remembering the story my father had told me about his time in Bosnia, and a man named Viktor Popovic. Now I knew… Richard was Viktor and he wanted revenge.

  “Your father was there and he did nothing! He stood aside like a fucking coward and watched as she was shot in the fucking head. Then he left me for dead, too. He is no saint. He is no hero. And he deserves to die for what he did!”

  “He told me that story, how torn up he–”

  “No!” He rushed toward me, his eyes on fire, holding a knife up to my throat. “You do not get to sit there and say he felt guilty. Guilty doesn’t bring my wife back!”

  Resolving to stay strong, I took a deep breath. “How does Mr. Mills fit into this?” I hoped by changing the subject, he would calm down.

  He glared at me, his eyes dark and sinister. Seconds passed even though it felt like hours, as he kept the knife pressed to my throat. Convinced he was going to cut me with the blade, I began to say the prayers my mother had taught me all those years ago. Finally, he loosened his grip on me and retreated to the couch, sharpening the blade once more.

  “Harrison Mills… Let’s see. He had been rather useful to me over the years. Once I was granted asylum here, just months after your father returned from Bosnia, I changed my identity so Viktor Popovic no longer existed. I tried to leave that person behind, not wanting to be reminded of my past…but my past would not leave me alone. Years later, I watched as your father received some commendation from the president for solving a large case for Counterintelligence. I was enraged. Something inside me snapped and I knew I couldn’t move on until I finally righted that wrong.

  “I spent my days keeping tabs on the members of your father’s team from Bosnia. That’s when I discovered what your friend’s father had been doing. Selling military secrets, weapons, et cetera, to terror organizations, drug cartels, anybody who would pay. Since I had no desire to go to prison or be sent back to Bosnia, I knew I could blackmail him into doing my dirty work for me. I sent him photos I had amassed of all the deals he had been involved in, telling him if he didn’t want me to leak them, he had to dispose of Galloway. I do have to admit, his method was quite ingenious. Set a trap for your father to investigate a certain deal, kill him in a fire, then leave enough evidence to attribute said fire to him, along with all the weapons and secret deals Mills had made. I couldn’t have done it better if I had planned it myself.

  “When I saw the newscasts reporting what happened, something changed in me. I can’t explain it. It was a rush, a high unlike anything I had ever experienced, knowing that I was the reason Galloway was dead.”

  “But you didn’t exactly get what you wanted, did you?”

  “I suppose not, although I didn’t know it at the time. I saw the footage of the fire and Mills said it was done. I suppose he thought it was, as did I.”

  “How did you find out he was still alive?”

  He got up and walked into the kitchen, returning with an apple. Bringing the blade up to the fruit, he peeled it, his eyes trained on me. A shiver traveled down my spine at the menacing look he was giving me, coupled with him running the knife against the skin of the apple, peeling it off in one carefully orchestrated movement.

  “I hadn’t heard from Mills in years. Now that your father was supposedly dead, we had agreed to go our separate ways. I actually got on with my life. I had been working at this up-and-coming hotel. I started as an engineer, fixing things that needed to be fixed. Soon, I found myself running the hotel. Then another. Then I had been tapped to take over the entire chain. Things were good. I even married a girl, although it was purely a business arrangement and nothing more. But as the years wore on, there was this kind of nagging sensation deep inside of me. I had been riding that high from being responsible for Galloway’s fall, but it was starting to wane. I needed to feel that rush again. You can imagine my excitement one day when Mills called saying some schmuck was looking into your father, convinced he wasn’t guilty of the fire or any of the other deals. We learned he worked in Cryptology and had been the lone survivor of that fire. Then he told me a bit of news I wasn’t anticipating… That this guy had found your mother and she was still alive. We both grew concerned everything would crumble on top of us if they spoke and began to put the pieces together. I saw this as a golden opportunity to chase that high again, so we took matters into our own hands.”

  “You killed my mother and had Charlie institutionalized.”

  “More or less, although I didn’t pull the metaphorical trigger myself.”

  “No. Whitman did, didn’t he?”

  “He was a very reliable employee of the hotel. He got the job done, so to speak.”

  “Why are you telling me all of this?” I asked.

  He gave me an ominous look as he sliced into the apple. “You’re a bright young girl, Serafina. I think you can figure out why I’m telling you everything.” He popped the apple into his mouth and took a bite, the juices flowing down his chin.

  “Well, what happened next?” I asked. It was readily apparent he had no intention of allowing me to walk out of that house so my only saving grace was to try to stall him as long as possible in the hopes that someone would figure out where I was. Or for me to come up with some sort of plan. I wasn’t putting too many eggs in that basket, though.

  “Killing your mother wasn’t enough. I was addicted to this now, desperate to recreate that high I felt when your father was killed. There was something lacking and it drove me crazy so I did the only thing I could think of. I knew it would only be a matter of time until someone else came out of the woodwork, throwing Mills’ and my world into a tailspin once again, so we decided to take preemptive action this time. Everyone on Mills’ team at the embassy fire… Gone. The Ranger unit in Bosnia… Gone. Anyone who could potentially leak the truth… Disposed of. Of course, law enforcement never put the pieces together, the incompetent fools they are. For the most part, Whitman made everything seem like an accident and no one ever thought it odd that nearly an entire Ranger unit had died. And with each new kill, that rush came back, but it still wasn’t enough. Then, roughly two years ago, I got a phone call from a frantic Mills, telling me something I never expected to hear.”

  “That my father was alive.”

  He nodded. “Yes, and he was convinced your father knew everything. It was only a matter of time until he ruined it all. The only thing we had on our side was that Galloway was deemed a treasonous bastard, although some higher-ups of the U.S. military issued a gag order on his alleged misdeeds so the pu
blic never knew about it.”

  “But I’m sure it would have all come out if there was evidence that he was still alive and had committed a crime…say, murder.”

  He winked. “Smart girl, but you’re skipping ahead. We’ll get to that. I saw this as the perfect opportunity to finally… What is the phrase you use to refer to recreating that first high?”

  “Chase the dragon,” I muttered.

  “Precisely! That’s the one. So, yes, with the news that your father was alive, this was my opportunity to feel that same rush again. Mills promised he would take care of Galloway once and for all and I grew antsy as I waited for news. Months had passed and I heard nothing. Nothing! Mills had forsaken his old life years ago, leaving behind his family for a deep cover assignment with the CIA, and I had become uneasy that this whole thing was a ticking time bomb. That’s when I found out the infamous daughter of Colonel Galloway, now parading around as Mackenzie Delano, was living on South Padre. And I knew this was the perfect spot to open up a new hotel.”

  “So you came here and…what? Married Jenna to get close to me? Seems like a lot of effort, if you ask me.”

  “I soon found getting close to you to be next to impossible, so the next best option was to get close to someone you trusted. Jenna. She was so desperate to fall in love with someone, it was perfect. While I was working you from one angle, Mills…or Collins, as he was now going by…had hired a private security company to work you from another, no questions asked.”

  “Tyler…”

  He nodded, devoting his attention to sharpening his knife again. The sound of metal against metal was like nails on a chalkboard, each drawn out motion unnerving me a little bit more.

  “Everything was going great. I did everything I could to convince you to finally lower your guard and let this guy in, knowing if it worked between you two, you may just lead him, and me, to your father. Then it all started to spiral out of control. Charlie had escaped from Walter Reed, then Elizabeth overheard me talking to Whitman on the phone while I was at the Chamber of Commerce’s office, ordering him to do everything he could to spook you…so she had to be dealt with.”