“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 public 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?”