Slaying the Dragon (Deception Duet #2) (14 page)

Mackenzie

T
HE
SUN
WAS
SWELTERING
when I stepped out of the car several hours later and made my way across the church parking lot, past the main building, and proceeded up the familiar path to the rectory. It had to be over a hundred degrees, the white material of my dress sticking to my skin.

As I approached, I tried to suppress my urge to turn around. I was apprehensive about seeing my father for the first time in over four months. So much had happened, I didn’t even know where to start. Between the drama with Charlie, Tyler’s deception, and the pregnancy, I had no idea how he was going to react. I prayed he would offer me some sort of guidance about what to do, like my mother would have if she were still alive.

I knocked on the door, fanning myself. It was nearly five in the evening, but the rays of the sun were strong and practically unbearable. The door opened and I felt a momentary relief when a rush of cool air escaped the house. I expected a nun to answer, as was normally the case. Instead, I stared into Father Slattery’s tired eyes.

“Good evening, Mackenzie.”

“Father Slattery,” I said, nodding.

He surveyed my appearance, his eyes settling on my stomach. Taking a timid step backwards, I pulled at the hem of my dress and stared at my feet. I didn’t know what to say. I thought about defending myself, but didn’t the church teach forgiveness, not judgment? I couldn’t really remember anymore.

“When’s the last time you went to confession, Mackenzie?” he asked in the same pacifying voice that calmed me when I was younger.

“It’s been a while, Father.” I shuffled my feet, staring off into the distance, feeling ashamed.

“I suspected as much. Please, come in.”

I shot my eyes to him. “But the mass for my mother… I need to–”

“Some things are more important and can’t be handled during a mass,” he interrupted, almost trying to tell me something with the way he stared at me, his gaze narrowed. “Please, Mackenzie. Come in.” For the first time in nearly fifteen years, I cautiously stepped foot in the rectory.
 

Being back here made my skin crawl with the memories I had struggled to forget over the years. It looked just as it did during the period of time my mother and I lived in a cramped room. Removed from the only life I had known. Forced into hiding. And why? I still had no definitive answers, only speculation.

“This way, child,” Father Slattery instructed, heading down a long, dark hallway and stopping outside a large cherry wood door. Reaching into his pocket, he produced a key and unlocked it, pushing it open.

I stepped into a spacious, dimly lit office, the smell of old books and wood finding its way to my senses. The walls were lined with shelves containing hundreds of hardbound books. In the center of the room sat a large desk, and several chairs were strewn throughout. The windows were covered with blackout curtains, although one was pulled back slightly, allowing a sliver of sunlight to filter into the room. Dust particles danced in the air and I smiled as a memory rushed forward.

“What are those, Daddy?”
I had asked my father when I couldn’t have been more than three or four.

“Those are angels,
mi bichito
. They’re just here to check on you
.
”

I still thought of my father and angels whenever I saw dust particles being illuminated by sunlight.

The sound of the door shutting startled me and I jumped, spinning around to see that Father Slattery was no longer behind me, as I expected him to be. The door knob began to jiggle and I heard the click of a lock.

My heart began racing. I had never questioned Father Slattery’s intentions before. He was the one who helped us escape North Carolina, after all. He put his reputation on the line and hid us in this very house for nearly two years. Now I wondered if there was more to it than that.

“Serafina,” a voice cracked and I whirled around, my eyes falling on a familiar silhouette sitting in a reading chair by one of the large windows. Confused, I glanced over my shoulder at the locked door. “Please, come sit. There’s much to discuss.”

I remained speechless, my voice nowhere to be found. Eyeing him guardedly, I hesitantly put one foot in front of the other and sat in the reading chair opposite him, noticing a tray of cheese and crackers set out on a table between us.

“I’d ask if you’d like some wine,” he said in the husky voice that once lulled me to sleep, “but I suppose that question is not quite appropriate, is it?”

I looked up, almost expecting to see a disappointed look on my father’s time-worn face, but that wasn’t the case at all. He actually looked genuinely happy, perhaps even proud of the woman I had become. For years, the only conversations I’d had with this man were when he’d sit behind me in church, not face-to-face, for fear someone would put the pieces together of who we both truly were. Now that we were in the same room and looking into each other’s eyes, I didn’t want this moment to end.

 
My eyes scanned my father, trying to imprint everything about him to memory. His face showed signs of his age. His brilliant blue eyes no longer exuded the vitality I remembered growing up. Scars still covered the entire left side of his body, reminding me of the purpose of this visit. I wanted to know precisely how he1` got those burn marks, and whether his side of the story corroborated Charlie’s.

“I see you got my letter.” He poured wine into one glass and water into another. “I’m sure you have a thousand questions.”

“I–”

“But,” he interrupted, “this works both ways. Full disclosure from this moment forward. I will tell you everything, Serafina. However, I expect reciprocity from you. I want you to understand where I’m coming from and why things have to be the way they are. But I need to know exactly what’s going on in your life. I need to know you’re okay, that you’ll
be
okay knowing the truth.”

“Full disclosure?” I repeated, surveying him. I couldn’t help but wonder whether this was a double-edged sword. I had been waiting sixteen years to know who I really was, why my father had been hiding, and why the man I loved felt the need to use me to get information about my father. However, I feared learning the truth may change my perception of everything. Sometimes ignorance was bliss. I just prayed this wasn’t one of those situations.

“Yes,” he reiterated. “No more secrets. No more lies. Just the truth from this moment forward, regardless of the consequences. You deserve that much.” He stared at me, catching my gaze, regret covering his demeanor. I wondered how difficult it must have been for him to keep his existence a secret from me for all those years. I didn’t know what to think, but I knew the only way to move forward was to learn to trust my father again. And the only way to do that was to finally learn the truth.

“What about all the talk for years that it wasn’t safe for me to know?”

He picked up the knife on the serving tray and sliced a piece of cheese, placing it on a cracker and handing it to me before preparing one for himself. “At the time, I thought that was true. However, things have been brought to my attention, making me think it’s no longer safe for you
not
to know.”

“How can I be sure you’re telling me the truth? I’ve heard so many stories. I don’t know which way is up anymore.” I placed the cracker on the plate in front of me, feeling sick to my stomach.

“I wish I had told you everything years ago.” He took a deep breath, his shoulders dropping slightly. “If I had, maybe it wouldn’t be so difficult for you to trust me now, but there were reasons for it.”

Straightening my spine, I strengthened my resolve. I went there for answers and I refused to let my apprehension get in the way of them.

“The embassy fire?” I asked in an even tone.

“Was not me.”

“Then who was it? How come you left for Liberia right before it happened? It looks suspicious–”

“Serafina,” he interrupted, “I joined the army the day I turned eighteen. I left my house and rode my bike thirteen miles to the nearest recruiting center. My parents didn’t want me to go into the army, or any branch, but I had wanted to be a Ranger as long as I could remember and nothing was going to stand in my way. I wanted that Ranger beret and I was lucky enough to spend many years wearing it. I love the army. I love my country. I devoted my life to protecting it, so much so that my superior officers noticed I had a knack for seeing things no one else could. Before I knew it, I was working in Army Counterintelligence. I was thrilled. But my ability to see things no one else could ended up being my downfall.”

I scrunched my eyebrows. “How so?”

“I started noticing patterns. Our weapons were being used against us. Our intel was being used against us. Someone on the inside was betraying their own country for profit. For months, maybe years, I tried to find out who, but I was always one step behind whomever it was. Then, one day, I thought I caught a lucky break. I unscrambled an encoded message confirming the U.S. Ambassador to Liberia would turn his head and allow a large stockpile of our weapons to disappear in trade for a substantial amount of diamonds.”

“Blood diamonds?”

“Most likely. The civil war in Sierra Leone was winding down, but there was still a great deal of corruption in the area, and Liberia borders Sierra Leone. I was permitted leave to go to Liberia to see if I could stop the arms deal, or at least find out who was behind it all, without causing an international incident. When I got there, I went to the embassy to speak to the ambassador about what was going on, but whoever was behind these deals, whoever the traitor was, beat me to it.”

“It was a setup?” I asked, staring at my father’s forlorn expression, recalling Charlie’s words from just a few days ago.

Swallowing hard, he didn’t answer. He simply continued with the story I could sense he had been wanting to share with me for years. His gaze was fixed on the bookcase behind me, as if he were watching a movie of what really happened and was simply narrating it for me.

“I remember walking in the front doors of the embassy, immediately halting in my tracks. There were no staff members at the front desk and the reception area was empty. As I made my way through the entry area, I heard a loud voice giving a speech about a circle of trust.” He tore his gaze back to me. “That was something I used to do in the field whenever I had new team members. It was a way to make them remember we had to work as one cohesive unit.”

He shook his head, almost like he was frustrated that he didn’t see the signs of it being a setup. “I stepped toward the source, trying to keep my presence unknown. The voice grew louder, more impassioned, and my heart dropped to the pit of my stomach as I listened to my own words. I physically felt sick and had to fight back the nausea. This guy took what I said verbatim and was repeating it to a huge room full of frightened people.” His lower lip trembled and I could sense he was back in that room on that day.

He avoided my eyes, staring past me once more as the memory washed over him. “The smell of gasoline was overpowering,” he said, his voice soft. “I knew it wasn’t going to end well, but what could I do? It wouldn’t do much good for me to go in shooting. It was twelve against one. The odds were not in my favor. So I did what I thought to be the best tactical decision. I hid my presence in the hopes I could save at least one person, even if it cost me my life.

“As I watched those traitors terrorize their hostages, I mentally began to sort through all the intel I had amassed, wondering what I could have missed. That’s when it hit me this was part of the plan all along. This guy wanted me to find everything. He wanted me to go to my superiors to tell them what I found and ask for leave to come here. Then, when word of my trademark fire spread, they would put two and two together and name me as the culprit to this attack, along with all the arms deals I had been investigating. Hell, one of the first things you look for when trying to find the person responsible for a crime is to see who tries to ingrain themselves in the investigation. I had made myself into the perfect suspect.”

“So you hid? You abandoned your family? You watched as over sixty people were murdered and did nothing?”

“I didn’t do nothing, Serafina!” He ripped off the hat he wore that shielded most of his face. “Do you think this is the result of nothing?!” he bellowed passionately, gesturing to the permanent scars covering the left side of his body. “I tried to save them, but I couldn’t! By the time whoever was responsible made his escape, it was too late! The flames were out of control, bodies were on fire! Their screams and shrieks plague my dreams every night! Have you ever smelled burning flesh?!” he exclaimed, tears welling in his eyes.

I stared in shock, shaking my head.

“It’s scorched in my memory, Fi! Every day, I’m reminded that I failed to protect people from a monster.
A real life dragon
!” He reached for his glass with shaky hands, the trauma of that day all those years ago still wearing on him.

“I did everything I could,” he continued after sipping his wine. “In the end, the only person I could save was a boy who couldn’t have been more than sixteen or seventeen. Someone must have shielded him from getting doused with the gasoline. His burns were minor but the smoke got into his lungs. He was barely breathing when I pulled him from the building. When I was about to go back and see if I could rescue anyone else, a convoy of Liberian soldiers pulled up. I knew it was probably cowardly of me to run, to hide from them, but I couldn’t risk being detained. At that point, my sole mission was to try to get home to you and your mother. I feared I would be painted as a monster and I couldn’t let you think that of me.”

“Where did you go?” I asked, still trying to wrap my head around his story. It seemed so unreal, so far-fetched, but it complimented Charlie’s version of what happened perfectly. All the puzzle pieces were falling into place.

“I found a church. I didn’t know what else to do. I had burns on over fifty percent of my body and was convinced I wasn’t going to make it.” He reached across the table, squeezing my hand. I took a quick breath at the contact. It had been years since I felt my father’s flesh on mine. His hand was scarred, rough, and warm. I choked out a loud sob at the gesture. It was so simple, yet it brought back memories of my life before it all fell apart.