Slaying the Dragon (Deception Duet #2) (37 page)

“Who?” Mackenzie asked.

Francis sighed. “Harrison Mills.”

“Mr. Mills?” She stared in shock at her father, her mouth open as she tried to process that piece of information. “How? Why?”

“It’s probably my fault he got into everything like he did. During our time in Bosnia, I realized he was remarkably good at the art of persuasion, so he became our man on the ground. He was young, charismatic, just an all-around great person. He was the type of guy you’d drop everything to be around, and this personality even drew the enemy to him. He’d make the deals, while the rest of us worked different angles or tried to determine movements based on intel and coded messages he received. Nearly every day, we’d send him on his way with a truck full of weapons. He’d come back with an empty truck and pages upon pages of his notebook filled with intel. Some of it was good. Some turned out to be false leads.

“After two months, we were pulled out of Bosnia, all of us given an award of distinction for our service to our country while there. We never uttered a word about our one failed mission. To everyone, the operation was a complete success. However, I couldn’t help but think that I was at a turning point in my life so I decided to put in for a transfer to the Army Criminal Investigative Command. I thought with all my special ops and investigative training from the Rangers, it would be a good alternative. Plus, I found out there was a baby on the way.” He looked at Mackenzie and grabbed her hand in his. “I hated the idea of having to spend weeks or months away from my wife and daughter. I was given a role as a special agent before being transferred into Counterintelligence as a supervisory special agent, where I spent the next ten years of my life putting some really horrible people behind bars.”

“But something must have happened toward the end, right?” I asked, knowing there had to be more.

He nodded, releasing his hold on Mackenzie’s hand. “Roughly seven or eight years after I started working in Counterintelligence, I received notice of a new agent who would be part of my team. No information had been given to me, but my superior officer assured me he’d be a great fit since he had just spent the past fifteen years as a Ranger. I was thrilled about having another Ranger under my supervision. That evening, I went home and you could imagine my surprise when I saw Harrison and his family moving into the house next to mine. I hadn’t seen him since the debriefing after Bosnia. When he told me he was my new special agent, I couldn’t have been happier. I took him under my wing, showing him the ropes at Counterintelligence. I trusted him blindly, but I shouldn’t have.”

“When did everything start to spiral out of control?” Mackenzie asked. “Toward the end, I remember you were barely ever home.”

“I thought I was on to something. The clues were all there. Arms shipment going missing overseas, the weapons eventually ending up involved in some big shoot-out between notorious drug cartels and the DEA, among other incidents. I remember thinking about Harrison and his knack for making these kind of deals while we were in Bosnia. I even brought him into my office to question him, especially when I caught wind of an arrangement between someone on the inside and the U.S. ambassador to Liberia. The ambassador had agreed to turn a blind eye and provide tactical support to a large weapons trade that was about to happen with the rebels in Sierra Leone. In exchange, he’d get a percentage of the diamonds for which the weapons were being sold. Harrison swore to me the only time he sold military weapons was under my guidance. I believed him, but I couldn’t let this lead slip through my fingertips.” He shook his head in frustration. “I should have seen it all before, but I blindly requested and was granted permission to go to Liberia and investigate.”

“Let me guess. You got there and there was someone already at the embassy, shouting about a circle of trust.” I knew enough that I could fill in the blanks at this point.

“He burned those people alive. I did all I could to save one of them.” He looked at Mackenzie. “Charlie.”

“But why would Mills want to set you up like that?”

“At first, I thought he was purely motivated by greed. He could continue to make arms deals, but I had confronted him about it and spooked him. The Liberian deal was already in place, so what better way to silence me than to go over there and kill me in the fire, all the while making it look like I was the one responsible for all those deals. But that didn’t sit right with me. I needed to know more.

“By the time I had figured out this much, I had been presumed dead, my name dragged through the mud. Hell, Harrison had done such a thorough job, all the compelling physical evidence pointed to me as the man behind those arms deals…including bank accounts. I had nothing to go on, but I just knew it
had
to be him. It was my word against his, so I would need something more. Thankfully, Chaplain Slattery still had some contacts who could access information for me. For years, I had Harrison followed, had access to information in his accounts, his emails, monitored his phone calls… I hoped we’d find something, but we couldn’t. Nothing at all. And it was eating me up to see him simply living his life while I had to remain in hiding. So I thought maybe if I sent him a message that I was still alive and knew what he had done…”

“How? I thought he went missing?” I inquired.

Francis nodded. “He did. It was shortly after Magdalena’s death.” He closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. “I stalled, always thinking I was missing something, that maybe he wasn’t the one behind it all. Hell, all I had to go on was my gut that he set me up. For years, I continued searching for a needle in a haystack when I should have trusted my gut from the beginning and confronted Harrison when I had the chance. If I had, I can’t help but wonder if things would have turned out differently. If my Magdalena wouldn’t…” His voice trailed off.

“Dad, you can’t blame yourself–”

“But I do, Serafina! Every day, I wake up wondering if I had opened my eyes sooner, had pressed the issue, had come out of hiding and followed my gut, maybe things wouldn’t have spiraled out of control. I know Charlie confronted Harrison about his investigation into the embassy attacks. This was just weeks before he was institutionalized. Then Charlie spoke with your mother. She told me about it, asking me whether she should tell him what she knew. I told her it was her decision but to be safe and meet in a neutral place. She never made it to that meeting. I know in my heart she didn’t have an accident. Someone didn’t want her to go to that meeting and give Charlie any information that could lead him on the right path. And now he’s on the chopping block, too.”

“So you think Charlie’s being set up?” I asked. From the beginning, Charlie had been a loose cannon to me, his intentions always confusing and open to several interpretations.

“I think this guy is ready to do anything, including killing, to silence anyone who could point a finger at him.”

“Like my mother?”

He nodded. “And Harrison.”

“Wait. What are you talking about?” Mackenzie asked loudly before lowering her voice. “So he’s not the one behind it all?”

“It would appear not. I think Harrison was just a puppet, doing what he had to in order to survive, including silencing anyone who could potentially incriminate him…until now.”

“So he
is
dead,” I stated.

“Possibly. He went missing back in March, so–”

“Wait a minute,” I interjected. “I thought you said he went missing shortly after your wife’s death.”

“That’s what I thought, as well,” Galloway said. “I was beside myself with remorse, thinking my only shot at some real answers was gone. I didn’t even consider the possibility that he
made
himself disappear.”

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

“I didn’t. Father Slattery has been by my side since day one. He knew me probably better than anyone else at Fort Bragg. I grew up Catholic, but didn’t really follow the religion much until I met your mother, Serafina. She went to confession regularly on the base and grew close to Slattery. And so did I. He had been just as involved in trying to put the pieces together, although he still had connections at the base who could access the information needed. I didn’t have that luxury. I couldn’t stick my nose out too much for fear of being found.”

“So how did he find out Mills was still alive?” I asked.

“Charlie.”

“Charlie?!” Mackenzie exclaimed. “How?”

“I have no idea how he figured it out, considering he was locked up at Walter Reed at the time, but he did. He always was able to see things no one else could. Charlie’s therapist was a friend of Slattery’s and before Charlie escaped Walter Reed, he shared things. Notebooks full of what would appear to anyone else to be the scribblings of a mad man. But to a man trained in special ops, it was more than that. Charlie was suspicious of Mills and had been tracking him, probably because of the timing of his disappearance and Magdalena’s death. He had always seen patterns where no one else could and he saw this. He found that Mills was alive and had been recruited by the CIA to work a deep cover mission. The CIA made Mills disappear on paper and gave him a completely new identity. Even his family assumed he had died. He walked away from all of it. Why? He loved his family, so there must have been something going on to make him accept that mission and give up his life and family.”

“Doesn’t sound like it was too deep of a cover if you know who he is,” Mackenzie argued.

“And I would never have found out if it wasn’t for Charlie. He knew. I don’t know how, but he found out that Harrison disappeared for a year, reappearing as Benjamin Collins…”

My eyes flung to Francis, shock apparent at the mention of the man who had contacted our company to find Galloway in the first place. “What did you just say?”

“Name sounds familiar, doesn’t it?” he asked smugly.

All I could do was nod.

“Benjamin Collins is Harrison Mills, and he has done a damn good job of hiding his true identity. I watched him for weeks, in awe at how he had adapted to a new life. Hell, he must have even gone so far as to get plastic surgery on his face to hide his true identity. I’ve tried to figure out what his mission was, but his cover is so deep, it’s been nearly impossible to determine what it is. Finally, after months, I sent him an unmarked package with something in it that would tell him, without question, I was still on to him, I was alive, and I knew who he was. You could imagine his surprise when he opened it.”

“What was it?” Mackenzie asked.

“A package of Beeman’s bubble gum.”

“And what was the significance of that?” I asked.

“You know how in the field, rank is sometimes forgotten? Especially at night when you’re sleeping in shifts or you’re all eating, faced with the reality that no one is immune from a bullet, regardless of the number of stripes on your sleeves?”

I nodded.

“Well, one night, we were somewhere in the Middle East, staring at a cloudless desert sky. As we listened to shells being fired in the distance, he told me a story. He was a little kid, and he and a friend had shoplifted a pack of gum. He was caught and, instead of owning up to it, he told the shop owner his best friend said he had paid for it. He thought nothing would happen, that all the shop owner would want is for his friend to apologize. Well, the following day, his friend wasn’t in school. He had been detained for stealing a pack of gum. Apparently, his father was the police chief and wanted to make an example out of him. He told me how horrible he felt for betraying his best friend. The Beeman’s gum was a message saying I knew he was alive and I knew he had betrayed me. I didn’t know what I hoped to get out of it. Maybe I wanted him to come clean and finally grow the balls to name who had scared him to the point that he ruined his life, but that didn’t happen.”

“How long ago was this?”

“About two years.”

I nodded. “I can finish the story. Collins, or Mills, not knowing what else to do, eventually contacted my security company with the directive to find you and bring you to justice, knowing you could claim you weren’t responsible all you wanted, but all the physical evidence still pointed to you.”

“If he even
wanted
to bring me to justice,” Galloway said. “A desperate man will do whatever he needs to save his neck, and saving his neck may just mean slitting mine. Not to mention, this case was deemed closed years ago. I have a feeling he used his position in the CIA to get you to do his dirty work, then silence me.”

“You really think he would have killed you over this?” Mackenzie asked.

“I don’t think, little bug. I’m fairly certain of it. And that’s where we still are today. Unless I find who’s really pulling the strings here, it’s my word against what everyone’s been led to believe.”

“And where is Mills now?” I asked.

“That’s the million dollar question, son. His ex-wife and her husband have been murdered, their deaths attributed to Charlie. His son took a leave of absence from his job back in March…around the same time you lost contact with the man you knew to be Benjamin Collins, I presume.”

“Sounds about right,” I muttered.

“I just think there’s something fishy going on here, and that Mills isn’t the one ultimately responsible for all of this. I could be wrong, but I’ve learned to always trust my gut. Whenever I haven’t, I’ve regretted it. So if my gut tells me to look for someone other than Mills, we look for someone other than Mills, someone with tremendous resources to pull something like this off.”

“Who do you think it is?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but it must have some sort of connection to my time in Bosnia. I plan on going through my notes of everyone I ever came into contact with over there, every asset we had, to get to the bottom of this.”

“So what do we do?” Mackenzie pushed.

“
We
don’t do anything. Tyler needs to focus on getting better after that nasty accident, and you need to focus on that baby.”

“I have a whole team of people who can help track this guy down,” I offered.

“And I appreciate that,” he replied calmly. “But I don’t think it’s necessary.”