Secret Truth on the Adriatic

1159 A.M. — Wednesday September 12, 2018

ZAGREB, CROATIA

PETRA HORVAT

Petra Horvat slipped on her oversized Gucci knockoff sunglasses and stepped out of the three-story building that housed the Ministry of the Interior.

Inside those walls, she was just a nearly middle-aged secretary nobody noticed, but once she reached her final destination—the Hotel Blue—she would be Petra, the mysterious object of desire to well-known true crime podcaster Luka Babic.

It was all so clandestine. So delicious.

She ached to brag about it to her younger sister, Vita, a smug stay-at-home mother of two.

But she couldn’t tell her, because Vita would immediately tell her awful husband, Tomislav, who would tell his boss, the director of legal affairs at the ministry.

She certainly had to keep the relationship a secret from her parents, her father being a retired police captain (and the one who convinced his old friend, The Director, to give her the job).

Her father would not only be horribly disappointed in his eldest child, but would feel obligated to immediately tell his friend she was no longer to be trusted.

Not when Croatia’s national security was at stake.

And that would mean Petra would lose her job.

But even worse than being fired, she would likely have to move in with her cousin Una, who had an awful screechy laugh and found everything—even the most mundane things—hilarious.

She certainly wouldn’t be welcome in her parents’ home if they found out.

And even worse than having to live with Una would be the fact that Petra’s family would insist that Luka was just using her for information, which would be a logical conclusion to reach, given his profession and the fact that Petra was the secretary to the police director for the entire country.

Besides, Petra was utterly plain— a frumpy dresser, never quite knowing how to make the most of her ample curves.

Her efforts to hide them instead of work with them (as so many women seemed to know how to do these days) made her resemble a potato (at least that’s what her mother had said when she was on her way out the door the other day).

As if that wasn’t bad enough, she had inherited her father’s heavy brow ridge and bumpy, large nose.

Luka, on the other hand, was not only empirically much better looking than her, he was also only thirty-three while she was closing in on forty.

He had light blond hair and brilliant green eyes that held the women at the hotel’s front desk captive.

She had once watched him check in through the front window, and could see how the receptionists smiled at him.

Petra knew instinctively that they would be horrified if they saw who he was about to meet.

They would look at him, then look at her, then back at him again with the word “Why?” written all over their faces.

It would be as if seeing them together was a personal affront to the card-carrying members of the beautiful people club.

If she could get him, what did that suggest about the state of the world?

Surely it must be a sign of the apocalypse, or at the very least, an indicator that a seismic shift in the proper order of the dating world had occurred and nothing made any sense anymore.

But they didn’t know Luka the way she did.

They weren’t there in the room when he was on top of her, his face buried in her neck, making her every cell hum Whitney Houston songs.

(Petra had loved Whitney Houston since she was a teenager lip syncing into her hairbrush about wanting to dance with somebody.

And now she had someone to dance with—horizontally—on the second Wednesday of the month from 12:05 until 12:45 p.m.) After an impossibly long dry spell without even one man showing interest in her, Petra decided she’d been saving all her love for Luka.

And she hoped that maybe, with a little luck and the right perfume, she could make him hers permanently.

She had read that Dior’s Hypnotic Poison was the number three most attractive scent to men, so as soon as Luka had asked her out, she went out and splurged on a bottle.

She had to go with the third most alluring perfume since she couldn’t find number two and number one was way out of her budget.

At exactly 11:55 a.m., she’d spritz it on (sparingly) at her desk, then rush off, her heart pounding with excitement.

So now, after nearly thirty-eight years of being a boring, overlooked underachiever who still lived with her parents, Petra finally had something that made her special. She was glamorous for once.

Well, it really wasn’t all that glamorous if she thought long enough about it.

Especially not on an unusually hot September day, because by the time she made the five-minute walk in her kitten heels and wool skirt (that she put on assuming it would be a regular autumn day), she’d be sweaty.

No, not sweaty. Dewy. That’s what a sophisticated woman would say.

And her lover would gladly agree as he dropped kisses down her dewy neck.

The word lover wasn’t quite right in her mind.

That evoked an image of someone much more passionate than he had proved himself to be.

Instead, he was a tidy, quiet man who had already shut the blackout curtains by the time Petra entered the room.

He folded his clothes into a neat pile on the credenza before getting into bed, even though Petra would very much have preferred him to be so overcome with desire that he’d tear open his dress shirt, sending the tiny white buttons into the air before they’d roll around the carpeted room and disappear under the bed.

Petra never imagined him ripping off her shirt, because even in her wildest fantasies, she couldn’t bring herself to want anything of hers to be ruined.

That would mean wasting money, which was a thought that made her stomach clench.

She couldn’t sew and secretaries didn’t get paid well at the ministry.

Instead of receiving generous compensation for her work, her boss fed her a line about the privilege of serving her country.

And since Petra only had a tiny nest egg and an even smaller imagination, she liked to picture Luka urgently ripping off his own things. Which was something he would never do.

So, it wasn’t exactly a passionate affair, what with no one ripping off anyone’s clothes or making love up against the wall when they first entered the room, unable to keep their hands off each other long enough to get to the bed.

Every time was exactly the same. After folding his clothes and fumbling around in the dark for the bed, they had sex missionary-style, which suited her just fine because if she was on top and she looked down to kiss him, her skin (that was already starting to grow lax) would make her look closer to fifty than thirty, which would surely be a turn off for Luka.

After it was over, they would talk about their jobs (mainly his, as it was infinitely more interesting than hers) until his alarm went off.

Their first time together, Luka explained that as much as he’d love to lay there all afternoon worshiping her body, he needed to set an alarm because even though he was self-employed, the important part of that term was the word employed.

Then he told her that as a podcaster, you eat what you kill, which was a phrase that made him sound heroic, manly, and oh so capable to Petra.

Just the kind of man she could see herself loving for the rest of her days.

She’d happily give up her job at the ministry to cook up whatever he killed for them.

At exactly 12:43, Luka would shower, dress, and drop a ten-euro tip on his pillow for housekeeping (which Petra would slip into her handbag on her way out the door).

When he’d leave, he’d tell her to give it a couple of minutes before she went back to work.

The showering thing made her wonder if he was lying about being single.

But a Google search didn’t indicate a woman in his life, and surely if he was in a long-term relationship, Google would know.

So, even though they weren’t exactly inventive in the sack, and they had yet to go out for a meal (which would be a terrible idea on account of it putting Petra’s job in jeopardy), it was a hell of a lot more exciting than anything she’d experienced before.

Petra hurried along the sidewalk under the tall maple trees so as to shield her face from her now-mortal enemy, the sun.

She darted around all the office workers on their lunch breaks who were leisurely in search of food.

Ha! Go ahead and eat your boring lunches.

I’m about to work off some calories instead.

Well, a few anyway. How many do you actually burn when you’re just lying there?

It couldn’t be many, but at least she wouldn’t be eating.

But none of that mattered because today she would endear herself to Luka permanently. She was sitting on the hottest story that had ever come through to the police director’s office, and in the biggest of all grand romantic gestures, she was going to betray her boss to deliver the story to Luka.

The call came in an hour earlier, interrupting Petra, who had been reading an article online about “how to give a blow job that will blow his mind” (something she would never actually do, but liked to pretend she would, like jogging or doing yoga every morning when she woke up).

It was the chief of police for an island just off the coast, called Lo?inj-Lussino.

A lowly police chief calling the office directly was unheard of, and Petra knew immediately that something serious must have happened.

And the urgency in his voice confirmed it was something big.

“The director is in a meeting right now,” she had told him, even though he was actually alone at his desk filling out a form for his new personal trainer.

The Director’s wife left him last Christmas, after thirty-two years of being ignored by a very busy and important man, and he was determined to hit the dating scene again.

But first, he wanted to shed a few pounds.

“Can I take a message?” she asked, knowing this would be her best chance at finding out what was going on.

“Pull him out of the meeting,” the chief answered, his tone growing impatient. “I’ve got a very delicate situation on my hands that he will need to know about immediately.”

“Hmm, I’m afraid the meeting is rather important. Can you give me any more details?” Oh, she was pushing her luck, and she knew it. “I’m only asking because the more information I can take to him, the more likely it is he’ll take your call.”

After a heavy sigh, the chief said, “There’s a yacht with some very important, very famous people on it, and one of them is dead.”