The Swan & the Jackal

  She blinks, stunned, and rears her head back. “Thought you said he’d never kill me?”

  “You know what I mean.” I sigh. “Look, Izabel, I appreciate it. I really do. But I can find my own.”

  “I want you to kill her,” she hisses through her teeth, as if she had been holding it back the whole time.

  I stop in my tracks just as I’m about to leave her sitting there.

  “What?”

  She stands up beside me.

  “I was going to do it myself when I found out what she did,” she whispers harshly. “I was ready to get on a plane last night. I even told Victor I was going to visit Dina—which I would’ve done afterwards so it wouldn’t have technically been a lie, so don’t look at me like that.” She grabs the lapel of my coat and wrenches me closer. “But then James Woodard gave me the information on Cass—Seraphina, and I knew then that killing Kelly Bennings would be a job better off in your hands. You need it more than I do.” She lets go of my coat. “I don’t actually need it. I just want it.”

  “Why do you want it so badly?”

  Her nostrils flare briefly.

  “Because of what she put her daughter and the client’s daughter through, all for a fucking man!” She looks behind me at the barista. A customer enters the store. “That bitch deserves to die, or to at least be tortured—who better to do it than you? Any so-called mother who would risk ruining her daughter’s life because of a man, deserves whatever’s coming to her.” She takes her purse from the table and tosses the short strap over her shoulder.

  I search her face for what I already know is there: pain for what her own mother did to her, for taking her away at a young age to live with a Mexican drug lord who held her captive for much of her life. Any other day I might mess with her head and accuse her of just using me to do her dirty work, but I know that’s not it. Izabel doesn’t need anyone to do her dirty work. She’s more than capable. And she likes it.

  “You need this, Fredrik.” She starts to walk past, but stops in front of me and looks at me with her soft green eyes. “You’re my family,” she says, “and I think you should let me help you the way Seraphina used to. And now after what you said before, about becoming the shell of the man you used to be, I’ll make it my job to help you. Because I refuse to lose any members of my family. Do you understand?” It was more a demand than a question.

  I say nothing, but I know I don’t have to. I look down at the paper and then take it into my hand.

  “Thank you, Izabel,” I say and she nods and walks out of the coffee shop.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Fredrik

  I couldn’t bear to see Cassia again tonight. I need time to figure out what I’m going to do, because in the end I’m going to have to do something, and I’d rather it be of my choosing than to be blindsided by whatever fate has in store. Though as history proves, I expect to be blindsided, anyway.

  But more importantly, more than my need to take a step away from Cassia, my need for bloodshed must be nurtured.

  I called Greta minutes before I left for the airport and told her to stay away from Cassia until I came back:

  “But what if she needs me for something? How long will you be gone?”

  “No more than forty-eight hours,” I said. “Cassia will be fine on her own for that long.”

  As usual, I could detect the frustration in Greta’s voice though she tried very hard to hide it.

  What Izabel did for me—well, it concerns me, and I’ll address it more when this is all over because I can’t deal with all of these things at once. But I won’t be letting her risk herself for me like this. Besides, the last thing I need is for Victor to think something is going on between us. He wouldn’t think twice about putting a bullet in my head when it comes to that girl. Unfortunately, I’m all too familiar with the feeling. I felt that way about Seraphina. And now, Cassia….

  Dorian stretches his legs out, one into the aisle of the plane, and slouches far down into his seat. I stare out the window beside me into the blackness of the night sky forty thousand feet in the air over Washington State.

  “I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately,” he says, resting his head against the seat and crossing his hands over his stomach, “but you’re really beginning to disappoint me.”

  I want to laugh at the seriousness in his voice.

  “I was warned,” he goes on, “that working with you wouldn’t be easy. Like you were some kind of Sweeny Todd two-point-o.”—I laugh softly to myself, anyway—“But truthfully, I’m finding you to be more wishy-washy than anything.”

  “Well, I could always offer you a seat in my chair, if you’d like,” I say with a grin.

  “Yeah, thanks, but no thanks, asshole.” He readjusts his position, pulling his foot from the aisle. “But I am going to request a reassignment after I help you with this.”

  “You won’t need to,” I say, staring at the back of the seat in front of me. “Victor assured me that the Seattle job would be our last one working together.”

  His head falls to the side to face me.

  “Really?”

  I nod.

  “Hm,” he says sharply. “Wonder why he hasn’t said anything to me about it yet.”

  “I don’t know.” I glance over at him briefly. “Perhaps the Seattle job wasn’t over when you thought it was.”

  He shrugs and looks at the seat in front of him.

  “I guess that would explain why we’re going back,” he says.

  Yes, that might make sense if Victor was the one who sent us back to Seattle, but this time it’s personal. Izabel was right—I need a job of my own to take off the edge. Like a drug addict needing a fix, I suppose. I never claimed to be any better than one.

  I have a very special date with Kelly Bennings. For me and for Izabel.

  Dorian glances over again.

  “No offense, of course,” he says. “I’m just used to working with people more like myself. You know what I mean?”

  I nod, still not looking at him.

  “I know perfectly well what you mean,” I say. “And I need to be free of you as much as you need to be free of me.”

  Dorian laughs under his breath.

  “But I don’t see there being many more like you waiting to take my place when I’m gone,” he says with an air of comical disbelief.

  “No, there won’t be. Because men like me prefer to work alone.”

  “It’s a lonely fucking world out there, Gustavsson.” He closes his eyes. “I think if I were anything like you, I’d probably go crazy by myself, doing that demented shit that you do.”

  In a big way, Dorian is right. My life is a lonely one. And if I had my way with things, Seraphina never would’ve betrayed me years ago. She never would’ve killed those three innocent women. She never would’ve ran and left me to live in solitude without her. But more than anything, if I had my way, she wouldn’t be sick and none of it would’ve ever happened to begin with and we’d still be together. I wouldn’t have to be alone.

  But it all goes to show that we’re all probably better off on our own, anyway. Attachments make us weak and vulnerable. They fuck with our emotions. And I don’t like my emotions fucked with.

  Dorian and I are in Seattle before six the next morning. We get a rental car and find a hotel where we spend some of the day going over location information on Kelly Bennings and the client who hired us to take out Paul Fortright. According to the files there is a connection between Bennings and the client, Ross Emerson, who claimed that Fortright molested his daughter. All the information I need is right here in my jacket pocket. The rest is—and was—gut instinct and I’ve yet to be wrong about a person’s guilt—except, of course, when a victim pretends to be guilty, which was a first for me and completely threw me off. But instinct can be a deadly weapon when one knows how to utilize it. I mastered mine when I was a boy. Because if I didn’t, I never would’ve escaped my masters and I would’ve died a slave.

  By nigh
tfall, Dorian and I are waiting in the car parked in the front of Kelly Benning’s current place of employment—a liquor store. Two hours later, after following her to a gas station, a fast food restaurant and finally to and from none other than the client, Ross Emerson’s apartment, we have her stuffed in the trunk after she finally makes her way home and parks in the driveway.

  Now, we’re back in the same warehouse we used to interrogate her the first time, and she’s just as defiant as she was then.

  With my handkerchief, I wipe her spit from my face and then shove the handkerchief in her mouth.

  “Mnnmmmnn!” Her stifled screams are most certainly filled with curses and threats. “Dmmnmmm-Mnnnmmooo!” The whites of her bugged-out eyes are in plain view. She thrashes against the wooden chair, causing it to jerk back and forth scraping against the concrete.

  I really wish I had my chair to strap her to—makes things so much easier.

  Dorian remains off to one side of the room, gun hidden away in the back of his pants, a look of impatience and discomfort on his pretty-boy face as he stands with his back against the steel wall.

  Collapsing my hand around the back of an empty chair in a corner, I lift the legs from the floor and walk with it back over to Bennings, setting it down in front of her. Just like the last time. She glares at me through pale blue eyes framed by unkempt dishwater-brown hair. Her shouts and threats continue to come out as muffled nonsense, indecipherable yet completely obvious at the same time.

  I cross one leg over the other and cock my head to one side. Then I glance down at the dirty gauze around her hand tied to the arm of the chair and I smile faintly, recalling what I felt when I drove Izabel’s knife through it—complete and utter satisfaction.

  I pull my own knife from the inside of my coat. Bennings’ eyes lock on the blade and she stops screaming.

  Leaning forward, I place the edge of the knife against the bare skin of her shoulder and drag it down the length of her arm without cutting her. I had stripped her before I tied her to the chair, and she sits in nothing but her miss-matched panties and bra, her bony legs shaking against the wood, her ribs clearly visible—she’s about ninety pounds of wicked bitch. Pale skin that isn’t beautiful, but sickly. Dark circles blemish the area underneath her eyes. I wonder what her drug of choice is, but don’t care enough to ask and resolve to believe it must be heroin.

  But does Kelly Bennings really deserve to die?

  Still practically in her face, I say calmly, “If you spit on me again, I’ll cut out your tongue.”

  She nods furiously with tears in her eyes.

  Hesitating only a moment, I reach up with my latex glove-covered hand and remove the spit-soaked handkerchief from her throat—shoved back far enough that she couldn’t have spit it out on her own—and drop it on the floor beside my feet.

  “What the fuck do you want from me?!”

  I tilt my head to one side.

  “And lower your voice,” I tell her, “because you’re beginning to give me a headache.”

  Her eyebrows draw inward and she looks at me as if to say What the fuck do I care? but won’t dare say it aloud. At least not yet. This one is bold and almost entirely fearless—it’s just a matter of time before that mouth of hers gets her into more trouble.

  “You set up that hit against your boyfriend, Paul Fortright, with Ross Emerson,” I say, leaning back in my chair again.

  “What? What the fuck are you talking about?”

  She’s not a very good liar when she knows she’s done for.

  “You know exactly what I’m talking about.” I set my knife down on the top of my leg, covering it gently with my hand. “But what’s even worse than setting up the hit on him, is that you were in on it with Ross Emerson to try and have Fortright put away in prison for child molestation—death would’ve been a better sentence.”

  Bennings’ eyes grow darker and her mouth falls open.

  “You’re—You’re insane! Why in the fuck would I do something like that?”

  “Because you’re a worthless bitch,” I say simply, cutting in. “A waste of air”—I twirl my white gloved hand in the air above my shoulder—“It bothers me immensely that you’re breathing mine right now.” I drop my hand back on top of the knife. “You and Emerson set up the hit when the molestation accusations failed to put him away. To get Fortright out of yours and Ross Emerson’s life. You—”

  “You’re crazy! Fuck you, you psycho motherfucker!” She thrashes in the chair again. “Let me out of here! Let me go!” She starts to scream at the top of her lungs.

  “Shit, man, shut her up!” I hear Dorian say from the wall.

  But I’m already leaning forward with the knife pressed against her arm again before Dorian finishes his sentence. I cut long and deep and blood pours from the slit. Bennings cries out in pain and agony as the left side of her body glistens with dark, red, wonderful blood.

  “AHHHHH! FUCK!” Tears shoot from her eyes.

  Finally, she stops screaming and all that’s left for her to do is tremble and stutter and bleed.

  “A-All right! I helped Ross! I did! But what does that matter to you?! You people were supposed to kill him! That’s what you were hired to do!”

  I flash the blade in her view and she shuts up in an instant.

  “You were willing to ruin an innocent man’s life for another man. You could’ve just left him.” My voice never raises.

  She struggles against her restraints regardless of knowing she’ll never free herself from them.

  “I couldn’t just leave!” she hisses. “Paul is a bastard! He threatened to take our daughter if I ever left him!”

  “You don’t care about your daughter,” I say.

  She looks shocked. And hurt.

  I’m not buying it, and as much as I know she wants to believe it herself, I know she’s not fully buying it, either.

  “I love my baby girl! How can you say something like that to me?”

  I inhale a deep, aggravated breath and adjust my back against the seat.

  “Oh sure,” I mock. “You love her enough to have her innocent father put in prison for child molestation.” I cut a long, deep slit down the length of her other arm just because I feel like it. She screams out again, but I continue calmly through her screams: “Not to mention, what you and Emerson put Emerson’s daughter through with the police, brainwashing her to make her believe that she was molested.” I’ve no physical proof of this, but I know it’s a fact, nonetheless. “You and your love affair are the lowest of the low, Miz’ Bennings, I have to say.”

  I’m just now noticing that at some point Dorian left the area. I knew it wouldn’t be long once I started the cutting. But then again, he has another job to do, which is why I brought him along to begin with.

  “Look, I-I don’t know why you brought me here,” Bennings stammers with thin quivering lips. “But Ross will pay you to let me go. H-He will pay you double what he was going to pay your organization to kill Paul. Just call him. Please. His number is in my cell phone. In my coat.” She looks across the room at her clothes sitting in a pile on the floor.

  “That won’t be necessary.” I cross my other leg and pull away from her, sitting as casually as if I were in a boring meeting. “But I’m interested in knowing why you believe that Ross Emerson would do something like that for you.” One side of my nose curls into a faint snarl as I look her up and down. “Look at you—you’re disgusting.”

  Shocked and thoroughly insulted, Bennings lashes out, “Go fuck yourself!” and it still amazes me how defiant and stupid this woman is to be in the situation she’s in and can’t keep her mouth shut.

  I smile.

  “So, are you going to tell me?” I ask, tapping the bloody knife against my pant leg. “Or, am I going to have to resort to more drastic measures of interrogation?”

  As with anyone, I really hope she doesn’t talk.

  Bennings stares coldly at me, harsh lines forming around the edges of her pale blue eyes. St
rands of her hair are scattered about her face and neck and collarbone, stuck to her skin by sweat even though it’s cold in this warehouse.

  I raise both brows asking her in gesture, So what’s it going to be?

  “Ross would do anything for me,” she begins. “And I’d do anything for him. Anything!”

  “Why?”

  “Because we were meant to be together. Because I love him. Because he loves me. What more does there need to be?”

  I smile again and look upon her thoughtfully.

  “A valid reason to intentionally ruin or take away entirely, the life of an innocent person,” I say, but find myself thinking only of Seraphina in this moment of personal divergence. “If you can give me one good reason, one valid and justifiable reason for what you and Ross Emerson did to Paul Fortright and the two defenseless children the both of you used to get what you wanted, then I will let you and Emerson go.”

  Bennings’ trembling mouth snaps shut, her thin, cracked lips stretching into a hard line.

  Then it dawns on her and her widening eyes dart to and from me and all around the cold, dimly-lit, spacious area.

  “What do you mean, let us go?” she asks carefully at first, but then her voice begins to rise. “Where is he? Tell me! Where is Ross?” She struggles against her restraints.

  “He’s in the other room,” I tell her, glancing over my shoulder at the metal door that once led into an employee break room.

  “You’re lying,” she accuses, but the worried look on her face says the opposite. “You’re just saying that to—”

  “To what?” I taunt her. “You have no more information that I need, Miz’ Bennings, other than the last fairly simple question that I asked you.” I smile faintly and shake my head. “But you and I both know that it’s not a question you’ll ever have an acceptable answer to. Because there’s not one.”

  “The answer I gave you is enough!” she roars, her disheveled hair falling more about her face and sticking to her lips. “Yes! We love each other, you fucking bastard! And yes! We’d do anything for each other, even if it means ruining another person’s life! Because that’s what love is! It’s the meaning of unconditional! You would never know!” She spits on the floor and looks at me with such hate and violent retribution in her wet and narrowed eyes.