The Swan and the Jackal (In the Company of Killers #3)

by Redmerski, J. A.

  Izabel tries to shake off her initial feelings of disapproval to give me the benefit of the doubt. “OK, so you’re interrogating her. She’s involved with Seraphina’s life of betrayal and murder and God knows what else. I get that.” She sets the phone down in the console.

  I can tell by the look of uncertainty on her face that she’s not so sure any part of the excuse she just came up with is valid.

  “No,” I admit with hesitation. “Cassia is an innocent girl. I’ve been keeping her prisoner in my basement for about a year now. Since five months after the Hamburg and Stephens job went down in New Mexico.”

  Izabel freezes.

  “A year?” she says aghast. “And she’s innocent? Fredrik, what the hell is wrong with you?”

  I shut my eyes softly. “Just calm down and let me explain.”

  She takes a deep, concentrated breath and just looks across the small confined space at me. “Victor was right,” she says and it makes my head snap around the rest of the way. “When he sent you home from Seattle, Victor told me that he had suspicions about your involvement with Seraphina, that it’s what’s been distracting you. I didn’t even know she was still alive until the other night, Fredrik.” She shakes her head gently. “Hell, the only reason Victor told me anything at all was because I was so worried about you and the way you’ve been acting lately. But Fredrik, you can’t do this to this girl, no matter what part she plays in Seraphina’s life. Not if she’s innocent. You need to let her go.”

  “Izabel,” I say softly, hoping I can make her understand without telling her too much, “Cassia doesn’t want to be let go. She’s terrified of Seraphina. She wants to stay with me.”

  Lines deepen in Izabel’s forehead as her brows draw inward.

  It takes a moment to get her words together, but she says, “Wants to stay with you? Jesus, Fredrik, she has a chain around her ankle. She’s locked in a basement.” She motions her hands, emphasizing the words, trying to make me understand how ridiculous they sound. “If she wants to stay with you, why would you keep her locked up?”

  “It’s just a precaution. In case she tries to escape.” Even to me my own words sound contradictory and stupid.

  And judging by the forced smile in Izabel’s eyes, she thinks so, too.

  But then her expression shifts suddenly as if a reasonable explanation just crept into her mind. “You’re in love with her,” she accuses and it shocks me a little—I hadn’t expected that, of all things. “You don’t want to let her go because you’re in love with her. It makes sense. And I can see something in you, Fredrik—I could sense something was different about you, and it didn’t feel like anything…bad. Just different.”

  I want to say, Izabel, you’re way off the mark here, because what she’s saying is ridiculous, but at the same time it’s a way out. If she thinks the only reason I’m keeping Cassia prisoner is because I’m in love with her it will seem less cruel and Izabel could possibly force herself to live with my decision and keep my secret, even if just for a little while longer, until I can get everything straightened out.

  “And she must be in love with you,” she goes on, her face lighting up with realization the more she puts the pieces together. “Stockholm syndrome. Makes perfect sense.”

  It actually amazes me how much everything she just said does make sense.

  Only thing is, none of it is true.

  Izabel leans over the console and pushes herself into view. “But Fredrik, this is crazy, even for you—“

  “Oh, well thanks for that,” I cut in with a faint smirk, trying to lighten the mood.

  She smiles.

  “You know what I mean.”

  Of course I do, but I couldn’t help myself.

  Then just as quickly as I had managed to inject a joke, I go back to the darkness and turn my eyes away from her, staring through the windshield at the cold, gray day.

  “You know that Victor—hell, even I—will help you find Seraphina.” She rests her body against the seat again, still facing me. I don’t look back at her. “I know you think this is something you feel you have to do on your own—I completely get that—but it doesn’t have to be that way. Not at the cost of that innocent girl. Fredrik, why do you need her to find Seraphina?”

  My shoulders rise and fall with a heavy sigh and my gaze strays toward my lap where my fingers fidget restlessly. And then after a moment of quiet contemplation, I tell Izabel the same story that Cassia told me last night about how she and Seraphina met. Izabel listens the entire time with parted lips and an ever-growing look of horror and sadness slowly twisting her features. I try not to look at her eyes at all because I can sense how much the story is affecting her personally. And I begin to feel regret for telling her, Izabel of all people, who lived nine years of her life under the rule of a notorious Mexican drug lord who molested and raped and kept her prisoner long enough to turn her into the killer she is today.

  By the time the story is over, Izabel can’t speak for what feels like an hour but is just mere minutes. I see the raw emotions eating away at her brought on mostly by the things that Seraphina went through, the memories of her own life with Javier Ruiz and all the things from her past that she—just as I do with my similar past—tries every day to shut out of her mind. But also like me, no matter how hard she tries, the deepest scars never fade.

  “Fredrik…,” she says softly and then turns her head to face me, “…you have to let that girl go. You have to, now more than ever.”

  I shake my head no, though I didn’t mean for her to actually see me do it—it was a reflex. I can’t let Cassia go, and I won’t, no matter how hard Izabel presses me.

  Why did I tell her any of this? What could I have possibly gotten out of it?

  I feel her hand on my forearm as I grip the steering wheel. Her fingers tighten around my bone. “You listen to me.” Her voice becomes sharper, determined, and I finally look back into her eyes. “Look what she’s been through. Think about what you just told me.” She shakes my arm. “That cold bitch—regardless of the horrific things she went through—killed this girl’s mother and father. She was traumatized as a child because of what your ex-wife did to her. She went through something that no one, goddammit no one, should ever have to go through, and now she’s being kept a prisoner, chained inside a basement like an animal, and what makes it sicker is that she thinks she’s in love with you!” Her rising voice fills the car, her fingers are digging into my arm over the top of my coat sleeve.

  Izabel looks a lot like I do when I need to torture and kill someone to appease the painful memories.

  I can’t look at her anymore.

  My fingers are white-knuckling the steering wheel.

  Finally, I feel her hand loosen and then fall away from my arm.

  “I’ll help you,” she says gently. “I’ll do whatever you need me to do, but you have to set that girl free. We’ll put her in a safe-house to protect her until Seraphina is caught—”

  “No.”

  Silence fills the car.

  Consumed by regret and guilt and a plethora of other negative emotions slowly eating away at me, all I can say is, “I’m sorry for what you went through when you were with Javier Ruiz. And I’m sorry that I dragged you into this—I don’t even know why I did—but I’m not letting Cassia go. I need her to find Seraphina. She’s the only way I’m ever going to find Seraphina.”

  After a moment, Izabel says somberly, “Then you’re not who I thought you were.” I hear the door click open and a rush of cold air escapes into the car.

  “Where are you going?” I ask carefully without moving a muscle.

  She swings the door open all the way and gets out of the car. Leaning over and inside with one hand propped on the edge of the door she glares in at me, her eyes full of anger and disappointment and pain.

  “If you won’t let that girl go,” she says through her teeth, “I will.”

  She slams the door shut, cutting off the frigid air filtering through the car. />
  “Izabel, wait!” I’m out of the car in seconds and walking around the front and toward her on the other side. “You can’t do that. You have to trust me on this!”

  She stops at her door without opening it, crossing her arms tight against her chest as the wind pushes against her long white coat.

  Disgusted with me, she shakes her head indignantly.

  “I was wrong,” she says. “You don’t love that girl at all. You’re still in love with that crazy bitch. And you’re so in love with her that you’re willing to ruin an innocent girl’s life just to find her. As if what Seraphina did to her already isn’t bad enough! I can’t believe you’d do this, Fredrik!” Her voice cracks.

  A small family approaches from the parking lot heading toward the conservatory. Hearing Izabel’s shouts, the father takes his little girl’s hand and pulls her closer between him and his wife. They watch us over their shoulders as they hurry up the walkway.

  Izabel and I both wait until they slip inside the building before saying anything more, glaring into each other’s eyes, hers filled with more anger and disappointment towards me than I ever wanted to see.

  “I can’t let her go,” I say calmly, one more time.

  She turns on her heels and jerks her car door open, intent on leaving me standing here.

  “Izabel!” My voice rips through the air.

  She stops, standing wedged between the door and the frame, her face consumed by rage, her body rigid and conflicted by its need to get away.

  I sigh heavily, and look down at my shoes, letting regret and pain crush me from the inside out.

  And then finally I realize why I brought Izabel here, why I need her so badly.

  “I can’t let her go…I can’t because Cassia is Seraphina….”

  She stares at me blankly, yet behind her eyes is a lake of shock and confusion and denial and she’s drowning in it.

  She steps away from the door, but leaves it open, and very slowly walks toward me. I study her quietly as she approaches, trying to decipher the seemingly impenetrable veil of perplexity that consumes her, and all I can make out from it is pain. Though I can’t tell who she’s hurting for: Cassia, Seraphina, me or herself.

  The corners of her eyes begin to glisten with moisture. She steps onto the sidewalk and reaches out carefully to touch the side of my face, and the moment she does, that unnamed pain she harbors transfers from her and right into me. Her throat moves as she swallows her tears down. I realize in this moment that I do the same thing.

  “Oh, Fredrik,” she says softly, shaking her head.

  But it’s all she can say and she drops her cold hand from my face and rests her arm down at her side.

  I choke back my own tears because they’re fucking ridiculous and they don’t belong in my eyes. I don’t have that right. I don’t want that right. Then I slide my hands into my coat pockets and straighten my face to look only like Fredrik Gustavsson, the Specialist, the Jackal—anything but the wounded man with the wounded heart who lost his right to weep or to care or to love, a very long time ago.

  “I need your help, Izabel.”

  She nods several times.

  “Tell me everything,” she says.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Fredrik

  Getting out of the cold and the small space inside the car—Izabel said she needed more room to breathe after what I just told her—we found a quiet place to sit together inside the Desert House of the conservatory. The bench is tucked away between rocks and yucca plants and cacti. It’s very warm in here, a stark difference from the frigid temperature outside. Izabel and I removed our coats and draped them over our laps before we sat down. And I pulled my black beanie off and shoved it inside my coat pocket with my keys.

  “Why do you keep looking at me like that?” I ask her about those sad green eyes filled with heartbreak and pity.

  I won’t accept pity. Surely she knows that.

  “I just…well, I just know how much you loved Seraphina,” she says with soft, pain-filled words. “I mean, I never knew the whole story, but I knew—I know—enough to know that this can’t be easy for you. I-I just can’t imagine—how is this even possible?”

  I look down at my hands.

  “Honestly, I don’t know,” I say with defeat. “I didn’t know the extent of any of this until last night.” I look over at Izabel to my left. “She finally remembered her past, or what she believes is her past. Izabel, I had no idea—I don’t even know what I’m saying. I’m as confused about all of this as much as you are.” My gaze falls to my hands again, draped between my opened legs, my elbows propped on the tops of my thighs. I fondle my thick, dark textured ring under my fingertips uneasily, briefly remembering the engraving I had placed on the inside that reads: The Jackal. To always remind me what the darkness inside of me was born from. In case I ever want to forget.

  “What do you mean that she remembered?”

  Hesitating, I look out at the desert flora, searching for signs of visitors who might be on their way inside to tour the room.

  “Cassia—Seraphina—has had amnesia since I took her from the shelter after the fire…

  One Year Ago –New York City

  I had been tracking Seraphina for two weeks after seeing her on a news broadcast in Times Square, walking behind the reporter in a small crowd. I knocked a steaming hot cup of coffee onto my laptop when I saw her face flash across the screen. Six years I had been searching for her. Six years—since the night she killed the last of three innocent women because of me—I thought—, injected me with drugs, set my house on fire and dragged my body into the large field behind it so that I wouldn’t burn to death. I never saw her again after that night until a year ago. I thought she was long gone by then. Dead, even. Because it wasn’t like Seraphina to simply vanish. She liked the game. She lived for it. I expected her to leave me a trail of bodies—all women with blonde hair—to hunt her down. So, when I saw her that night after all that time, something dark and predatory triggered inside of me. Anticipation. Vengeance. Lust. Love…

  I left Baltimore that day and went to New York City.

  Two weeks later, I found her where I should’ve thought to look all along, working as a singer in an upscale Jazz and Blues bar and restaurant. There were no traces of a ‘Seraphina Bragado’ anywhere that I could gather in New York, or anywhere else, for that matter. I had been using The Order’s resources to run her name against everything for six years. She didn’t even have a birth certificate or a credit card under that name. But that didn’t really surprise me much because she was employed by another order, and like all of us, we never use real identification. But I had no idea that the reason I couldn’t find anything on Seraphina was because she was living under ‘Cassia Carrington’. She had an apartment in New York. She paid bills. She had a close friend who lived across the hall from her. And she was employed. Living a normal life out in the open and seemed to have been for a very long time.

  Finally, after years of searching, I thought I had her.

  I went to the bar that night, dressed in my finest suit, the way she always loved to see me dressed, and I had a plan.

  The bar smelled of sweet cigars and bourbon and women’s perfume. I was intoxicated by the atmosphere. I had always loved places like this where the finest wines are served and the entertainment is classy and sophisticated. Seraphina, despite her profession as a killer, or her dark sexual needs that only matched my own, was quite a classy and sophisticated woman—when she wasn’t killing people, or sharing blood with me during sex, of course.

  I chose a table, small and round and darkly-lit, just off to the left of the stage so that I’d be in sight, but not the first face she saw when she stepped up to the mic. A small handful of instruments occupied the stage behind where she would be standing, and two more tall microphones were positioned behind and to one side of hers where the backup singers would be.

  Already it was bringing back so many memories of when we were madly in love for two
short years.

  I had never been so anxious—my stomach had collapsed into a rock-solid ball of hot muscle burning through my insides. My throat was painfully dry no matter how many times I sipped from my whiskey glass just to wet it. But I kept my composure flawlessly, not letting on to anyone sitting at the tables around me that deep inside I was ready to explode with anticipation and need that only Seraphina would understand.

  The band came out on stage quietly and took their positions, and then the backup singers, dressed in matching lacy black dresses that hugged their bodies down to their knees.

  Seraphina came out last.

  She was beautiful. The most beautiful thing I had ever seen, just as she had always been since the day we met. Only this time long, flowing blonde hair draped her shoulders, fixed perfectly so that each side fell in a silky blonde wave and ended in a half-curl just below each breast. Not a strand of hair was out of place. She wore a short cream-colored dress adorned with feathers and diamond-like flower sequins laid out in an intricate pattern about her hips and thighs. And tall high-heeled cream-colored shoes with sparkling silver glitter around the heels and the soles.

  I was mesmerized by her. I had never seen her with blonde hair and only a hint of makeup of natural rose-colored shades, or dressed in something so light and soft. Seraphina had always dressed in black. Wore her hair black. Colored her eyes and lips darkly. It was as if an angel had replaced the devil right before my eyes.

  I had no idea just how true that thought was. Not then.

  The music began to play and immediately the familiarity of it struck me numb. My hand tightened around my whiskey glass. My shoulders went rigid and I stopped breathing in the moment.

  The lyrics to Wicked Game came through her lips, so sultry and soul-filled. Exactly the way I remembered her singing it to me years ago. Did she know I was there? Had she seen me enter the building, or walk through the room in search of the perfect table? Had she known I was in town all along and had found her? It was possible. Seraphina was a master assassin and spy. She was at the top of her game, difficult to hide from and impossible to escape once she’d found you. She had always been a step ahead of me.