Текст книги "The Swan and the Jackal"

Автор книги: J. A. Redmerski

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 The Swan & the Jackal
In the Company of Killers – 3
J. A. Redmerski

Dear Reader,

What you are about to read is not a romance. It’s not a conventional love story. It’s not erotica. It’s not a New Adult title. As with all books in this series, please do not attempt to read it with any of the above expectations. In the Company of Killers is a series that can only be categorized as Crime, Suspense, Thriller, Mystery, Psychological Thriller and sometimes Romantic Suspense—yes, the series has elements of love, romance and erotica, but not enough they actually fall into those categories.

Some authors—when they want to write in other genres—choose to write under pseudonyms, and for many reasons it’s a very smart choice. I am taking a risk by choosing to keep my name and write several different genres under that name. It’s a risk because some of my readers might assume that everything I write is going to be more of the same they are used to reading from me. But that’s just not the case. I write many different genres. I have published Young Adult/Paranormal Romance, New Adult/Contemporary Romance, Contemporary Fantasy and Crime/Suspense all under J.A. Redmerski—and I will continue to write different genres under that name. All I ask is that before reading any of my books, please make sure it’s the genre you are in the mood to read. This will spare you from being disappointed that it wasn’t what you expected, and spare me from receiving ‘disappointed’ reviews.

If you are ever unclear as to what genre any of my books fall under, the quickest and simplest way to find out is to go to my web site at www.jessicaredmerski.com under the tab ‘Books’ and check out the page for the book in question. The page will state the genre—the first listed being the primary—directly under the blurb next to the publication date.

Thanks so much for all of your continued support in my work! And Happy Reading!

Sincerely,

J.A. Redmerski

-Playlist-

Connie Francis – Where the Boys Are

Connie Francis – Fallin’

Duffy – Mercy

Kendra Morris – Wicked Game

VAST – Winter in My Heart

VAST – Don’t Take Your Love Away

Arcana – Wings of Gabriel

Christina Aguilera – Bound to You

Prologue

Six years ago…

There is blood on the furniture and smeared across the wall, a beautiful crimson color that only blood can be, stark against the bright white sheetrock even in the darkness of the room. This wasn’t done by a gun. The nearly-naked body of the woman lying on her back against the floor in a thick, dark pool of the crimson stickiness was dispatched by a knife. A very sharp one. Probably with a curved blade and an engraving down the length that reads: Taste the sugary thorns upon my lips. But this wound…I’m all too familiar with the handiwork. The gash in the lowest part of the neck, just above where the center of the collarbone meets. Seraphina, my wife, has been here. Just moments ago. I can still smell her perfume in the air.

I’ve been spying on her for months, since the day I allowed myself to believe she had been betraying me all the time she claimed to love me. But before that she had been betraying my employer, Vonnegut, and our Order by working for another employer and leaking information to our rival. I couldn’t let her die for what she had done. I wanted to help her, to change her, to make her choose a side, my side. So, I began working with her against Vonnegut. It was the ultimate disloyalty, an instant death sentence betraying the Order. But love came first.

Love always comes first.

Though I learned the hard way that love is cruel and dangerous and more fiendish than a man like me could ever be. Because Seraphina played me for a fool, after all. After everything we had been through together. She threw it all away.

Tonight I’ll find her. And tonight I’ll kill her.

I step over the body, remembering the little brown mole on the woman’s lower stomach, close to her hipbone. I remember the shape of her slender thighs, the way they felt in my hands while I was fucking her as Seraphina watched. It had always been our thing, something we thrived on. Dark, forbidden sex.

This dead woman is the second I’ve found in two days. Both of them women who Seraphina and I have shared. Both of them doomed to suffer this brutal fate the second Seraphina’s jealousy switch finally flipped. That, along with her needing a way to get back at me for figuring out her secrets and no longer falling for her lies. These dead women are messages. Come and find me, they say. I’m not hiding from you, my love, I’m just enjoying the game, she’s telling me.

She always did enjoy the game. So did I. Only now I know I have to end it. And I have to win.

I let the body go and it falls against the saturated carpet. As I rise back into a stand, headlights blink on across the street and shine blindingly into the large living room window, illuminating the sheer white curtains that dress it. An engine revs. Come and get me, she’s telling me. With my gun gripped in my hand, I walk, not run, briskly out the front door and into the frigid air. I raise the gun in front of me pointed at the car as I approach it brazenly from across the street. A dog barks vociferously in the backyard of the house on the corner, violently heaving itself against the chain-link fence that confines it. Teeth gnashing. Blood-thirsty. Like all animals, it knows evil when it sees it.

“What are you doing, Seraphina?” I ask in a low, threatening voice as I get closer to the car, my gun still pointed at her, my finger on the trigger. “This is beneath even you.”

Seraphina grins from the driver’s seat, her long, slender fingers draped over the top of the steering wheel. Her shiny jet-black hair, cut short to the bottom of her cheekbones is always in perfect order, not a strand out of place, even in times like this.

The echo of blaring sirens approaching from afar sounds in my ears and I snap my head around toward it. Then I hear a thumping. Thump, thump, thump, BANG! It’s coming from the trunk. My eyes dart to and from it and Seraphina and the south street from where I hear the sirens. I can’t decide which is more imperative.

“What are you going to do?” Seraphina taunts, grinning in such a wicked way it can only translate as complete confidence. She knows she has me in this moment. Even with a gun pointed at her beautiful head, she has me.

I take a deep breath and look behind me again, expecting the police cars to drive up any second. The sirens are getting closer, but I still don’t see the sporadic flashing of their lights reflecting in the darkness of the late hour, so I have a little time. But only seconds.

I look back at Seraphina in the car. My breath exhales visibly in the winter air.

“I’ll give you what you want,” she says, changing her tune to something more serious and less taunting. “But you have to hear me out. Do you fucking understand me, Fredrik?!”

I feel my teeth grinding behind my cheeks, my nostrils flaring, the bones in my hand aching as my grip tightens around the gun handle with crushing force.

We look into each other’s cold, dark eyes one last time and she presses her foot on the gas pedal and speeds away. Reluctantly, I drop the gun to my side and let my breath out in a long, deep sigh of defeat and enragement. Seraphina knows that I can’t kill her until I get information from her. Like an obsessive compulsive need, the information must come first or I’ll never be able to sleep again. No one knows but Seraphina, not even my employer, Vonnegut, that I’ve been torturing and interrogating criminals associated with The Order since I met Seraphina. She was the one who opened me up to it, who…gave me a release for my greatest imperfection as a member of the human race. Seraphina helped me and for that, though not that alone, she knows I can’t kill her. At least not yet.

With only seconds to spare, I tuck my gun into the back of my pants and walk briskly down the sidewalk, slipping into the shadows of the trees lining the street. Heading toward my car parked four blocks away, I leave the house with the dead woman behind me as well as the police who are coming from the opposite direction.

Seraphina wants to talk. After all this time she has eluded me, kept me in the dark about what she’s been doing behind my back, she finally wants to tell me. More lies? Is this her way of getting me off her back so that I’ll let her go and let her live? So she can be free of me? But it’s not her style. Seraphina, for all that I love about her, is as sadistic as I am. Begging for her life even in the most sardonic of ways, is very out of character for her.

There’s something more to it.

I’m back at our house in Boston in under thirty minutes and her car is parked in the driveway. How bold this woman is, how defiant and fearless. She knows what I’ll do to her. She knows how much I’ll enjoy it and that not even she is immune now that she has betrayed me so unforgivably.

I park next to her car, my eyes skirting the trunk before I pull in all the way, remembering the sounds I heard from it before. But I don’t care about that right now.

Slamming the car door behind me, I rush up the stairs and burst into the house, the front door slamming into the wall.

“Seraphina!” I call out as I close the front door and begin my search.

But in the back of my mind I know exactly where to find her, in the basement where I keep my interrogation chair and tools.

The basement door is unlocked. And cracked.

I place my full palm against it and push. It opens without making a sound and I waste no time and descend the concrete steps. A single light glows in the distance, casting faint swaths of light against the steps as I take them one at a time. The familiar sound of a woman whimpering slowly fills my ears. But this is another kind of whimper. Not one of pleasure inflicted by sexual pain, but of fear and pain of another kind.

I step off the last step to find Seraphina standing there in all of her dark and sinister glory. A woman in a long T-shirt and a pair of panties is strapped to my interrogation chair—an old dentist chair—with a gag in her mouth. Blood is still wet in her long, disheveled hair, staining the blonde color just above her hairline, indicative of being hit over the head with something. Tears stream from her wide and frightened eyes, running streaks of mascara down her reddened cheeks. I know now that it was her who had been banging inside the trunk.

Seraphina smiles at me across the space between us, so lovingly, yet so darkly. Her knife hangs from her hand down against her thigh covered by the fabric of a skin-tight black bodysuit. The black lace-up boots with six-inch heels appear to make her tower over the frightened woman. But I don’t remember this woman. She’s not one that Seraphina and I ever ravaged together.

“Why are you doing this, Seraphina?” I walk closer, slowly. “Why did you bring her here? Who is she?” We’re not cold-blooded murderers—of innocent girls, anyway. We’ve never done something like this to any woman who wasn’t willing—unless she was a target. Seraphina has taken this to a whole new level and I don’t like it.

She clicks her tongue and puts the blade to the woman’s throat. “Not too close, love,” she warns me, shaking the index finger of her free hand side to side. “She’s the one with the information. She’s the one you want to talk to.”

This isn’t about sex, I realize now. This is about something so much more.

Confused, but thoroughly invested, I crouch down and set my gun carefully on the floor beside my scuffed dress shoes. Then I raise back up slowly into a stand, both hands level with my shoulders to let her know that I’m not going to make a move. The blonde-haired woman’s eyes grow wider, darting between me and Seraphina though with her head fixed against the chair by a leather strap, she can’t see much of my wife behind her.

Seraphina’s eyes stray briefly to the wooden chair sitting against the wall to my left. Knowing it was an indication for me to sit down, I wrap a hand around the back of the chair and drag it on its back legs into the light before doing so. I cross one leg over the other and fold my hands on top of them after I sit.

“Why do I need to talk to her?” I ask calmly.

“Because she’s the reason we’re here,” Seraphina answers and then slowly moves the blade away from the woman’s throat. “She’s the reason I am what I am. And just like I helped you kill that bastard pig who raped you when you were a boy, you’re going to help me kill her.” She points the knife at the woman. “Because you owe me, Fredrik, just like she owes me.”

I remain quiet for a long moment, trying to take in her words, seeking some kind of understanding in them and how this woman has anything to do with why Seraphina betrayed me. Why she has betrayed the Order. I want to feel out the details she’s already given me and have some kind of idea of where this is going before I speak. Because I like to have the upper-hand right at the get-go. Always. Only this time, I’m beginning to think that’s not going to be the case.

Not being the one in control makes me very anxious.

“Why does this woman owe you?” I ask. “What has she done to you?”

Seraphina’s darkly painted eyes grin before her lips do. She reaches around and touches the woman’s hair, spearing the ends of it in-between her fingers with gentle, motherly strokes. “So blonde. So pretty.” Then her hand comes up in a swift motion and falls back down across the woman’s cheek; a sharp slapping noise zips through the air. “I hate blondes. I’ve always hated them. But this one in particular, I’ve been looking for her for years, Fredrik. Because of what she did to me.”

“What did she do?”

She slaps the woman again and this time blood springs from her nose. The woman’s hands are shaking against the leather restraints securing them to the arms of the chair. The muscles in her legs harden and relax repeatedly as she struggles. Her eyes are pleading for me to help her. I can’t tell her that I’m not here to rescue her, that I’m a heartless bastard who only needs answers. But it’s the truth. I don’t want the woman to die, and if I can stop Seraphina from killing her, then I will. But sadly she’s not my priority. And if she dies, I’ll still be able to sleep tonight.

Yes, I am a monster.

“Why don’t you ask her?” Seraphina says as she steps around in front of the woman and snatches back the gag that was tied around her head, removing it from her mouth.

“PLEASE! PLEASE LET ME GO!” The woman’s cries pierce my ears, filling my senses with pain and heartbreak.

I only feel this pain when the victim is innocent, I say to myself as I’ve done many times before. It’s how I know when I’m being lied to. It’s how I know that when I’m torturing a victim in my chair whether they deserve to be set free or not. It’s an instinct, one that only my heart knows, but sometimes my mind refuses to listen.

I only feel this pain when the victim is innocent…

She thrashes violently within the chair, trying to break free, but to no avail.

“P-Please…I’m begging you…please just let me go!” Sobs roll through her chest, causing her whole body to shake.

I push myself out of the chair and grab Seraphina from behind just as she’s slamming the hilt of her knife into the woman’s face. She fights against me, swinging her fists in the air blindly at me behind her until I grab them, too, and pin them against her chest. I hear the knife clink against the concrete floor. And then black spots spring before my eyes accompanied by a white-hot pain as the back of Seraphina’s skull smashes against my face. Instinctively, I release her, trying to shake my eyesight back into focus. Finally, when I do seconds later, Seraphina already has the knife in her hand again and she’s heaving herself away from me and toward the woman.

“SERAPHINA! STOP!”

I don’t get to her in time.

Time stops. Everything stops. My answers, if they were truly to come from this unknown woman, seep out of her throat with the gush of blood pouring down her chest.

I stumble back and fall against the chair again, sitting in a slouched and defeated position with my legs splayed out across the floor. I watch the woman from my seat, the way her eyes begin to glaze over, how her eyelids flutter in some soft yet sickening way. I watch helplessly as she chokes, and how her body fights to hold on to that last breath, her bloodied chest heaving desperately.

And then her fingers uncurl and lay heavily over the chair arms. Her dead eyes look upward at the ceiling, filled with nothing. Blood drips from the chair into a dark puddle beneath it. It won’t stop. I wonder how much blood this woman’s body held.

I sigh with pain and remorse and softly shut my eyes.

I only feel this pain when the victim is innocent.

Seraphina, standing with her back facing me, finally turns around. Her soft, plump mouth is partially agape. There’s something called confusion and maybe even regret swirling in her brown eyes. She looks down at her hands, the right one with the knife covered in blood, and then she drops the knife as if it’s a dirty, evil thing. She brings her hands up and looks at them, it seems as though asking herself how she could’ve done this. How could she have done this? I don’t understand it. Seraphina is a killer. An executioner. Many lives have been taken by her hands. But they were, for the most part, deserving deaths. These three women she killed since yesterday were the first—that I know of—that were done in cold blood.

Was it because of me? Am I to blame for her madness somehow?

No. She was already mad. She was a sadistic bitch when we met and when I fell in love with her. But this. What I’m witnessing now…

I am so goddamn confused…

“It wasn’t her,” Seraphina says, her voice cracking.

She looks at her hands again, one covered in blood, and then she looks back at me.

“I’m so sorry, Fredrik”—tears begin to stream down her cheeks—“I’m so sorry.”

She falls to her knees on the concrete floor and buries her face in the palms of her hands, sobbing into her fingers.

I rush the short distance to her and pull her against my chest, enveloping her in my arms. I rock her against me, pressing my lips to the top of her black hair as she weeps. I let her cry, but I don’t let it go on for long. Because I need answers now more than ever. I need to know everything.

“Tell me, love,” I whisper, holding her tightly within my arms. “Tell me who you thought she was. I can help you if you’ll just tell me. Make me understand.”

She shakes her head against my chest.

“I-I can’t. I can’t tell you because you’ll hate me.”

“I could never hate you,” I say with truth. I love her. Parts of her I don’t love, like who she was moments ago when she killed that woman. But right now, the person she is wrapped in my arms, I love with everything in me. “You said she owed you, Seraphina. What did she owe you?”

At first, she doesn’t want to answer. I wait patiently, hoping that if I don’t push her she’ll feel more confident about telling me. I squeeze her gently for good measure.

“I was ten when I met her,” she says, but then becomes quiet again.

Anxious. Desperate. Perplexed. They are among a thousand different emotions I’m feeling right now. But still, I try to remain calm.

“I never meant to betray you,” she says.

I feel like she’s jumping subjects, evading the one about the woman.

“But I knew you had to get away from me,” she goes on. “I couldn’t leave you on my own. I tried. But I couldn’t bear it. So I lied to you about everything. I started sleeping at Safe House Sixteen.”

This is the part I don’t want to hear, but know that I need to.

I brace myself, gripping her tighter, both out of preparation for the pain I’m going to feel, and the pain I’m going to inflict on her before this night is over, because of it.

“I-I did sleep with him, with Marcus who ran the safe-house.”

I grit my teeth and take a deep breath.

I stay calm.

I stay quiet.

I want to skin her alive.

“I did it because I wanted you to find out.”

“Why did you want me to find out?” My voice is composed, careful.

“Because I wanted—.”

She stops.

I’m growing more impatient. Subconsciously, I feel the leather straps on the chair slipping through my fingers as I bind her against it in my mind.

“You wanted what?” I ask with my chin resting atop her head.

“I wanted to hurt you.”

“Why did you want to hurt me?”

I love you.

I despise you.

“Because love is pain,” she says and I swallow down the truth of her admission. “Because love is the greatest scam of all time. And because as much as I fucking love you, I hate you for inflicting it upon me!”

Suddenly, I feel a pinprick.

Warmth moves from my thigh upward, spreading out through my veins.

The room begins to blur, faintly at first, but enough that I instantly know I’m in trouble. I try to shake my mind free of the drug, but it’s too strong, wrapping around my consciousness like a spider’s silk around its prey.

I didn’t even realize when Seraphina left my arms, or when I fell against the concrete floor.

Gasoline. The cool air is rife with it, so much so that it’s beginning to burn my nostrils.

“Love…where are you?” I call out, but can’t tell if the words ever actually left my lips. “Sera….”

My lids are getting heavier. Flames. The air isn’t cool anymore. It’s hot…so fucking hot. I want to loosen my tie to let my neck breathe, to strip off my suit jacket, but I can’t move my arms.

“I love you, Fredrik,” I hear her voice whisper near my ear, soft like powder, fatal like poison. I want to kiss her, to feel her lush lips on mine. I want to grind my hips against hers until she cries. “I love you…and because I love you,”—I feel my body moving across the floor—,”you have to let me go.”

Smoke. It’s scratching my throat and my lungs, seeping into my pores and suffocating my blood vessels. I feel like I’m being cooked from the inside out. The heat is becoming unbearable, the flames engulfing the wooden beams holding the basement ceiling up. I can’t see them through my heavy lids, but I can hear them, licking the walls like a thousand demons that sprang from Hell to torment me.

“Seraphina…,” I call out, my voice hoarse with pain, every kind of pain, “…Sera…”

* * *

I wake up the next morning lying in a cold field with the sun on my face. The thin layer of white snow around my body is stained black by soot from my clothes. I look up at the sky, so clear and so blue, and I see a sliver of gray smoke rising into the air in my peripheral vision.

With difficulty, I try to get up, but can only go as far as rolling over onto my side. Dead grass pricks my cheek. Snow melts in a little indention near my face as my hot breath expels from my lips and nostrils against it. I’m freezing, yet I’m warm and it doesn’t make sense.

The thin layer of smoke rising over the tops of the trees in the short distance is coming from what was left of my house.

She didn’t leave me there to burn.

Why did she drag me out?

Upon realizing, finally I feel the pain in the back of my head and I reach up weakly to massage the area with my fingertips. She had to have dragged my body up the concrete steps.

I’m aching all over. But I’m alive. And I wouldn’t be if Seraphina didn’t want me to be.

I will find her.

I’ll never stop looking for her.

It’s a dangerous game that she and I play, that we’ve always played. Only this time, she has upped the ante.

And I’m all in.