Free The Swan and the Jackal by J. A. Redmerski

the other side.
    I stand from the ottoman and straighten my coat.
    “Search the house,” I tell Dorian. “I’ll send a cleaner to dispose of everything after you’re done.”
    “Wait…what are you doing?” Woodard asks nervously from the chair.
    I remove a syringe from my coat pocket and pull the protective cap off the tip of the needle.
    “No…w-wait a goddamn minute! Y-You haven’t even asked me anything! You haven’t given me a chance to talk!”
    I don’t want you to talk.
    Dorian’s eyebrows crease as he looks at me questioningly.
    “Let’s see what he has to say first,” Dorian speaks up, waving his gun at Woodard who keeps looking at the barrel apprehensively, worried it’s going to go off. “There’s a lot of shit to go through, Gustavsson. If the guy is willing to talk, I’m all for listening.”
    “Yeah…,” Woodard agrees, hoping I’ll do the same, his eyes jerking back and forth between us.
    Suddenly, he looks as though he was slapped in the face. His beady eyes grow wider and his breathing begins to elevate.
    He points a shaky, pudgy finger at me.
    “Gustavsson? Y-You’re Fredrik Gustavsson…t-the one they call the Specialist?” His big head begins to shake side to side, over and over. “No…I-I’ll tell you anything you want to know. But I don’t have anything to hide. If I’d known who you worked for—shit, if I’d known who you were—I’d have let you in at the door. No questions asked. I’d have made you fucking soup!”
    “There’s nothing to tell,” I say, though I’m pulling straws here. “We already know what you’ve been selling and to whom. There’s no coming back from that.” I just need him to shut the fuck up. I need to interrogate and kill him. I need Cassia to see it. “Stand up.”
    Woodard looks to Dorian for help, seeing as how he was the one of us willing to give him more time. Lucky for Woodard, Dorian doesn’t like paperwork and this big house full of files he’ll have to sift through when I leave is the only thing keeping Woodard alive right now. In any other case, Dorian would’ve blown his brains against that hideous tapestry curtain behind him already.
    “Five minutes,” Dorian suggests. “Come on, man, you know I’m all about taking them out quick, but he’s ready to talk.”
    Woodard nods furiously, his hands gripping the edges of the chair arms, his double-chin moving like Jell-O.
    I sigh heavily and drop my hands at my sides, the syringe filled with a cocktail that would’ve put Woodard to sleep long enough to get him back to my house quietly, dangles from my fingertips.
    “Three minutes,” I say.
    “O-OK…three minutes,” Woodard stutters. “I’m not a traitor.”
    “So, you’re a liar,” Dorian says from beside me.
    “No.” Woodard shakes his head. “I did sell information to Marion Callahan, the guy who dropped me off in the parking lot. But—”
    “Sounds like a traitor to me,” Dorian adds and then raises his gun, pointed right at Woodard.
    I reach out and place my hand on the cold steel, lowering it. The last thing I need is for Dorian to kill my victim and leave me with no one to put in my chair. Or, the gun to go off that close to my ear and make me go deaf.
    “Clock’s ticking,” I say to Woodard.
    He puts up his hands momentarily and then drops them on the tops of his legs covered by khaki pants.
    “I wanted to prove to the new bossman that I’m worth keeping,” Woodard says. “Because I knew I was on my way out the first day Norton was killed and you guys took over. Look at me. I’m not necessarily considered an asset at first glance. And I couldn’t get a face-to-face meeting with the new boss.” He sighs. Already, I’m feeling a wave of disappointment beginning to wash over me. “Marion Callahan approached me outside my house, where my wife and daughters sleep for Christ’s sake, and told me that if I could get him information on the new boss and his operations, they’d secure me a top