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She held him tight and asked, “Do you love me?”
“You know I do,” he said with a slight laugh.
“I have something I must tell you.” She kissed his chest and added, “But I want you to think about what I am going through while I tell you this.”
Louie grabbed her by the shoulders and took a step back. He knew Claudia well enough to be warned by her tone. “What did you do?”
She looked him in the eye, wavered, thought she might not have the courage, and then blurted out, “I have been in contact with the CIA.”
Louie searched her eyes for the truth. She was not lying to him. In as calm a voice as he could muster he asked, “Why?”
“It is complicated. It started out as a way to say that I was sorry for what happened to the woman. On top of that you know I don’t like Abel. I didn’t from the moment I met him.”
“I don’t care about Abel. I want to know what you did.”
“After we parted ways, Abel sent several more threatening e-mails. I decided if that was the way he wanted to play I would give the CIA his name and see how he liked it when Mitch Rapp showed up looking for him.”
Louie nodded slowly. A part of him admired Claudia for the move. He had warned Abel to watch his step.
The man was in no position to threaten them, but he supposed the German was under a great deal of pressure to get the money back. The type of pressure that sometimes causes people to do very foolish things. “The CIA is a big place,” Louie said. “Who did you contact?”
“Director Kennedy.”
This surprised Louie momentarily. “When you say you’ve been in contact, what exactly does that mean?”
“We have e-mailed each other.”
“How many times?” Louie asked, his chest tightening.
“I sent her four e-mails.”
Louie released her shoulders and nearly bit off his own tongue. “Why four?”
Claudia’s big brown eyes welled with tears. She could see Louie struggling to contain his anger. She ignored the question and moved onto the part that was really going to send him through the roof. “Please stay calm for a moment so I can get this all out, and then if you want to leave me I’ll understand.”
“I’m not going to leave you,” he said, almost as if he was convincing himself.
Claudia grabbed his hands. “We’ve always split everything…Right?”
He nodded.
She knew of no easy way to say it so it just came out. “I put five million dollars into a Swiss bank account under Rapp’s name.”
Louie thought his head was going to implode. “Five million dollars.” He was doing everything in his power to stay calm. He loved this woman standing before him. If he didn’t care for her, he would have simply chucked her over the wall and taken great joy in watching her head split open as it hit the rocks. “Why?”
“Our baby.”
“What does giving Mitch Rapp five million dollars have to do with our baby?” Louie’s voice started to rise.
“I wanted to try and make things right…and buy some time.”
“Buy some time.” Louie frowned. “How does this buy some time?”
“You know he’s going to come after us.”
“Let him,” Louie said in a quiet but angry voice.
Claudia shook her head. “You don’t mean that. This is not some normal man. We killed his wife. His pregnant wife. What would you do if some man killed me right now?” Claudia watched him intently for a moment. “We both know you would stop at nothing until you had killed him with your own bare hands. If Mitch Rapp finds us, he will kill us both.”
