Louie kissed Claudia on the forehead and slowly pulled his arm from under her neck. She stirred and rolled onto her other side. Carefully, he flipped back the sheets and slid out of bed. He went to the bathroom to relieve himself and then decided to go out to the patio. Looking out at the ocean he leaned over and rested his forearms on top of the wall. Sunrise was fast approaching. The sky above him was gray, and the sky to the west was black.
Louie was glad he'd come to his senses and abandoned the idea to finish the job. Losing Claudia after all they'd been through would've been extremely stupid. He'd recognized before it was too late that it was his ego that had been driving him to finish the job. The desire to be known someday as the man who had defeated the great Mitch Rapp mixed with his need to finish everything he started had blinded him to the reality of the situation. The professional in him kicked in when he was clearing U.S. customs at the Houston International Airport. He had one set of identification, one credit card, no weapon, and just under $8,000 in cash. The likelihood that he could successfully get to Rapp, who would now be alert and protected, was not good. The odds that he could kill the man and get out of the country without leaving a trail were next to nothing.
Ultimately, though, it was that one memory of Rapp the day they had accidentally bumped into each other on the road that had forced him to come to his senses. Louie had spent the entirety of his adult life around soldiers. Men who were trained to go off and fight. They came in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some had overpowering physical presence, but were as dumb as a potted plant. Louie had used these men in the same way one used pack mules. He had them carry heavy machine guns or mortars. Other men were wiry and small, but had great instincts or organizational skills. These men became clerks, or if they had endurance they were trained to be snipers or scouts. Muscle could be added or heft could be taken away. Basic skills could be drummed into the stupidest of men, but instinct was something that could not be taught. It could be discovered and nurtured, but you were either born with it or you were out of luck.
Standing in the Houston airport waiting for the flight that would take him back to DC, Louie remembered the way Rapp had looked at him on that morning, and the way his hand had hovered just above the fanny pack that undoubtedly concealed a gun. They had found out later, from listening to the wife's conversations, that he had been hurt on that morning. Louie remembered hearing the wife tell a friend that she had never seen her husband in so much pain. At the time Louie was thinking in terms of how he could use the injury to his advantage and hadn't bothered to connect the fact that despite being in great pain, Rapp's instincts had still detected something wrong that morning on the road by his house. Like any highly developed predator, Rapp was acutely in touch with his senses and his surroundings at all times.
As the departure for the flight to DC neared, Louie began to lose his nerve for the first time he could remember since almost drowning in a scuba training accident at the age of twenty-one. His subsequent trips to the ocean had been terrifying, and if it hadn't been for his fellow paratroopers standing right next to him he had no doubt that he would have quit. The only thing worse than his fear of the water was his fear of letting down his fellow brothers in arms. But now, alone in an airport filled with strangers, there was no esprit de corps. His thoughts turned to Claudia and the child that was growing within her. Without any further thought he returned to the Continental ticket counter and exchanged his ticket to DC for a flight to Ixtapa.
Louie looked down at the waves breaking against the rocks beneath him and smiled. He was confident that he had made the right decision. To think that he had almost abandoned Claudia when she'd needed him most embarrassed him. Louie had always sworn that he would never be like his own father. Leaving her like that in the airport, pregnant and traumatized, was just the thing his father would have done.
Louie watched the sailboats gently rock back and forth on the water. This place was special. It was too bad they couldn't stay here and raise a family.
Just then Claudia came up from behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. "What are you doing up so early?"
"I got up to go to the bathroom and decided to come out here and look at the water." Louie stood up straight and grabbed her hands. "How great is this place?"
"Much better with you here."
He undid her hands and stood next to her. His arms wrapped around her shoulders and hers wrapped around his waist, they stood there looking out across the bay. With a sigh, Louie said, "It's too bad."
"What?"
"That we're going to have to leave."
"Why?" she asked, her voice filled with disappointment.
"You know why. It's too risky to stay in one place for too long. Especially right now."
Claudia's heart sank as she remembered the difficult road that lay ahead. She had yet to tell Louie what she'd done in the days they were apart and it was beginning to weigh heavily on her. There was no telling how he would react when she told him, although one thing was certain; the longer she waited to tell him the harder it would be. Claudia rested her head against Louie's bare chest, and started to speak but suddenly lost the courage.
Louie noticed something was bothering her and asked, "What?"
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."
"And you think just because you gave him five million dollars he will forget about us?"
"No," she said, "as I told you, it will only buy us some time."
"Time?" he asked with a frown, still not comprehending what she was after.
Claudia placed his hand on her stomach and said, "I asked for nine months. I asked for him to spare our baby. I want to give birth to our child and hold it in my arms, and then whatever he does to us I will accept." She sensed some understanding in Louie's face. "That five million dollars isn't even ours," she said with disgust in her voice. "I never wanted the job, and we didn't finish it. If I had it my way, we would give him all of the money."
"We need that money," Louie said in a surprisingly calm voice. He was just now comprehending the maternal forces that had been at play. Her words had stirred his own sense of paternity-a need to protect Claudia and their unborn child. He disagreed vehemently with what she had done, and how it may have exposed them, but there was no undoing it. Her motives had been pure.
Louie kissed her on the forehead and said, "I still love you."
Claudia melted in his arms. "Thank you, darling."
They stood there, not speaking, for several minutes and then Claudia said, "Let's go back to bed."
Louie shook his head. "No."
"Why?" she asked, suddenly afraid that he would in fact leave her.
"We need to get out of here immediately. Pack your bags."