“I—”
“He knows, Tony. I don’t know how, but he knows about the dossier. Probably from Enzo Ruiz, but it doesn’t matter. Mitch Rapp just sent you a message. The truce is off. And if Legion manages to kill Claudia Gould, there’s nothing he won’t do to see you dead.”
“She and Rapp are back at the house in South Africa with limited security. Darren thinks they’re trying to draw Legion in. We need to quit screwing around and deal with him.”
She laughed. “We did deal with him. We agreed to a truce. And he was going to abide by it. All you had to do was nothing. But you couldn’t help yourself.”
“So now you trust Mitch Rapp?”
“I trust him to pursue his own self-interest and the interests of his country. He’d have understood that what we were offering was a good deal. And if not, Kennedy would have convinced him.”
“I disagree,” her husband said coldly.
“What now, then? Do we take another run at Rapp and hope it goes better this time? Scott Coleman? Irene? What about the hundreds of other people who owe Rapp their lives?”
“We already have Maslick.”
“For God’s sake, Tony. Let him go. He’s a war hero who hasn’t broken any laws. Right now, Irene Kennedy is sitting around figuring out how to leak this to the press in the most damaging way possible.”
Cook finally came around and sat on a sofa in front of her. “Lately all I hear out of you is criticism. That I’m a coward. That I’m an idiot. That I’m being played. What I don’t hear is solutions.”
“I gave you the solution!” she snapped. “You threw it away. And now you’re going to sit there and try to shift the blame? I’m not one of your adoring cult members, Tony. Don’t treat me like one.”
He leaned back, putting as much distance between them as he could without appearing to retreat. When he spoke again, his tone was more respectful. “You always have a plan B, Catherine.”
“Not this time. Trying to take out Rapp and his people would have a high probability of failure and a level of political backlash that even we wouldn’t be able to withstand. And reaching out to him and trying to reestablish our truce is impossible because he has no reason to trust us.”
“Then what?”
She let out a long breath. “I see only one path. That you rely on your security and go back to your political life.”
He stiffened. “That sounds like a recipe for my death.”
“Maybe,” she admitted. “But losing the White House definitely is.”
CHAPTER 36
NEAR FRANSCHHOEK
SOUTH AFRICA
RAPP finished his last set of pull-ups and dropped from the bar hanging in front of his gym’s sparkling clean windows. Bebe’s endless cleaning and straightening did have its benefits. On the other hand, he still hadn’t figured out her latest tool organization protocols and couldn’t find an entire category of wrenches. Asking her would be the logical solution but would lead to an intricate explanation that he didn’t want to listen to. Besides, it was a problem that shrunk to insignificance when compared with the one standing right in front of him.
When Sadie had first arrived, she’d trained hard—primarily with free weights and intense interval sessions on the treadmill. She’d seemed dedicated to her fitness level—for good reason in her line of work—but also used the time to blank out whatever the hell it was that went on in that beautiful head of hers.
Now, though, there were no more heavy dead lifts or steep sprints. To the degree she exercised at all, it was just a few graceful yoga moves in Claudia’s stylish athleisure wear. Occasionally, when performing a gymnastic act that Claudia would be completely incapable of, her eyes would harden behind the brown contacts obscuring them. Those glimpses of the real Sadie Hansen, though, were becoming more fleeting.
Today she wasn’t there to exercise, but instead to feed the newest addition to their misfit household—a collection of white mice contained in individual wire cages. He noted that each hair in her ponytail seemed to have been groomed individually, and that she was wearing a well-coordinated collection of Claudia’s gardening clothes. Somehow she made the ensemble look more like a new fashion trend than something one would wear to mow the lawn.
He stared at her from behind for a while, but when she looked like she was about to finish, he jumped back on the bar. Any excuse to keep their interactions to a minimum.
Not that he was doing a particularly good job of it. The night before, she’d come out of the bathroom and sat naked in front of him on the bed. Instead of making a pass, she’d stared at him with Claudia’s eyes and apologized for going to the store without telling him. From his position on the sofa, he’d done the same—saying that he was sorry for “overreacting,” and chalking it up to how important she was to both him and Anna. At that, she’d stood, kissed him gently on the forehead, and slipped beneath the covers.