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"Well, the one I dragged up here, when I jumped him he swore in Hebrew. And then when I pulled him out of the car he spoke in Italian."
"What does that prove?"
"I don't know. Why don't you tell me?" While Donatella thought about it, Rapp continued to check her shoulder. He tried to calculate the trajectory of the bullet and announced, "It passed clean through, which of course is good, but I think it did some pretty bad damage."
"I'd say," muttered Donatella as another wave of pain washed over her.
"Where's your first-aid kit?"
"In my bedroom closet. Top shelf, right side."
Before leaving the room, Rapp yanked the cord off the nearest lamp and then tied the wrists of the man he'd knocked out. "I'll be right back."
Donatella watched Rapp go down the hall to her bedroom. When he was gone she whispered several swear words to herself and looked at the bodies on the floor. It was a big deal that Rapp had heard the man swear in Hebrew. Donatella didn't recognize any of them, but they were Mossad. They were personal recruits of Ben Freidman. She'd seen the type before. As Donatella linked things together, she saw that she was painted into a very tight corner. Her life in Italy was over, and for that fact, so probably too was her life. She needed a way out, and she didn't mean finding a way to spend the rest of her life on the lam. She'd seen others try it. Very few succeeded. They usually slipped up somewhere along the way or were forced to live such a shitty life that it wasn't worth it. No, she'd worked too hard for everything. She wasn't going to just throw it all away. She needed leverage. She needed a way to negate Ben Freidman's significant power. She thought of what Rapp had said earlier. That he could protect her. That he could take it all the way to the top. She wondered briefly how high all the way to the top was.
The man on the floor began stirring. Donatella wondered what information he would provide when Mitch went to work on him. At that moment she made a difficult decision. She would be the only one with the secrets, and if Rapp wanted them, he would have to come through on his promise. He would have to give her her life back.
The silenced Walther was still in her left hand. She heard Rapp coming back down the hall. Donatella raised the weapon, took aim and fired a single shot into the top of the man's head.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE.
"What in the hell are you doing!" snarled Rapp as he stood in the hallway, staring at the smoke wafting from the end of Donatella's silenced pistol. His own gun was aimed at her head, and he was holding the first-aid kit in his other hand with some towels under his arm. "Put your gun down right now, Donatella!"
Acting as if his request was tiresome, she tossed her weapon to the floor and sank back into the couch. Rapp crossed over to her and kicked her weapon to the other side of the room. He set the first-aid kit and the towels on the coffee table, looked at the man with the fresh bullet hole in the top of his head, and then turned back to Donatella. "What in the fuck was that for?"
"We were going to have to kill him sooner or later." She looked away from Rapp and closed her eyes."I didn't want you to have to do it."
"The hell you did."
"I did you a favor."
"My ass you did." Rapp pointed his pistol at the man whose hands he'd just tied. "You knew him, didn't you?"
With her eyes closed and a grimace on her face, she shook her head.
"Bullshit, Donny."
"Stop your stupid arguing and give me a shot of morphine." She reached out for the kit with her good hand. For this exact reason Donatella possessed a military first-aid kit, complete with battle dressings, sutures, clamps, surgical staples, penicillin, morphine and much more. Rapp snatched the kit away from her and said, "I came all the way over here to help you, and you haven't given me shit. You better start giving me some answers."
"You didn't come over here to help me, you came over here to help yourself"
"Oh, is that right, you little ingrate? If I hadn't stepped in, the Agency would have grabbed you off the street and done God only knows what to you."
"For all I know, these guys were sent here by the Agency."
"Yeah, Donny, these guys were sent here by the Agency," Rapp said in a mocking tone. "That's why you executed this sap right here."
"I don't know them."
"Bullshit, Donny. I know you well enough to know you wouldn't have just executed this guy if you weren't afraid he'd have something to say."
"I don't know any of these guys." She grimaced as another wave of pain washed over her. "Give me some goddamn morphine."
"You might not know these guys personally, but you sure as hell know who sent them."
"Maybe."
"Maybe, my ass, Donny. I'm done fucking around. You gonna tell me right now who hired you to kill Peter Cameron, or I'm walking out of this apartment and out of your life."