Baby Trouble: The Spy's Secret Family

She considered him carefully. “Because I’ll hold you responsible for kidnapping my son and kill you if you don’t?”

He let out an exasperated sigh. “Look. They pay me a small fortune to be the public face of AbaCo. But I’m not about to go down in flames, as you say, for all the activities they’re into.”

Nick leaped on that right away. “What else is AbaCo up to besides human trafficking?”

Kloffman snorted. “That’s the tip of the iceberg.”

Laura had no trouble believing that. “Again, I ask if you have any proof.”

“Why should I hand any of it over to you?”

Nick asked reasonably, “Who else would you give it to? If you were going to hand it over to the U.S. government, you’d have done it before now—when it became clear the feds are going to come after AbaCo with everything they’ve got in the upcoming trial. But you saw what Meredith’s goons did to me. I think you’re afraid to cross her. And rightly so, by the way.”

Nick was doing an excellent job of playing good cop. Which left her to play bad cop.

She leaned forward. “Don’t be stupid, Werner. I have the gun, and I won’t hesitate to use it.”

The German looked back and forth between them. “Let me make a phone call to inquire about your boy.”

She considered briefly. Why not? What could it hurt? She nodded and allowed the man to pull out a cell phone. He put it on speaker and laid it on the coffee table in front of him before hitting a speed dial number.

Nick commented as a man’s voice came on the line, “I speak fluent German.”

She threw him a grateful look. That could prove immensely helpful.

Kloffman nodded irritably at them. “Klaus. It’s Kloffman. Did you hear that Nick Cass’s boy was kidnapped?”

“It’s all over the news,” a heavily accented voice replied in English. “Serves the bastard right.”

Kloffman asked, “Do you know anything about it that could implicate AbaCo?”

“No.” The guy sounded genuinely surprised. “We had no such orders. Besides, everyone would suspect us right away. We’re not that stupid. Just do what you were sent to Washington to do and stay out of things that don’t concern you.”

Laura was surprised by the scorn in this Klaus guy’s voice. That didn’t sound anything at all like the respect due a genuine CEO. She glanced over at Nick and he was frowning, too. Apparently, Werner was telling the truth about being a figurehead.

“I’m sorry to bother you, Klaus.”

The German ended the call. “Satisfied?” Kloffman spit out.

She answered, “Not yet.”

“Look. I have children of my own. I would not hurt your son.” As her gaze hardened, he added in desperation, “Why would I kidnap your boy? The trial’s going to be stopped anyway.”

Laura started, and it was Nick who leaned forward and said smoothly, “Who did you cut the deal with, Werner?”

“The CIA.”

Laura was stunned. Her own agency had sold her out?

Thankfully, Nick didn’t miss a beat and nodded beside her. “Of course. I’ll bet you’ve held a few prisoners for the agency, maybe given them a heads-up where certain shipments were headed. You scratch their back, and now you’ve called in the favor and forced them to scratch yours.”

“Exactly,” Kloffman exclaimed, obviously relieved that Nick was on the same page. “In another day or two, the federal prosecutors will announce that national security could be compromised by proceeding with the case, and all charges will be quietly dropped. I have no need to kidnap your boy to silence you.”

Then why did Meredith and the shadow operators at AbaCo go after Adam? Petty revenge? The question still remained as to how they’d managed to move so fast against her heavily defended estate. It just didn’t add up in Laura’s gut. She was missing something major, here.

Nick, bless him, was carrying the conversation while her mind stayed frustratingly blank. He asked the German, “When will the announcement be made stopping the trial?”

“Two days from now.”

Laura’s heart sank. If AbaCo was behind his kidnapping, they had two days before Adam’s life became irrelevant to his kidnappers. How were they ever going to find him in so little time? Worse, if the trial was dead in the water, she and Nick had no leverage whatsoever to force this man to help them find Adam. Unless …

She leaned forward. “Werner, here’s the deal. Even if the trial is halted, Nick and I aren’t going to stop. We’re going to go public with everything we have on your company. We’ll use the media to full advantage, and with what we’ve got on AbaCo, we’ll destroy the company. In fact, we can probably do a more effective job of ruining it without the constraints of a trial to tie our hands. Do you believe me?”

Kloffman stared at her for several long seconds. Finally, he said heavily, “What’s it going to take to stop you from doing that?”

He might be a figurehead, but he undoubtedly liked his paycheck. He also seemed to understand that, as the figurehead, he’d be the sacrificial lamb.

Nick replied gently, “Save yourself, Werner. You don’t strike me as a bad type. Don’t let Meredith and her cronies drag you down with them.”

“How?” Werner snapped. “Who’ll believe me?”

“Why wouldn’t people believe you?” Nick asked. “I’m living proof that someone at AbaCo is up to no good. And there are others who have been victims of the company.”

Werner shook his head. “You don’t understand. It’s not about the prisoners they keep. It’s about the cargo.”

Nick glanced at her. Werner seemed inclined to talk to Nick, so she nodded subtly at him to take the lead. “What about the cargo?” Nick asked.

“AbaCo has become the freight carrier of choice for every nefarious group you can think of—drug lords, weapons dealers, terrorists, slavers, illegal lumber smugglers, you name it.”

Nick paled beside her. It had to be painful to hear that his family’s firm had fallen so far. “Do you have proof?” he asked hoarsely.

Kloffman hesitated one last time, and then he capitulated all in a rush. “I’ve been collecting it for years. Bit by bit. I had to be careful. But I’ve got cargo manifests, incriminating emails from customers, shipping documents, even financial records.”

“Why haven’t you taken it to the authorities before now?” Nick queried.

“What authorities?” Kloffman answered bitterly. “The same ones who are also using AbaCo to do their dirty work? How do you think the CIA gets weapons and supplies to the various regimes Uncle Sam can’t publicly support?”

The three of them fell silent.

Laura eventually broke the silence. “Who within the company does the dirty work?”

“The Special Cargo division,” Kloffman answered promptly.

That made sense. The people on trial for kidnapping Nick came out of that group. But the Feds had been combing through that division’s records for most of the past year and not found anything to indicate that AbaCo was engaging in widespread criminal activity.

“Do you have access to their real records, then?” Laura asked curiously.

Kloffman nodded eagerly. “I’ve been copying everything for the past three years.” He added sourly, “They didn’t even bother to restrict my access to the accounts. They think I’m too stupid to notice what they’re up to.”