Final Exit

by LENA DIAZ,

  “Enough time for what?” Bailey demanded. But Kade didn’t even look at her.

  The pounding sounded again behind them, then again. The lights blinked off and on.

  “Hurry,” Kade said.

  Mason motioned toward the others. But Devlin was already pushing Austin’s wheelchair down the aisle at a run. Terrance and the others jogged after him, leaving only Kade, Mason, and Bailey by the computer screen.

  Kade finally looked at her. “You need to go.”

  “Not a chance. I’m not leaving you.” She yanked out her Sig Sauer. “Those cowardly Equalizers can run and hide but I’m staying here. With you.”

  Kade smiled. “I doubt your new friends would appreciate being called cowards.” He glanced at Mason over the top of her head. “And I have a feeling they’d stay and fight if I asked them to. But I’m not asking. Most of the agents on the other side of that door are being manipulated and used. They’re good men and they don’t deserve to die just because they have the bad luck of working for a corrupt boss. I can end this without a single drop of blood being spilled and that’s exactly what I intend to do. Don’t worry about me, Bailey. I’ll be okay.”

  “No. You won’t. Those ‘good men’ out there have guns and will shoot just as readily as anyone else. You’re being foolish with your life.”

  The door shuddered.

  “Kade,” Mason said, from behind Bailey. “We need to hurry this up.”

  “Just go,” Bailey told him over her shoulder. “I’m staying with Kade.”

  “No,” Kade said. “Trust me. Faegan has put too much effort into painting me as his scapegoat. He’s obviously planning on using me as the fall guy if this mission goes south or other people find out what’s going on. And from what I’ve seen, it’s heading in that direction. He can’t afford to kill me. He needs me alive until everything implodes and I’m blamed. For now, I’m completely safe.”

  “That’s the biggest load of crap I’ve ever heard,” she told him.

  He shook his head in exasperation. “Now, Mason.”

  Bailey frowned, then, suddenly realizing what he meant, she started to whirl around. Mason grabbed her in an iron-hold and threw her on his shoulder.

  “No,” she yelled. “Put me down, damn it.”

  He sprinted down the aisle toward the screen.

  “Kade,” she yelled, as she pummeled Mason’s back. “Don’t do this. Kade!”

  Mason ran with her around the screen and into the safe-room with the others.

  “Close the door,” Mason yelled.

  “No!” Bailey struggled to get out of his arms. “Let me go!”

  The door slammed shut.

  Silence reigned in the lab. But not for long. Kade knew Faegan’s men would be coming through the door any second. He needed them to believe that he was here alone. He needed a diversion, something to keep them from even thinking about the safe-room.

  He punched up the video of the car crash. The memories he’d seen over and over in his mind, torturing him for months, now played out, larger than life. The gunman was just pulling up beside the car when the door to the lab slammed open, crashing against the wall.

  “Kade, what the hell are you . . .” The familiar voice behind him trailed off as the heavily armed team crowded around him and stared at the movie.

  Gunshots. The squeal of tires. The crunch of metal. Fake Abby screaming. Hell, had there even been a car wreck? He didn’t even know what had happened to his leg at this point. Had he been shot? Or was that fake, too?

  “Stop the movie,” Faegan ordered.

  Kade punched a button on the keyboard. Abby’s terrified face was frozen on the screen. He had to hand it to her, whoever she was. She was one hell of an actress. At least now he knew why his memories had always seemed muted, foggy, never completely in focus. Because they’d never been real. The guilt he’d felt for so long was for nothing. The guilt he’d felt for caring for Bailey, for wanting her so desperately when he should have been grieving for his wife had been a waste of emotion.

  He slowly turned in his chair and faced the man who’d put him through hell over the past year and had sentenced him to a life of pain, assuming he survived this. The man who was probably responsible for murdering dozens of Enforcers and using Kade as his tool to kill them.

  “You set me up, you bastard,” Kade said.

  Faegan blew out a deep breath. “It’s not that simple.”

  “It never is when you betray someone.” Kade rose from his chair. “So what’s it going to be? Are you going to shoot me, like you did Porter and Simmons? Like you probably did to all of the Enforcers?”

  Faegan cocked an arrogant brow. “Of course not. We’re the FBI. We don’t murder people.” He leaned toward Kade. “That’s the type of behavior a man does when he fries his brain with meds and convinces himself that he was married to a woman who doesn’t actually exist.”

  Kade lunged toward him but several sets of hands grabbed him from behind and yanked him back.

  Faegan motioned toward someone out of Kade’s line of vision. “Cuff him.”

  Bailey put her hands on her hips and glared up at Jace. Mason had been wise enough to keep well away from her and was currently standing on the other side of the safe-room.

  “We’ve been in here for thirty minutes,” Bailey snapped. “We’ve waited long enough. Either you move or I’ll move you.”

  Jace blinked and his lips quirked in an indulgent half smile. “Now, Bailey. No need to act so—ooof!”

  She slammed her fist into his belly and followed through with an uppercut to his jaw. The shocked look on his face as he fell to the side was a reward all its own. She punched the red button beside the door and it popped open with a swishing sound.

  Laughter from the other Equalizers, and cursing from Jace, sounded behind her. She ran into the now-empty computer room and sprinted up the main aisle. She’d been wanting to punch someone for a while now. It was Jace’s bad fortune to be blocking the exit door when her temper had boiled over.

  “Bailey, wait, damn it,” one of the men called out behind her. “They might be outside, waiting for us.”

  “Kade might be outside, too, needing our help,” she called back as she ran from the room.

  It took a frustrating full minute to figure out the maze of hallways but she finally burst out the front door onto the circular drive in front of the building. Empty, just like the computer room. And the road leading up the hill to the lab was deserted, too. She was too late. Kade was gone, and she didn’t know how she was going to find him again.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Wednesday, 12:42 p.m.

  Twenty-four hours later, Bailey sat at the table in the Equalizers’ hideout, listening to the others comparing notes on what they’d each done since leaving the FBI lab.

  Bailey had spent the past day bouncing between the FBI lab, the house in Boulder where Kade had been staying that first night when she’d stowed away in the trunk of his car, even EXIT headquarters in case he showed up there. She’d been searching for signs of him, but had found nothing—while the other Equalizers had been focusing more on searching for Faegan.

  None of them had been successful either.

  “Another Enforcer was taken last night,” Mason announced from his seat to Bailey’s right. “That makes two since Kade disappeared. Which means that either he’s back calling the shots again, or his boss is doing it without him. Either way, we’ve got to close the net. I vote that we shadow some of the remaining Enforcers in the area to try to catch Faegan in action.”

  “You mean, use Enforcers as bait?” Devlin asked. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

  That started a whole new round of discussions. Bailey tapped her foot impatiently beneath the table and wondered what had happened to make her more worried about finding one man than about stopping the attack on her fellow Enforcers. No, that wasn’t fair. It wasn’t that she was choosing Kade over anyone else. It was that no one else was choosing him, so it w
as left to her to do so.

  She shoved back from the table and stood. Conversation stopped and all eyes focused on her.

  “I’m going back to EXIT headquarters,” she announced.

  “Again? Why? We’ve been there half a dozen times searching for Kade. If Faegan was still watching the place, he’d have shown up one of those times. Face it. EXIT headquarters is a dead end.”

  “Well, I can’t sit here and do nothing. I have to keep looking for him.”

  Jace sat back in his chair, studying her. An expression of sympathy crossed his face, and she wanted to pummel him all over again. He and probably most of the others believed it was too late to help Kade, that he was . . . gone . . . like all of the missing Enforcers and would never be seen again. But that wasn’t something she could even begin to accept.

  Aside from her friendship with Hawke and his friends—Sebastian and Amber—she could still count on one hand the number of people she’d allowed to get close to her in the past dozen or so years. Losing Kade now, before she was even sure what he meant to her, what he could mean to her, would utterly wreck her. She had to keep holding on. She couldn’t lose hope.

  “All right,” Jace finally said. “If you need us, call. You have my cell number.”

  She blinked in surprise. “I kind of thought you all would throw me out of your little club for doing my own thing.”

  He grinned. “Well, that’s not how this club operates. You’re one of us now. We may not think that looking for Kade is the best use of our resources at this point. But we’re still a team. And that includes you. We have your back. If you need us, we’ll be there.”

  She looked around the table. To a man, every one of them nodded their agreement with Jace. They considered her a team member. They weren’t kicking her out.

  “Thank you,” she said, her voice tight. She hadn’t realized how much she’d wanted their approval, their support, until she knew she had it. “I, ah, I’ll call with updates.”

  She whirled around and headed out. The Mustang, with its bullet hole and bloody passenger seat, had been left in a junkyard to eventually be reunited with the rental company who owned it. Now she was driving one of her favorites, an old deep blue Charger with an engine that fairly purred.

  She again went everywhere that she’d seen Kade before, even the little house where she’d been hiding out that first night when Hawke had warned her and she’d fled to the woods ahead of his men. But he wasn’t there, and it didn’t look like anyone had been there since she’d left. When she checked on EXIT headquarters, she boldly drove right up to the building and sat for a good long time, as if daring Faegan’s men—if they were the ones who’d been watching the building the first time—to come after her. At least if they did, they’d take her where they took Kade. Or so she hoped.

  But no one suddenly appeared and tried to capture her. Maybe because they knew they had something she wanted, and didn’t want to risk her going after them.

  Frustration had her punching the gas and spinning donuts around the parking lot. Finally she stopped, her foot on the brake as she breathed in heavily, trying to calm her racing pulse.

  “Damn it, Kade. Where are you?”

  She tried to reason it through.

  If Faegan knew Kade was helping them yesterday, then it made sense that he would have taken Kade into custody. But if he had, it wasn’t through any official channels. One of Devlin’s brothers, Pierce, was an FBI agent. One of the good ones, not one working to exterminate Enforcers. And he hadn’t found evidence of anyone bringing Kade in for questioning. He was looking into information on Faegan, and from what she’d heard, had done a great job of getting details on his homes and official capacity, even what office he normally worked out of—again, officially. But Faegan was also currently on some secret assignment. The file that might have given them what they needed to find him was sealed so tight that no one was getting into it.

  Just another way that EXIT’s hierarchy protected itself.

  She considered all of the possibilities. If Kade was with Faegan, then the Equalizers would eventually—or so she hoped—catch up to both of them. They were focusing on the head of the snake, and right now that seemed to be Kade’s immediate boss. But if Kade had somehow managed to escape, what would he do? Where would he go?

  Bailey put herself in his shoes. He’d sacrificed himself at the lab to ensure that no one else got hurt—on both sides of the conflict. Which only proved how deeply honorable he was. His choices always put the safety of others first. So if he’d escaped, and knew that Faegan’s men were searching for him, he wouldn’t want to do anything that could jeopardize Bailey. She was certain of it. Which meant that he wouldn’t want to draw any attention to the Equalizers either. He might be on shaky ground with them right now, not really sure if they were his allies or not. But he knew they were Bailey’s allies—the friends of his . . . friend, or whatever she was.

  She tapped her hands on the steering wheel as another possibility occurred to her. Kade had to know she cared about him. They’d never discussed the attraction between them. But it wasn’t exactly a secret either. He had to know she’d be worried. He had to know that she’d want to hear from him that he was okay. But it wasn’t like they’d exchanged numbers or given each other business cards. Which meant, the only way he’d feel safe about contacting her was if she came to him. He could be hiding somewhere waiting for her to find him.

  The more she thought about it, the more that made sense to her. Now all she had to do was figure out where he would hide, knowing that it was a place they both knew about. The locations that she and Kade had been to together made a very short list.

  And of that list, there was only one place that she hadn’t searched—the house in Colorado Springs where she’d nursed him back to health.

  When Bailey finally pulled onto the familiar street in Colorado Springs, she slowly passed the house, keeping an eye out for anything unusual that might indicate that its location had been compromised. She parked a few houses down, watching the occasional car go by, studying any casual passerby. It was well past the evening rush hour now. The sun had set and traffic was light. Everything seemed normal. No suspicious cars or people wandering around. If she was going to do this, now was the time.

  A few minutes later she’d parked her car inside the garage and was ready to go into the house. The excitement and hope that she’d clung to the whole drive here had plummeted the moment she’d seen that the garage was empty. If Kade was here, he’d have stolen—no, rented—a car somewhere along the way. Otherwise, how would he have gotten here? Clearly, he wasn’t here. But she hadn’t driven this far to turn around without being absolutely sure.

  Still, she wasn’t going to foolishly barge inside without clearing each room first. When she and Kade had left they’d been worried about someone finding the house. She had to assume that was still a possibility, and that someone else could be hiding inside—even without a car in the garage.

  With her pistol out, she headed inside. The house was closed up like a tomb, the heavy drapes covering every window, making it dark inside even though it was only late afternoon. There was just enough light to let her navigate around furniture but not enough to see much detail.

  She quickly cleared the kitchen, family room, the first bedroom and the bathroom. So far, nothing. No signs that anyone had been here recently. Her shoulders slumped with disappointment. One room left. She threw the door open to the second bedroom.

  “Bailey?”

  She jerked her gun hand down at the sound of the familiar voice. It was too dark to clearly see his face. But she’d know that silhouette anywhere. Good thing he probably couldn’t see the goofy grin that had to be on her face right now.

  “Kade. I can’t believe you’re really here. I was right.”

  “Bailey, what are you—”

  She threw her arms around his waist and pressed her head tightly against his chest. “I’m hugging you. Now hug me back, damn it. I thought Faegan
was torturing you or might have already killed you.”

  He hesitated, then wrapped his arms around her and rested his cheek against the top of her head. “Everyone made it out of the lab safely? No one got hurt?”

  “We didn’t get to shoot one single agent. You ruined our fun,” she teased. “What about you? How did you get away? And why did you come back here?” She pulled back and flipped the hall light on. Her eyes widened as she stared up at him. “Oh, Kade. What did they do to you?”

  “Nothing that hasn’t been done before.” He pulled the bedroom door shut behind him and took her hand in his, leading her into the family room. “I was just about to make some soup. Want some?”

  “I . . . guess I could eat.”

  She followed him to the kitchen. Was his limp worse than before? Was he favoring his side? She climbed onto one of the bar stools so she could watch him. He turned on the stove and grabbed two cans of tomato soup from the pantry.

  “Kade, what happened after we went into the safe-room?”

  He set out two bowls and stirred the soup as it heated in a pot. Was it her imagination or did he seem distracted? Tense?

  “I played one of the videos to throw Faegan off. He bought it. As soon as I started accusing him of using me as a scapegoat, he had me handcuffed and brought me to some compound.”

  He turned off the stove and began ladling the soup into the two bowls. “Crackers?” He held up a box of saltines.

  Why was he acting so weird? He was acting like a . . . stranger. “No crackers. Thanks.”

  After placing a bowl in front of each of them, he took the stool beside her. She could see how stiff and sore he was as he sat down. And in the light from the kitchen, the bruises she’d seen by the light of the bedroom looked even worse. They were just starting to show up, evidence of a recent beating for sure. Maybe that’s why he was acting so off. He was in pain and didn’t want to worry her.

  The eyelid on his right eye was swollen, but not too bad. The worst part seemed to be the cuts and welts, like someone had taken a whip to his neck and shoulders, and run a knife down his right cheek from temple to chin, not to mention several equally long cuts on both arms. The cuts were angry and raw, but didn’t appear to be deep or in need of stitches. A couple of Band-Aids were apparently covering the worst of the cuts.