Final Exit

by LENA DIAZ,

  Bailey jerked her head toward the window. The Equalizers stood together again, huddled like football players, including Austin. They still thought they could figure a way out of this.

  “Please,” Bailey pleaded again. “I’m begging you.”

  Kade hesitated, his finger poised over the button.

  Dominic shoved him out of the way and slammed his own palm down.

  A cloud of white shot out into the lab.

  “No!” Bailey cried, desperately trying to free herself from the chair. She wrenched it backward and jerked her legs free, then jumped to her feet.

  The gunman who’d been standing by the door stepped forward, pointing his pistol at her.

  She stopped, torn about what to do next.

  The sounds of cursing and coughing filled the room. The lead gunman had flipped the intercom, broadcasting the sounds from the lab into the booth.

  Austin tumbled out of his wheelchair and sprawled on the floor.

  Devlin shouted something and knelt beside him, then started coughing.

  “How can you just stand there and let this happen?” Bailey yelled at Kade. “Do something.”

  “It’s too late,” he said, infuriatingly calm. “There’s nothing anyone can do for them now.”

  Ignoring the man with the gun pointing at her, Bailey charged at Kade, slamming her body against him and shoving him back against the wall.

  “I hate you,” she yelled, kicking him. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.”

  He grabbed her in a bear hug, squeezing her against him. “I’m so sorry.”

  She collapsed against his chest, sobbing.

  “Go,” Kade said quietly over the top of her head. He leaned over the control panel and flipped something. The sounds from the other room went silent. He must have turned off the intercom. “You have what you want. Go.”

  “You forget, you’re coming with us. That’s the bargain,” the leader said.

  “I know. But only after all of you step out. I want Bailey to lock herself in the control booth until we’re gone.”

  The man clucked his tongue. “I have a feeling you don’t trust us.”

  Kade laughed harshly. “Trust you? If there was any way for me to unlock the door to the lab and let my friends kill all five of you, I’d have done it. Instead, I’ve killed them.”

  Dominic laughed. “Very well. You’ve honored your word. I shall honor mine.” He motioned toward Jack, the one who’d been guarding the door. Footsteps sounded as Jack and the others filed out of the control room and into the warehouse. Only Dominic remained in the control booth with Kade and Bailey.

  “Time to go,” he said, motioning for Kade to step outside.

  Kade nodded and gently pushed Bailey back. He reached his hand up as if to touch her face but she jerked away from him. He gave her a sad smile.

  “Lock the door after we leave,” he said.

  “Yeah, no problem with my hands bound behind me,” she sneered.

  “Just kick the bar. It will fall down across the latch. Kick it up once you know it’s safe to come out.”

  She turned her head, refusing to look at him.

  “All right,” Kade said. “We’re leaving the control room now.”

  Bailey frowned at his odd choice of words. As soon as the door closed, she hurried forward and kicked the bar. As Kade had said, it dropped down into place, locking her inside.

  She plopped down on the ground and contorted her arms and body until she worked her handcuffed arms under her legs and in front of her. Breathing hard from the exertion, she looked around the room for something to break the cuffs. But there was nothing she could use.

  No time, no time. She had get to a computer and warn the other Enforcers before Kade tricked them into heading toward their deaths. She jumped to her feet, swiping at the tears flowing down her cheeks. Damn it. She wasn’t a crier, didn’t want to cry. But Kade had broken her heart. Not only broken it, but smashed it into a million jagged pieces. He’d used her to kill her friends. How was she supposed to live with that kind of guilt?

  She looked at the control panel. Was it wired to a security system? Were there camera views she could see so she’d know whether Kade and the gunmen were gone yet? Even though she’d tried to keep her gaze averted from the horror in the other room, she couldn’t resist one quick look. She blinked. What the hell? She leaned closer to the glass, looking right and left. The lab was empty! She looked toward the lab door. It was wide open. What was going on?

  Thump, thump, thump. Someone was pounding on the control room door.

  “Bailey! It’s Jace. Open up.”

  Jace? It couldn’t be. And yet, that was his voice. And the lab was empty.

  “Bailey!”

  She ran toward the door and jammed her cuffed hands beneath the bar, lifting it up and out of the way.

  The door flew open and Jace ran inside, sweeping his pistol around the room.

  “It’s empty,” Bailey whispered, her throat so tight she could barely speak. “They’re all gone.”

  “All clear,” he yelled to the warehouse behind him. Then he holstered his pistol and grabbed her in a hug. “You okay?”

  She froze in shock for a moment, then pulled back and said, “I don’t . . . I don’t understand. You . . . you died.”

  Mason and Terrance filed into the control room, with Austin wheeling in behind them. She stared at them in wonder.

  “I thought you were all dead.”

  “So did we,” Jace said, giving a nervous laugh. “Kade had us all fooled, until he mentioned the white cloud of gas. Then we knew.”

  She frowned. “Knew what?”

  Mason cocked a brow. “Sarin gas is colorless. Kade was warning us that he was trying to trick the gunmen. So we played along, played dead.”

  “There wasn’t any Sarin gas?” She knew it was true, or none of them would be alive. But she couldn’t quite wrap her mind around it.

  Mason shook his head. “Remember he kept up with the investigation. He told us all about it. He must have known they had some kind of test canisters in this place and he could use them to fool Faegan’s men. The FBI sure as hell wouldn’t leave deadly Sarin gas in a warehouse, even if it was part of an investigation. Those mercenaries were too stupid to know that, and thank God they didn’t know that Sarin gas didn’t have a color. I knew of course, and so did Jace since he used to be a Navy SEAL.”

  “And Kade knew that you knew,” Bailey finished for him. “Because you told him the other day, that you’d been on a mission involving Sarin gas.”

  Mason nodded.

  Bailey looked from Austin, to Jace, to Mason, and finally Terrance. “Then, it was all a ruse. But . . . how did you get out of the lab?”

  “We heard a click at the door, figured Kade had remotely unlocked it. And we heard him say something about the door over the intercom. Sure enough, it was unlocked.”

  “He must have done that when he leaned over the control panel that last time. I didn’t notice. Thank God the gunmen didn’t either.” She looked at each of them again. “But I thought he’d bargained your lives for mine.” She started to press a hand to her temple, which was starting to throb, but the handcuffs jangled on her wrists, reminding her she was still tied up.

  “Here, I’ll get those.” Jace stepped forward with a handcuff key, freeing her, just as he had that first night.

  “Thank you.” She rubbed her wrists gratefully. Then she frowned. “Where’s Devlin? What happened to the gunmen? Where is Kade?”

  “Come on,” Jace said.

  He led her and the others out of the control booth back into the warehouse. Four bodies lay against the far wall. Jace and the others must have taken them out as they’d left the lab, warned by Kade as he’d announced that they were leaving the control room. It was all starting to make sense to her now. But there had been five gunmen.

  Jace waved behind her and she turned around. The fifth man, Dominic, stood against the wall, his hands bound behind him, a le
ngth of phone cord—probably taken from the lab—tying both his ankles together. And standing in front of him, pointing a gun and saying something in a low menacing tone, was Devlin. And beside him?

  Kade.

  They all joined Devlin and Kade, who were grilling the mercenary. From what Bailey caught of the conversation as she approached, he was squealing like a pig, telling them everything they wanted to know. So much for those loyalties he’d been so proud of back in the control room.

  Bailey stopped several feet from Kade. Jace stopped with her.

  “What happened after Kade and the others left the room?” she whispered.

  “We waited until the gunmen went outside to surprise them,” he said, keeping his voice low to mirror hers. “They’d handcuffed Kade by the time we got out there and he was sitting in the leader’s Humvee. We heard them arguing. Kade was taunting the leader.”

  “Taunting him?”

  Jace stared at her. “Apparently the leader had a computer in his car and expected Kade to access the Enforcer network to trick more Enforcers into coming in. But Kade had lied about being able to access the network. He was taunting the leader about how gullible he was to believe his lies. Saying as long as you were safe, that was all that mattered.”

  Bailey stared up at him. “He had to know the leader would kill him for that.”

  “Yeah. I imagine he did. I’m pretty sure he didn’t expect us to make it out of there in time to save him. The leader was raising his gun to shoot Kade when Devlin leaned in and wrenched the gun out of his hand. It was close. Another second and Kade would have been dead.”

  “Then he . . . he did all of this, expecting to die. He didn’t bargain his own life for mine. He was willing to die to make all of us safe.”

  “Yep. That’s pretty much what we concluded, too.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “He’s a good man, Bailey. He was in an impossible situation and he came up with a plan that was risky as hell. But he did it to lure out the bad guys. And now that we managed to get the leader, we can get Faegan. He saved all of us.” He left her to join the others.

  Bailey couldn’t seem to make her feet move. Everything that had happened in the past few hours kept running through her mind. And it all boiled down to one thing. They were all safe, because of Kade.

  Devlin grabbed Dominic’s arm and hauled him toward the exit. The rest of the Equalizers followed.

  Kade gave Bailey an uncertain look, then limped after the others.

  “Oh, hell no.” Bailey ran after him and blocked his way.

  He stopped and watched her with a wary look.

  “Jace,” she yelled over her shoulder. “Give us a minute.”

  “You got it,” he yelled back.

  She didn’t say anything until she heard the door close.

  “This was all a trick,” she finally said. “You knew that you would probably die either way. And still, you bargained, to save me. Why?”

  His brows lowered as if in confusion. “Why? I couldn’t let them kill you, not if I could do something to stop them.”

  “Why?”

  He glanced impatiently toward the door. “We need to go. We have a lead on Faegan and where he might be holding the captured Enforcers.”

  “The retraining center. You know where it is?”

  He nodded. “Dominic blubbered the details. If he’s telling the truth, and I think he is, then this is our best chance to finally end this.”

  “Why?” she repeated. “Why would you risk your life, and the lives of my friends, to save me?” When he didn’t answer, she swore at him. “Is this some chauvinistic thing, protect the woman? Well that’s bullshit. I can take care of myself. Do you think I would want anyone else to die for me? How could you bargain someone else’s life for mine?”

  His jaw tightened. “I couldn’t let you die.”

  “So you’d let my friends die instead?”

  He swore. “I had a plan. I knew they’d be okay.”

  “Plans don’t always work out. And from where I stand, your plan was shaky at best. You had no right to—”

  “I had to,” he said, his voice raw. “Don’t you get it, Bailey?” He placed his fist over his heart. “I didn’t have a choice. I couldn’t bear to let you die. I couldn’t . . .” He shook his head and swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat.

  “For months, I saw shadowy pictures in my head of a woman I supposedly loved, had married. And then I watched her die while I sat there doing nothing. I couldn’t save her, and I’ve been dying a slow death ever since. Because nothing felt right. The memories weren’t real. I know that now. And I think I knew it then, somehow, in my subconscious. And I still felt guilty as hell that I couldn’t save her.”

  He pounded his chest. “It tore me up. But nothing like the thought of something happening to you. Don’t you get it, Bailey? Everything I believe in—the law, justice, that all lives are valuable no matter what—goes out the flipping window when I think about you. Nothing else matters but saving you. That’s why I did what I did. That’s why I risked others’ lives, even though it was wrong. I couldn’t let you die. Even if you hate me for it.”

  He stalked around her and out of the warehouse, slamming the door behind him.

  Bailey blinked, stunned at the anger and hurt that had rolled off Kade. And stunned to hear him say that the one driving force behind all of the decisions that he’d made today was that he couldn’t let her die.

  What did that mean? Did he . . . love her? Was that even possible after knowing someone for, what, a week? Or did he just feel responsible for her for some crazy reason, because of Hawke? And her other friends? She didn’t know and wasn’t sure she was even prepared to handle the answer if she did know. Wanting someone was one thing. Loving? Well, that was something else entirely. The only people she’d ever loved had died. She was bad luck, bad mojo. And like Kade, she couldn’t bear the thought of something happening to him.

  She raked a hand through her hair. This was all so screwed up.

  The warehouse door popped open and Jace leaned inside.

  “Bailey, we’ve already got some other Equalizers performing surveillance based on Dominic’s information. They’ve spotted Faegan. We know where the retraining facility is located. The Equalizers are going to war.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Thursday, 4:22 p.m.

  Kade stood beside Jace high on a heavily wooded ridge, looking down into a canyon about an hour west of Boulder. To their left and right, Mason’s small army of Equalizers formed a line, ready to launch their attack as soon as Mason gave the signal.

  Bailey stood about three people away, to Kade’s left, discussing strategy with Mason. With everything going on, he’d barely been able to say more than a few words to her since the disaster at the warehouse. And he’d just managed to make her mad at him all over again.

  He sighed and looked down into the canyon. The retraining facility was only a few hundred yards away. It was carved out of a network of caves in the side of the mountain—definitely not something the FBI higher-ups knew about or had authorized. This was all on Faegan and his mercenaries. Whoever had assigned him to clean up the EXIT debacle had entrusted exactly the wrong man with the job. And they were probably pumping millions of dollars into his program, without even realizing what he was doing with the money.

  Kade was restless to start the assault, to get into those tunnels and hopefully free the men and women who’d been taken by his very own teams. It was already late afternoon. Hours had passed since they’d gotten the location of the facility. But the delay in going after Faegan had been a deliberate one. The time had been used to send all of the known Enforcers’ and Equalizers’ families into hiding.

  Faegan wasn’t governed by the old EXIT code of not going after Enforcers’ families, no matter what. If the Equalizers didn’t manage to capture Faegan during the raid, he might decide to have his revenge by going after their loved ones. Kade sure wouldn’t put it past him. He just wished he kne
w for sure who was working with Faegan and who wasn’t. It was hard to trust anyone these days.

  He’d finally checked his email after leaving the warehouse and had a brief reply from Gannon. He hadn’t gotten a chance yet to redirect any resources into checking on Kade’s two agents. But from his own scans and searches, he agreed with Kade. There was something suspicious about the two men. He promised he’d do whatever it took to get something official back by the end of the week.

  “I hope you know,” Kade told Jace, “that the FBI isn’t what you’re seeing here. Faegan is a traitor to everything we stand for. The few people in the bureau aware of EXIT’s clandestine side were supposed to clean things up and make sure the documentation was gone. Killing people was never supposed to be a part of the equation. I guarantee that they don’t know what Faegan’s up to.”

  “I know that,” Jace said. “Devlin’s brother, Pierce, is in the FBI. He’s one of the most decent men I’ve ever met. I know the FBI itself, as a whole, isn’t a part of any of this. And that most of the agents involved have no idea they’re being directed to do anything wrong. I imagine most of the men working for Faegan aren’t agents at all. They’re mercenaries using FBI equipment. So why are you telling me all that?”

  “I’m just so disgusted. I wanted to make sure you guys don’t think that these . . . scum . . . are representative of most of the people who wear the badge.”

  “So noted.” He cocked his head, studying Kade. “Why are you so fired up about defending the FBI anyway? Was it a lifelong dream to be an agent or something?”

  “Sort of.” He stared down into the valley. “My dad was a lifer in the Navy, thirty-one years before he retired. My days consisted of lectures on love of country, justice, and honor above all else. I guess most of it stuck.”

  “You were military before the FBI?”

  “No. I would have been, probably. But my best friend, Gannon, was determined to be an agent. Same high school, same college. I guess his enthusiasm rubbed off on me. When he signed up, I did, too. It was more about the structure, and serving my country in some way. Where or how I served wasn’t all that important.”