Page 110 of Final Exit

Gannon stumbled back, wiping at his bottom lip, his hand coming away smeared with blood.

“You bastard. I should have had you killed instead of setting you up as a fall guy. You’ve been nothing but problems from day one.”

He charged forward, managing to get a punch in this time, slamming Kade’s left shoulder hard enough to make him stagger against the wall. But Kade used the momentum to swing around, slamming his foot into Gannon’s knee before the other man could jump back.

Gannon swore and fell back against another decorative table, which collapsed beneath his weight. But he managed to remain upright, standing at an awkward angle as he tried to keep most of his weight off his injured knee.

They both faced off, slowly circling each other. Kade couldn’t help but laugh.

“Looks like we both match now.” He indicated the leg Gannon was favoring.

The man’s eyes narrowed. “Too bad that gunman only managed to hit your thigh the night your wife was killed.”

Kade narrowed his eyes. “I know everything. I broke into the lab, saw the films, figured out that you used hypnosis and mind-control techniques to make me think I’d been married when I never had. All so you could, what, drive me crazy? Make me vulnerable, at rock bottom, so I’d buy anything you were selling? So I’d think Faegan was doing me a favor by giving me this one last mission, a chance to redeem myself?”

Gannon shrugged. “So you finally know. Good for you. It was an easy setup. Car accidents are easy to arrange. Of course, the bullet hole in the door was a problem, so I had to get creative afterward—make the car disappear. Bribe a police contact into filing a false report.”

Kade shook his head in disgust. “I know that you’re behind the murders of the men and women who once worked as Enforcers at EXIT Inc., doing the government’s dirty work. I know that you set up Faegan as your go-between to murder the Enforcers, and that you set me up as your main fall guy, making me think I was saving people while you and Faegan were actually murdering them.”

Gannon wiped his bleeding lip again. “Why are you wasting my time talking about all that crap? You’re like a dog who’s been kicked one too many times, begging for table scraps or a pat on the head. Fine. You need me to say it? I guess you’ve earned it. Everything you said is true. I’m behind everything, and set you up to take the fall. Feel better?” He gestured toward Kade’s left leg. “You know about the lab, and the mind-control experiments we ran on you. But you don’t know the full story, do you?” He laughed harshly. “You don’t know the best part. Who do you think put that bullet in your damn leg in the first place?”

Gannon’s laughter turned to a hiss when Kade slammed into him. They both fell to the floor, punching and kicking at each other. Having learned from his earlier fights with Bailey, Kade focused on keeping his bad leg out of Gannon’s range. One good kick or punch to his thigh and he’d be out of commission. But trying to fight while protecting his leg was nearly impossible. And Gannon, as if sensing his struggle, began punching and kicking even harder—everything aimed toward Kade’s bad thigh.

Kade managed to slam his own fist against Gannon’s hurt knee. Gannon’s answering shout of pain was music to Kade’s ears. He shoved free of Gannon’s arms and rolled away, then used the stairs to pull himself up. Grabbing one of the ruined decorative table’s legs like a baseball bat, he hefted it and raised it to slam down on top of Gannon’s shoulders.

“Do it and I’ll drop you where you stand.”

It was the voice, more than the words, that made Kade freeze. His gaze flew to the doorway between the main room and the kitchen, and he slowly lowered his arms. A woman stood there, pointing a pistol at him—the same woman who’d haunted his nightmares for months.

“Abby?” The word barely made it through his tight throat, and he felt foolish as soon as he said it. But even though his mind knew she wasn’t his wife, had never been his wife, he’d lived with the falsehood for so long that he was having difficulty getting past the shock of seeing her again. Part of him wanted to drag her to him, to protect her, even though she was the one with the gun.

“Abby, huh? Is that what you told him my name was, darling?” She spoke to Gannon but kept her gaze firmly fixed on Kade.

“I thought it had a nice ring to it.” Gannon brushed bits of wood from his legs and stood with his back to the wall beside the doorway. “Just shoot him already. I’ll tell Kendall that Quinn was behind everything just like I’d originally planned. And I’ll tell the cops there was an intruder, which there was.”

The woman let out a sharp cry of pain and fell to the floor, the gun wrenched from her hand. Gannon whirled around, but froze when he came face-to-face with both Abby’s gun, and the Sig Sauer nine-millimeter the other woman—the one who’d snuck up behind her and slammed her to the floor—had always favored.

“Give me a reason,” Bailey snarled. “Trust me, it won’t take much.”

Gannon slowly raised his hands in the air and backed away from her.

“Bailey, what are you doing here?” Kade demanded.

“Saving your ass. You can thank me later.”

He shook his head. “Damn it, woman. I didn’t need saving. And all you’ve done is make this more complicated.” He unbuttoned the top button of his shirt.

Bailey blinked. “Kade, what are you doing?”

He looked down at the fake Abby, lying in a fetal position on the floor, not looking nearly so tough without her gun. Then he looked at Gannon, who was still backing up, keeping both Bailey and Kade in sight. After unbuttoning two more buttons, he decided to hell with the shirt and ripped it open. Buttons went flying and pinged off the wall.

Bailey started laughing when she saw the wires taped to his chest.

Gannon’s eyes widened with horror.

“Did you get all of that, Kendall?” Kade spoke into the wire that some Homeland Security agents had strapped on him right before he’d driven to Gannon’s house.

A man in a business suit stepped into the room, having come in through the same door that Kade had used a few minutes ago. Several others converged into the room holding assault rifles and wearing flak jackets with the words POLICE, DHS on the front and, POLICE, HOMELAND SECURITY printed across the backs.

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