Page 36 of Final Exit

“Special Agent Quinn?” gray suit asked.

“Yes, sir.” Kade pulled his arm from around Bailey’s shoulders. “Sorry, sweetheart. I need to get my wallet.”

She sniffed and nodded, mystified by the thrill that shot through her when he’d called her sweetheart. It wasn’t real. It was part of their act. Focusing on her own performance, she hunched her shoulders and wrapped her arms around her middle.

Kade rose to his feet and handed the officer his credentials.

“I’m Lieutenant Russell,” he said as he handed Kade’s wallet back to him. “Sorry to hear about your friend. Is he going to make it?”

“We’re still waiting for an update. This is MissDavenport.” Kade waved toward Bailey.

The lieutenant held his hand out.

She stared at him blankly as if she didn’t understand what he wanted.

He dropped his hand.

Kade flashed her a warning look and cleared his throat. “She’s... distraught,” he said, echoing her earlier words. “Hawke is a good friend. We were coming over to help him cook dinner and, well, you know what we found.”

“Do you have any ID on you, MissDavenport?” Russell asked.

She merely blinked, content to let Kade handle the questions, especially since her purse was in the Mustang. And even if she’d had it with her, she didn’t exactly have ID that listed her name as Davenport. She tuned out their conversation and focused instead on the swinging double doors on the other side of the room, the ones where they’d taken Hawke.

The doors opened and closed many times, spilling nurses and doctors into the waiting room where they updated families and friends waiting for news about their loved ones. And then, finally, one of the nurses stopped beside Kade and the lieutenant, bringing their conversation to a halt.

Bailey rose and found herself reaching for Kade’s hand before she thought about it.

He entwined his fingers with hers, squeezing them as if to lend her strength.

“Special Agent Quinn?” the nurse asked. “MissDavenport? You’re here about Mr.Hawke Jacobs?”

Kade nodded and the nurse began rattling off details about his injuries.

The lieutenant, looking none too happy at the interruption, stepped back a few feet, but not so far away that he couldn’t hear everything the nurse was saying.

So much for privacy laws.

When the nurse finished, Bailey glanced from her to Kade, then back again, afraid that she’d heard her wrong. “You’re saying he’s... that he’s alive? He’s going to be okay?”

“I’m saying we just got him stabilized and if he remains that way we’ll move him to ICU. As for his prognosis, you’ll have to talk to the doctor. I’ll take you on back if you want to see him.”

“Not right now,” the lieutenant protested. “I have a few more questions.”

“They can wait,” Kade said.

The lieutenant didn’t look happy with Kade’s clipped reply. But he didn’t try to stop them again.

The nurse led them through the double doors into the chaos that was the treatment area. Machines beeped, doctors rattled off orders, nurses ran around trying to make sense of the whole thing and somehow succeeded.

Hawke was being treated in the last curtained-off area at the end of the long aisle, beside a door marked Stairs.

“Wait here,” the nurse said, stopping them outside the curtain. “The doctor will be right out.” She smiled and hurried off to help someone else.

Bailey was impatient to see her friend. But she wasn’t a bundle of nerves like she’d been in the waiting room. Stable. Hawke was stable. That was so much better than she’d expected that she might have cried right then and there except that she wasn’t sure she remembered how to cry. The last time she’d cried she was ten years old.

Kade’s hand jerked in hers. She’d forgotten they were even holding hands. Her face heated as she let him go. But when she looked up, whatever she was about to say froze in the back of her throat.

Gone was the kind, gentle man she’d just started getting used to. In his place was a warrior, his body stiff, his jaw tight, his dark blue eyes blazing with an intensity that sent a chill down her spine as he stared at something over her shoulder.

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