Page 74 of Final Exit

“Did they follow me to the Equalizers’ base, too?”

He frowned. “Not that I know of. I don’t remember Faegan mentioning another location.”

She pressed her hand against her throat in relief. She must have picked up her tail at EXIT the second time she retraced her steps and performed a second round of searches. And since she’d gone straight to Colorado Springs after that, without returning to EXIT headquarters, then she hadn’t compromised any other Equalizers or their families.

Assuming that Kade was right.

“So you made a deal,” she said, her voice rising. “But then you got away. You could have warned me, told me what was going on. And I could have warned them.” She waved toward the window. “We could have fought them, instead of being offered like sacrificial lambs to slaughter.”

He slowly shook his head. “The deal was that I had to lead them to the Equalizers, specifically to the leaders—Devlin and Mason. Those two are the ones who brought Cyprian Cardenas down. I think Faegan resents that and wants some payback. I didn’t know where they were, or any way to get in contact with them. Showing up at EXIT, or my old house, or even yours, would have been too obvious. I knew you and the others would be suspicious. You might expect I was being forced to set a trap. So, instead, I told them about the only other place where you might show up.”

“The house in Colorado Springs.”

He nodded again. “They had the whole place rigged with cameras and microphones. If I’d even tried to pass you a note, they’d have known. And the phone they gave me was an open line to them at all times, not to mention, it had a GPS tracker. They were going to kill you, Bailey. There was no other way. I had to give them the Equalizers.”

She pressed a hand to her throat again, thinking about last night in a whole new light. At least she understood now why Kade had been so remote. He didn’t want the others to see or hear them. Apparently he still had some honor left after all. Her stomach lurched. But that wasn’t the horrible thing here. What was horrible was that he’d made a deal with the devil, her life for the lives of her friends.

“No,” she whispered harshly. “I can’t let you do this. I won’t let you trade my safety for their lives.” She waved toward the window. “Put me in there with them. Whatever’s going to happen should happen to me, too. I couldn’t live with myself knowing they died because of me.”

“That can be arranged.” Dominic turned from his conversation with the others. He waved them to fan out farther down the control panel, leaving him standing there alone.

“That’s not our deal,” Kade insisted. “She goes free. As soon as it’s done, you let her go. That’s the agreement I made with Faegan.”

“No,” Bailey insisted. “Let them all go. What is it you want? You’re mercenaries, right? You do jobs for money. Well, I’ve got money, plenty. You wouldn’t believe how lucrative being an Enforcer is. There are, what, five of you? How does a quarter of a million dollars sound? Foreachof you?”

“Bailey—” Kade warned.

Dominic waved him to silence and stepped toward her. “It’s clear you don’t understand how mercenaries operate. Yes, money is the objective, in most cases. But our entire careers, our lives, depend on us keeping the deals that we’ve made. Our loyalty lies with our current employer, until we’ve fulfilled the agreements we’ve made with him. If we took bribes every time we captured someone, we’d never be employed again. And someone else would take us out for breaking our agreements. So, trust me when I tell you this. No amount of money you offer us will save your friends.” He motioned toward one of the others. “Tie her to a chair where she can enjoy the show, without interfering.”

“No.” Kade moved in front of her. “No one ties her up. In fact, you need to take those handcuffs off her. Right now.”

A wall of guns pointed at Kade.

He held his hands up and stepped back.

Bailey cursed at the man who grabbed her and shoved her into a chair. But apparently he hadn’t come prepared to tie someone up. Since her hands were cuffed behind her, and she was sitting back against them, he used two more sets of handcuffs to cuff her ankles to the legs of the chair. Not ideally secure. She figured she could rock the chair back to free her legs. But in a roomful of gunmen, she had no plans of trying it anytime soon. He glared at her in warning before joining the others at the control panel.

“Okay,” the leader said, motioning toward Kade. “We haven’t found any traps or tricks.”

“I haven’t been out of your sight. How could I have tricked you?” Scorn seemed to drip from Kade’s words, as if he thought these men were idiots to doubt him.

Dominic’s eyes narrowed. “Careful,boss. You’re not the one paying my fee. And you don’t know what kind of deal he made with me.”

Kade’s face turned pale. “What did Faegan tell you to do?”

“Kill the Equalizers. That’s happening no matter what. But he didn’t seem to care what happened to MissStark here. As a matter of fact, I think he said something along the lines of ‘let her go with Kade if she isn’t any trouble, otherwise, do whatever you want.’ I’m thinking she’s been a bit of trouble. What do you think, boys?”

Laughter went up around them.

Bailey tensed in the chair.

“I’ll offer you another deal,” Kade said. “For MissStark’s life.”

Dominic laughed. “Unless you can bring all the remaining Enforcers to me in one fell swoop so I can finish the Enforcer Extermination and move on to the next job, there’s nothing else you have to barter.”

Bailey sucked in a breath. Extermination? She’d been right all along. There never was a retraining facility.

As if realizing what she was thinking, Kade asked, “Are you saying there isn’t a retraining facility?”

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