Page 79 of Final Exit

“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—”

“Ihadto,” 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 knew 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?”

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