Page 99 of Final Exit

The stairwell, opening the door.

An explosion.

A shout sounded off to his left, tinny, but clear. Another shout sounded from his other side, louder now. His hearing was coming back. Gunshots, footsteps, people running both away from him and toward him.

The door, it had exploded as he’d pulled it open. Everything snapped into place. The red sky was the red metal door. It had taken the brunt of the force, blew him backward, protected him from the blast.

He shoved it to the side, tossing it toward the wall, or where the wall should have been. Lights from the parking lot, dulled by dark smoke, shined through the exterior wall, in a hole large enough to accommodate several men. Which was what it was doing right now. Men were running past him, coughing as the smoke got thicker, carrying guns, shouting, directing others through the debris and out the hole in the wall. Not Faegan’s men,hismen, Equalizers. And men he didn’t recognize but that were being helped by the Equalizers. The hostages—they must have found them and were evacuating them from the building.

But where the hell was Bailey?

He shook his head again, trying to clear the buzzing noise, and shoved himself to his feet. Everything ached, like he’d been pulverized with a giant meat tenderizer. His bad leg pounded in rhythm with his pulse.

“Bailey? Bailey?” He turned in a circle, a sick feeling starting in his chest when he didn’t see her.

“Kade, over here.” Jace’s voice echoed from a corner on the opposite side of the stairwell.

Kade ran to him, climbing up mountains of debris as someone else he didn’t know but recognized as an Equalizer joined him.

“Name’s Brady, sir,” the man said.

“I’m Kade. And that’s Jace under there. Grab the other end of that desk. The damn thing must have blown through the wall and landed on him.”

Between the two of them, they pulled the desk off Jace’s body. There was a hole where the wall to the first floor should have been. The hallway was filling with smoke, eerily lit by emergency lights. And flames, at the far end. They needed to get out of here. Now.

While Brady helped Jace to his feet, Kade turned in a circle again, looking at the piles of debris, half-expecting to see Bailey sitting there, perhaps shaking her head. Stunned, shaken, but alive and well. The scene was utter chaos, with people still running past. But the gunshots had stopped. And Bailey wasn’t anywhere to be seen.

He looked back at Jace who was standing now, checking the loading on his pistol. He had a bloody gash on the side of his head but appeared to be okay, otherwise.

“Where’s Bailey?” Kade asked, unable to keep the desperation from his voice.

Jace looked around as if just noticing that she wasn’t with them. “She was right beside me when the explosion went off.”

The three of them called her name, frantically digging through the piles of debris.

Kade shoved chairs and large pieces of wood aside, yelling for Bailey. He found the bodies of the two men who’d fallen to their deaths earlier and tossed them out of the way in his attempts to find her.

“I don’t think she’s... here.” Jace looked just as confused as Kade felt.

Brady shook his head, letting them know that he hadn’t seen her either.

“She has to be here,” Kade yelled. “Keep looking.”

After sifting through every inch of the stairwell, twice, the three of them stood in the middle of the debris.

Kade’s heart was pounding so hard he could hear the blood rushing in his ears. “She couldn’t just... vanish. Where the hell is she?” He coughed and wiped at the tears that had started streaming from his eyes from the smoke that was beginning to fill the stairwell.

Another man stumbled through the destroyed doorway, soot on his face and arms, his shirt in tatters. He headed toward the parking lot lights shining through the far wall, but stopped when he saw them.

“Kade,” he yelled. “Jace.”

“Mason?” Jace said. He hurried forward. “Good grief, you look like the walking dead.”

“I’m sure I look worse than I am. I had to pull a few guys out from the other explosions.”

“Other explosions?” Jace asked.

“Two, one at the end of the building on the other side, another closer to the middle. Not as powerful as they could have been. We were lucky. We got the hostages out of the tunnels in spite of everything else. The teams that breached from the outside are picking them up in trucks and taking them back to the field for medical attention.” He shook his head. “Bailey’s friends didn’t make it.”

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