Page 37 of Final Exit

“I’ll be back,” he said, his voice gritty, hard. And then he was gone, slipping through the exit door a few feet away.

Bailey whirled around, but the only thing behind her aside from the curtained-off treatment areas was a large monitor suspended from the ceiling listing patient names, bed numbers, and cryptic descriptions about their conditions.

The curtain slid back and a man in a white lab coat stood in the opening. “MissDavenport?”

“Yes.”

He smiled reassuringly. “You can come in for a few minutes. Mr.Jacobs is still unconscious but stable. I’ll try to answer any questions that you have while we wait for an orderly to take him down to ICU, okay?”

She glanced at the door where Kade had disappeared, then forced a smile and followed the doctor to Hawke’s bedside.

Kade took the stairs to the basement. Wasn’t that where all hospital morgues were located? He strode down the long hall that ran the length of the building, unsurprised when he saw a sign pointing toward the morgue.

Hawke wasn’t the only Enforcer that Kade had tracked to Colorado Springs. A second man was being monitored twenty-four seven by Special Agent Lamar Porter. The surveillance would give Kade the data that he needed before sending in a team to capture him. The target’s name was Henry Sanchez—the same name listed on a monitor upstairs, next to the worddeceased.

It was certainly possible that there was more than one man in this city with the name Henry Sanchez, and the other man just happened to have died today.

But Kade wasn’t betting on it.

When he reached the morgue, he flashed his FBI credentials to the greasy-haired attendant sitting at a desk just inside the door, with a name tag that simply said Rob.

“Special Agent Kade Quinn. I’m in the middle of an undercover operation and believe that one of the men I’ve been looking for may be in your morgue right now.”

Rob didn’t even look at Kade’s badge. Instead, he propped his feet on top of the desk and leaned back in his chair. “And that’s my problem how?”

Kade really wanted to knock the man’s feet down. But he couldn’t afford to cause a commotion and bring attention to him or Bailey. Besides, he knew that smug look. He’d seen it a hundred times before. Rob was probably an ex-con who resented anyone to do with law enforcement. Or maybe this job was all he could get, a last resort, and he wanted to make everyone around him just as miserable as he was. Either way, Kade knew just how to deal with his type.

He pulled a couple of twenty-dollar bills from his wallet and slapped them on top of the desk. “His name is Henry Sanchez. I need a few minutes alone with the body and I also need to see his medical records.”

Rob’s brows rose and he picked up the twenties. “This’ll get you five minutes with the corpse. But I ain’t messin’ with no privacy law crap. That’ll get me hard time.”

Kade tossed three more twenties onto the desk.

“You’re kidding, right?”

Five more twenties landed on top of the others. “I’m tapped out,” Kade lied. “That’s all I’ve got.”

Rob grinned and shoved his haul into his pocket as he stood. “I reckon you just bought yourself ten minutes to do whatever you want. But I can’t give you longer than that. The ME got called in ’cause we’re stackin’ up back here. He’s on his way.”

“The records?”

He waved toward a stack of folders on the corner of the desk. “Sanchez is our newest resident. His file’s on top. He’s in drawer seven.” He grabbed a cell phone and some earphones out of the top drawer. “I’ll keep a lookout. If I tell you to get out, get out. Got it?”

Kade ignored him and flipped open the folder.

Rob mumbled some insults under his breath but stepped out of the morgue into the hallway.

Kade stood alone inside the bright white-tiled autopsy room. An empty stainless steel table sat in the middle. The whole place smelled like antiseptic and death.

Flipping through the file only took a minute. Then Kade crossed to the wall of refrigerated drawers and opened number seven.

Even though he’d never seen Sanchez in person, he’d seen enough pictures of him to know this was the same man that he currently had under surveillance. But just to be sure, he pulled the sheet back a little farther. Unless the Enforcer had an identical twin, who also had a tattoo of Jessica Rabbit on his right forearm, then this was definitely him.

“Eight minutes,” Rob called from the hallway.

He raked the sheet all the way down the body, bunching it up at the dead man’s feet. The file stated that Sanchez had died of an allergic reaction, anaphylactic shock. He’d stumbled into the ER, his lips turning blue but then he’d lost consciousness and never woke up. The only reason the hospital even knew his name was from the driver’s license in his wallet.

And the peanut-allergy medical bracelet on his wrist.

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