Page 5 of Final Exit

Ignoring the hand that Cord offered, Kade forced the muscles of his face to relax into a carefully blank expression and shoved himself to his feet, locking his knees to keep from falling when his hip wobbled under the stress.

He should have drawn his gun even though she wasn’t armed. Hell, maybe he should just lop off his useless leg and be done with the whole thing.

“Sir?” Cord asked, waiting for orders.

“The target was just here,” Kade said, his voice gritty and strained. “She’s wearing the same clothing she had on when she arrived. No gun that I saw. Find her.”

“But, sir, are you sure you’re—”

“Go.”

It only took Cord a few seconds to locate Bailey’s footprints. Then he disappeared into the dark woods, giving orders through the transmitter to the rest of the team.

Kade limped to a tree and braced himself against it. He focused on steadying his breathing while he waited for Cord to transmit the sitrep. Ten minutes passed. Fifteen. When the twenty-minute mark approached without news from his team, the truth coiled in Kade’s gut like a bad piece of meat. He punched the transmit button at his waist.

“Status,” he demanded.

“We lost the trail,” Cord replied. “We’re sweeping in a grid pattern, but...”

“But, what?” Kade asked, already dreading the answer.

“It’s not looking good, sir.”

He scrubbed his forehead and slowly blew out a breath. They’d been so close. He’d had her in his arms. All it had taken was one quick kick to his thigh and he’d been as helpless as a new recruit.

“We’ll keep searching, sir,” Cord assured him.

“Give it another ten minutes, then call it.” Kade didn’t hold out much hope that it would make a difference. Bailey was probably long gone by now. “Station some men at her house, in case she doubles back. But I doubt she will. She’s far more clever than I gave her credit for. Have them search the inside of the house and figure out how she escaped. They can email me a report in the morning.”

He shook his head again, disgusted with how the evening had turned out. “What about the team in Colorado Springs tasked with capturing Hawke? I haven’t heard an update on their mission from Simmons yet. Have you?”

“None of them checked in with me, sir. If they do, you’ll be the first to know.”

“All right. I’m heading back to home base. We’ll reconvene in the morning, figure out what went wrong and how to avoid the same mistakes next time.”

“Yes, sir.” Cord sounded dejected, embarrassed.

Kade knew exactly how he felt.

“Cord?”

“Sir?”

“From what I saw, you and the team did everything right. I’m the one who screwed up. Don’t worry. We’ll figure this out. We’ll catch her next time.”

“Thank you, sir.” Cord sounded relieved. “’Night.”

Kade flipped off the transmitter. As he limped through the woods to the Caddy, he reviewed everything that had happened, from the tip his boss had gleaned during an interrogation of an Enforcer at the retraining facility who personally knew Bailey, to what Bailey had said to Kade when he’d wrestled her to the ground.

I see your kind of help every time I bury one of my friends.

What had she meant by that? It didn’t make sense. There weren’t any friends to bury, not if she meant Enforcers.

Kade didn’t recall anyone named Sebastian or Amber, at least not on the list of Enforcers he’d been tasked with capturing. Had they been in the initial group that had voluntarily come in? Or the few the agent before him had captured, prior to Kade taking the lead? Maybe Kade knew them by their aliases, monikers they’d taken, like the one who called himself Hawke.

He wished Bailey would have given him more information, explained why she believed her friends had been killed. But she hadn’t. And now he’d have to start over with trying to figure out where else she’d go to ground. Until he found her again, he’d have to focus his team’s efforts on capturing other Enforcers, or performing surveillance to plan future captures.

Once he reached his car, he dug the keys out of his pocket, then hesitated. Bailey had managed to evade his men so far, and he’d assumed that she was making her way deeper into the woods to get away. But what if she wasn’t? What were her alternatives?

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