Page 66 of Final Exit

Mason ran with her around the screen and into the safe-room with the others.

“Close the door,” Mason yelled.

“No!” Bailey struggled to get out of his arms. “Let me go!”

The door slammed shut.

Silence reigned in the lab. But not for long. Kade knew Faegan’s men would be coming through the door any second. He needed them to believe that he was here alone. He needed a diversion, something to keep them from even thinking about the safe-room.

He punched up the video of the car crash. The memories he’d seen over and over in his mind, torturing him for months, now played out, larger than life. The gunman was just pulling up beside the car when the door to the lab slammed open, crashing against the wall.

“Kade, what the hell are you...” The familiar voice behind him trailed off as the heavily armed team crowded around him and stared at the movie.

Gunshots. The squeal of tires. The crunch of metal. Fake Abby screaming. Hell, had there even been a car wreck? He didn’t even know what had happened to his leg at this point. Had he been shot? Or was that fake, too?

“Stop the movie,” Faegan ordered.

Kade punched a button on the keyboard. Abby’s terrified face was frozen on the screen. He had to hand it to her, whoever she was. She was one hell of an actress. At least now he knew why his memories had always seemed muted, foggy, never completely in focus. Because they’d never been real. The guilt he’d felt for so long was for nothing. The guilt he’d felt for caring for Bailey, for wanting her so desperately when he should have been grieving for his wife had been a waste of emotion.

He slowly turned in his chair and faced the man who’d put him through hell over the past year and had sentenced him to a life of pain, assuming he survived this. The man who was probably responsible for murdering dozens of Enforcers and using Kade as his tool to kill them.

“You set me up, you bastard,” Kade said.

Faegan blew out a deep breath. “It’s not that simple.”

“It never is when you betray someone.” Kade rose from his chair. “So what’s it going to be? Are you going to shoot me, like you did Porter and Simmons? Like you probably did to all of the Enforcers?”

Faegan cocked an arrogant brow. “Of course not. We’re the FBI. We don’t murder people.” He leaned toward Kade. “That’s the type of behavior a man does when he fries his brain with meds and convinces himself that he was married to a woman who doesn’t actually exist.”

Kade lunged toward him but several sets of hands grabbed him from behind and yanked him back.

Faegan motioned toward someone out of Kade’s line of vision. “Cuff him.”

Bailey put her hands on her hips and glared up at Jace. Mason had been wise enough to keep well away from her and was currently standing on the other side of the safe-room.

“We’ve been in here for thirty minutes,” Bailey snapped. “We’ve waited long enough. Either you move or I’ll move you.”

Jace blinked and his lips quirked in an indulgent half smile. “Now, Bailey. No need to act so—ooof!”

She slammed her fist into his belly and followed through with an uppercut to his jaw. The shocked look on his face as he fell to the side was a reward all its own. She punched the red button beside the door and it popped open with a swishing sound.

Laughter from the other Equalizers, and cursing from Jace, sounded behind her. She ran into the now-empty computer room and sprinted up the main aisle. She’d been wanting to punch someone for a while now. It was Jace’s bad fortune to be blocking the exit door when her temper had boiled over.

“Bailey, wait, damn it,” one of the men called out behind her. “They might be outside, waiting for us.”

“Kade might be outside, too, needing our help,” she called back as she ran from the room.

It took a frustrating full minute to figure out the maze of hallways but she finally burst out the front door onto the circular drive in front of the building. Empty, just like the computer room. And the road leading up the hill to the lab was deserted, too. She was too late. Kade was gone, and she didn’t know how she was going to find him again.

Chapter Seventeen

Wednesday, 12:42 p.m.

Twenty-four hours later, Bailey sat at the table in the Equalizers’ hideout, listening to the others comparing notes on what they’d each done since leaving the FBI lab.

Bailey had spent the past day bouncing between the FBI lab, the house in Boulder where Kade had been staying that first night when she’d stowed away in the trunk of his car, even EXIT headquarters in case he showed up there. She’d been searching for signs of him, but had found nothing—while the other Equalizers had been focusing more on searching for Faegan.

None of them had been successful either.

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