Page 67 of Final Exit

“Another Enforcer was taken last night,” Mason announced from his seat to Bailey’s right. “That makes two since Kade disappeared. Which means that either he’s back calling the shots again, or his boss is doing it without him. Either way, we’ve got to close the net. I vote that we shadow some of the remaining Enforcers in the area to try to catch Faegan in action.”

“You mean, use Enforcers as bait?” Devlin asked. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

That started a whole new round of discussions. Bailey tapped her foot impatiently beneath the table and wondered what had happened to make her more worried about finding one man than about stopping the attack on her fellow Enforcers. No, that wasn’t fair. It wasn’t that she was choosing Kade over anyone else. It was that no one else was choosing him, so it was left to her to do so.

She shoved back from the table and stood. Conversation stopped and all eyes focused on her.

“I’m going back to EXIT headquarters,” she announced.

“Again? Why? We’ve been there half a dozen times searching for Kade. If Faegan was still watching the place, he’d have shown up one of those times. Face it. EXIT headquarters is a dead end.”

“Well, I can’t sit here and do nothing. I have to keep looking for him.”

Jace sat back in his chair, studying her. An expression of sympathy crossed his face, and she wanted to pummel him all over again. He and probably most of the others believed it was too late to help Kade, that he was... gone... like all of the missing Enforcers and would never be seen again. But that wasn’t something she could even begin to accept.

Aside from her friendship with Hawke andhisfriends—Sebastian and Amber—she could still count on one hand the number of people she’d allowed to get close to her in the past dozen or so years. Losing Kade now, before she was even sure what he meant to her, what hecouldmean to her, would utterly wreck her. She had to keep holding on. She couldn’t lose hope.

“All right,” Jace finally said. “If you need us, call. You have my cell number.”

She blinked in surprise. “I kind of thought you all would throw me out of your little club for doing my own thing.”

He grinned. “Well, that’s not how thiscluboperates. You’re one of us now. We may not think that looking for Kade is the best use of our resources at this point. But we’re still a team. And that includes you. We have your back. If you need us, we’ll be there.”

She looked around the table. To a man, every one of them nodded their agreement with Jace. They considered her a team member. They weren’t kicking her out.

“Thank you,” she said, her voice tight. She hadn’t realized how much she’d wanted their approval, their support, until she knew she had it. “I, ah, I’ll call with updates.”

She whirled around and headed out. The Mustang, with its bullet hole and bloody passenger seat, had been left in a junkyard to eventually be reunited with the rental company who owned it. Now she was driving one of her favorites, an old deep blue Charger with an engine that fairly purred.

She again went everywhere that she’d seen Kade before, even the little house where she’d been hiding out that first night when Hawke had warned her and she’d fled to the woods ahead of his men. But he wasn’t there, and it didn’t look like anyone had been there since she’d left. When she checked on EXIT headquarters, she boldly drove right up to the building and sat for a good long time, as if daring Faegan’s men—if they were the ones who’d been watching the building the first time—to come after her. At least if they did, they’d take her where they took Kade. Or so she hoped.

But no one suddenly appeared and tried to capture her. Maybe because they knew they had something she wanted, and didn’t want to risk her going after them.

Frustration had her punching the gas and spinning donuts around the parking lot. Finally she stopped, her foot on the brake as she breathed in heavily, trying to calm her racing pulse.

“Damn it, Kade. Where are you?”

She tried to reason it through.

If Faegan knew Kade was helping them yesterday, then it made sense that he would have taken Kade into custody. But if he had, it wasn’t through any official channels. One of Devlin’s brothers, Pierce, was an FBI agent. One of the good ones, not one working to exterminate Enforcers. And he hadn’t found evidence of anyone bringing Kade in for questioning. He was looking into information on Faegan, and from what she’d heard, had done a great job of getting details on his homes and official capacity, even what office he normally worked out of—again, officially. But Faegan was also currently on some secret assignment. The file that might have given them what they needed to find him was sealed so tight that no one was getting into it.

Just another way that EXIT’s hierarchy protected itself.

She considered all of the possibilities. If Kade was with Faegan, then the Equalizers would eventually—or so she hoped—catch up to both of them. They were focusing on the head of the snake, and right now that seemed to be Kade’s immediate boss. But if Kade had somehow managed to escape, what would he do? Where would he go?

Bailey put herself in his shoes. He’d sacrificed himself at the lab to ensure that no one else got hurt—on both sides of the conflict. Which only proved how deeply honorable he was. His choices always put the safety of others first. So if he’d escaped, and knew that Faegan’s men were searching for him, he wouldn’t want to do anything that could jeopardize Bailey. She was certain of it. Which meant that he wouldn’t want to draw any attention to the Equalizers either. He might be on shaky ground with them right now, not really sure if they were his allies or not. But he knew they were Bailey’s allies—the friends of his... friend, or whatever she was.

She tapped her hands on the steering wheel as another possibility occurred to her. Kade had to know she cared about him. They’d never discussed the attraction between them. But it wasn’t exactly a secret either. He had to know she’d be worried. He had to know that she’d want to hear from him that he was okay. But it wasn’t like they’d exchanged numbers or given each other business cards. Which meant, the only way he’d feel safe about contacting her was if she came to him. He could be hiding somewhere waiting for her to find him.

The more she thought about it, the more that made sense to her. Now all she had to do was figure out where he would hide, knowing that it was a place they both knew about. The locations that she and Kade had been to together made a very short list.

And of that list, there was only one place that she hadn’t searched—the house in Colorado Springs where she’d nursed him back to health.

When Bailey finally pulled onto the familiar street in Colorado Springs, she slowly passed the house, keeping an eye out for anything unusual that might indicate that its location had been compromised. She parked a few houses down, watching the occasional car go by, studying any casual passerby. It was well past the evening rush hour now. The sun had set and traffic was light. Everything seemed normal. No suspicious cars or people wandering around. If she was going to do this, now was the time.

A few minutes later she’d parked her car inside the garage and was ready to go into the house. The excitement and hope that she’d clung to the whole drive here had plummeted the moment she’d seen that the garage was empty. If Kade was here, he’d have stolen—no, rented—a car somewhere along the way. Otherwise, how would he have gotten here? Clearly, he wasn’t here. But she hadn’t driven this far to turn around without being absolutely sure.

Still, she wasn’t going to foolishly barge inside without clearing each room first. When she and Kade had left they’d been worried about someone finding the house. She had to assume that was still a possibility, and that someone else could be hiding inside—even without a car in the garage.

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