Final Exit Read online

  A gap appeared between two thick trees straight ahead. Praying that she hadn’t passed this way already, she sprinted for the opening. If this was the beginning of yet another circle of the lost, she really was going to scream, to hell with the consequences.

  A fallen log blocked her path again, so she leaped over it. A dark shape loomed off to her right. She twisted around, automatically bringing up her hands to defend herself. A man slammed into her with the force of a battering ram, sending her crashing toward the ground.

  Kade clasped Bailey against him, twisting in midair to spare her the brunt of their fall. He landed on his back, Bailey’s chin snapping against his chest. Blinding pain lanced through his bum leg, making him hiss with pain.

  Bailey’s surprised, wide-eyed gaze stared into his as she lay on top of him, his arms tightly clasped around her waist. A shout sounded in the distance, and Bailey exploded like a firecracker, twisting and shoving, trying to break Kade’s hold. Clenching his teeth against the pain in his leg, he rolled on top of her, pinning her to the ground.

  “Let me go.” She pushed at him, squirming like an oiled snake, trying to get away.

  “Stop fighting me.” The awkward angle of his left leg was cutting off the circulation, starting to make it go blessedly numb. Without the fog of pain, he was able to better focus on the squirming woman in his grasp.

  And damned if the breath didn’t wheeze out of him as he stared into her beautiful green eyes, just like it always did.

  As he’d feared, Bailey in person was far more devastating than Bailey on paper. The feel of her soft skin, the feminine scent of roses in her glorious red hair, had his heart hammering and his pulse buzzing in his ears. All of the lectures he’d given himself as he’d worked his way through the woods to try to cut her off were useless. He was useless, an equal mixture of lust and fury coursing through him.

  What was it about this woman that made him so damned confused?

  Even as he silently berated himself for wanting her, he couldn’t stop himself from wanting to protect her. It was those shadows in her eyes. They had him thinking of her as a comrade in arms, someone who’d fought through some of life’s harshest lessons as he had, a fellow survivor. And no matter how much he wanted to think of her as his enemy, he couldn’t.

  But that didn’t mean he was going to let her go.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he assured her.

  “I’ll bet that’s what you tell all the women you murder.” She bucked beneath him, jarring his hip again.

  He gritted his teeth and shoved her wrists against the ground, plastering the full weight of his body against hers. What he hadn’t been able to accomplish himself, she’d just taken care of with one single word, murder. That word, uttered accusingly by an Enforcer of all people, had jolted the sympathy and even the lust straight out of him.

  “Funny you should talk about murder when you’re an assassin by trade. How many people have you killed while working for EXIT? Ten? Twenty? More?”

  She stilled and studied him intently. “You’re not wearing a flak jacket like the others. Who are you?”

  “The man in charge of stopping you, and your peers, from hurting anyone else ever again.”

  Her eyes went wide, and an answering anger flashed in their depths. “You’re their leader, aren’t you? The one the government sent to destroy us. The Ghost.”

  “Ghost?” He laughed harshly, but he wasn’t amused. Maybe because her moniker struck so close to the truth. Much of the past year was a dull fog of bleak, barely remembered images he struggled daily to hold on to. The accident had stolen so much from him, leaving him like the wraith she accused him of being.

  “Ghost or not,” he told her, “I’m about justice, not vigilantism. My men and I are set to destroy EXIT’s legacy, not its people. Haven’t you received the dispatches we’ve sent through the Enforcer network? We’re trying to help you, not hurt you.”

  The sneer on her face told him she didn’t believe anything that he’d said. She opened her mouth to respond when a shout sounded from one of his men. They were much closer now.

  Kade turned his head to call out to them. Bailey bucked beneath him, jarring his leg and sending a fresh new wave of white-hot pain sizzling across his nerve endings. He sucked in a breath, shaking his head to clear the spots swimming in front of his eyes.

  “Be still,” he gasped through clenched teeth.

  She suddenly twisted and jerked a hand free.

  Wham!

  Her fist cracked against his jaw, the force of the blow knocking him back several inches. Before he could recover, she slammed her kneecap against his left thigh, right where the bullet and twisted metal had torn into muscle and bone all those months ago. An explosion of heat burned through him like lava, scorching everything in its wake. He fell back in agony, clutching his leg.

  Bailey scrambled out from beneath him. He made a desperate, one-handed grab for her, but she easily jerked out of his reach. He’d been such a fool. And he couldn’t even blame it on alcohol, or the heavy painkillers he’d once been so dependent upon. Because tonight he was stone-cold sober.

  “Bailey, wait.”

  She hesitated, glancing toward the woods, then eying him with suspicion. He hated showing weakness in front of her, in front of anyone, but the pain was too raw to ignore. He could barely breathe.

  “Don’t go. Please,” he gasped, sucking in another breath. “I want to help you.”

  Her lips curled with contempt. “Like you helped Sebastian? And Amber? I see your kind of help every time I bury one of my friends.”

  She grabbed for her right hip, as if going for a gun. Then she shook her head in disgust when she realized she didn’t have one.

  “What are you talking about?” He squeezed his eyes shut against another wave of agony. One breath, two. He should go for his gun. But his whole body was shaking, his hands clutching his thigh.

  Damn, he really needed a drink. Or a Vicodin. Or ten.

  Finally, the burning bands around his thigh began to ease. The fog of pain cleared, leaving him weak, spent. He drew a shaky breath, another.

  “Special Agent Quinn, are you all right, sir?”

  Kade’s eyes flew open. Cord was crouching in front of him, the camouflage grease smeared across his face wrinkling with concern.

  And Bailey Stark was nowhere to be seen.

  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?

  She could circle back to her car. If she reached it before Cord assigned agents to watch the house, and she managed to get her keys, she’d still have Nichols and the Suburban blocking the exit onto the highway to deal with.

  That still left one accessible and unguarded vehicle close by.

  His.

  He took a quick step back, wincing at the strain on his leg even as he grabbed his pistol and swept it out in front of him. But there was no sign of the curvy, petite, infuriating redhead, no flash of her white T-shirt. No footprints that he could make out, not that she’d probably leave prints here where the sun had baked the ground like a kiln earlier in the day.

  Using the powerful LED light on his key chain, he inched forward and shined the light through the dark, tinted windows at the driver’s seat, the backseat, the floorboard. Nothing. No one was hiding inside.

  He considered all of the options again and peered into the darkness toward the thick trees. If he were in Bailey’s shoes, what would he do? He’d been studying her for months, trying to anticipate her actions, figuring out where she might hide. So what would she do?

  After pondering all the alternatives for a full minute, he opened the driver’s door and slid behind the steering wheel.

  Then he opened the bottle of Jim Beam.

  Chapter Three

  Saturday, 2:15 a.m.

  Bailey rested on her stomach, her phone’s screen the only thing visible in the dark as she typed a text to one of the few people she trusted—Hawke, an Enforcer she’d worked with on several rescue missions overseas.

  On their last mission together, they’d been tasked with getting a diplomat’s family to safety in a volatile situation where any public US involvement could have caused an international incident.

  Disguised as a rebel, she’d been tucking one of the diplomat’s toddler daughters into the vehicle that would whisk them to safety when an unfriendly had approached her from behind. All she’d heard was a rush of air before whirling around to see the man lying with his throat slit on the ground behind her, a machete still clutched in his hand. Hawke was standing over him, holding a knife that was dripping blood.

  He’d earned her respect, her trust, and her loyalty. She’d returned the favor by saving his life the very next day. In some people’s books that might make them even. But she still felt she owed him, and probably always would.

  She typed out a text. I’m still evading pursuit. You?

  I’m a bit of a mess, but hanging in there. Managed to get to a good hiding place to lick my wounds. The buggers will probably give up soon.

  Dismay curled in her stomach. Wounds figuratively or literally?

  No worries. I’ll be okay.

  She glanced around her hiding place, listening intently before texting her reply.

  Too bad you’re not in Boulder. We could do something relaxing, like bungee-jump off a cliff.

  Too bad you’re not in Colorado Springs. We could count cards and get thrown out of the Double Eagle.

  She smiled. He still had his sense of humor. Maybe he really was okay.

  I saw the Ghost tonight. Up close and personal.

  An emoticon of a shocked face appeared on her screen. Guy or girl?

  Most definitely a man, his broad, well-defined chest shown off to spectacular advantage in a tight, black T-shirt tucked into sexy black jeans that molded to his muscular thighs and tight rear end. Standing at about six foot two with short dark hair and an angular face that gave him a hard, dangerous look, his body could make a saint drool. Since Bailey wasn’t a saint—not even close—she hadn’t been immune to his hard body and earthy, male scent. Even though she’d hated herself for thinking of him that way.

  Then she’d looked into his eyes.

  They’d been dark wells of shocking desolation that could freeze a wildfire. Even now she shivered at how bleak they’d been.

  Guy, she typed. The word didn’t come close to describing the sense of power, of authority, that wrapped itself around him and had both fascinated and worried her at the same time.

  You’re lucky he didn’t kill you. What happened?

  Lucky? Perhaps. He’d been armed. She hadn’t seen the pistol, but she’d felt the familiar hard edge of its grip digging into her hip as he’d pinned her down. Her mouth had practically salivated at the thought of grabbing his gun since she’d had to leave all of her weapons back at the house. But he’d clamped her wrists in an iron-tight hold. So why hadn’t he gone for his weapon? Why was she still alive? Because he was in too much pain after she’d kicked him?

  The flash of guilt that swept through her at that thought was surprising. After noticing him grimace and favor his leg, she’d purposely driven her knee into his thigh muscle. She shouldn’t feel guilty about that. Hurting him was self-defense. Totally justified. And if she repeated that often enough, she might eventually believe it.

  Her thumbs flew across the screen as she started typing again. I exploited his weakness. Will give deets later. Don’t know his name. He had a team. Not sure how many. Only saw two.

  There are four after me, Hawke texted.

  Then there are probably a dozen after me. I’m more of a badass than you any day of the week.

  An eye-roll emoticon popped up on the screen.

  She g
rinned and continued typing. I didn’t get a good look at the men after me, just an impression in the light of the bathroom doorway. But I think they both had shaggy hair. And one of them had a tat on his neck. If it weren’t for the FBI lettering on their flak-jackets, I’d have thought they were common thugs. What do you make of that?

  When he didn’t reply, she typed, Hawke? She was just starting to sweat when another text popped up.

  Sorry. Had to hold my breath there for a minute. They got pretty close.

  Alarm shot through her. You need to get out of there.

  Don’t I know it. These guys are more persistent than a revenue officer when I’m on a Blackjack winning streak. What’d you mean about the FBI? You think they’re fakes?

  A thump sounded. She froze, listening carefully, trying to identify the sounds around her.

  Bailey?

  She typed faster. It was almost time to make her move. But she wanted to pass the important information to Hawke in case the worst happened. One of them needed to survive to warn the others.

  Not sure. She gave him a description of the Ghost and mentioned his leg. Must be a recent injury, still healing. He almost passed out when I slammed my knee against his thigh. And get this. He carries a James Bond gun.

  A few seconds went by. Then, James Bond gun?

  Oh, come on. Really? A Walther PPK. I almost called him Craig, Daniel Craig.

  Another eye-roll emoticon. Are you somewhere reasonably safe for the moment?

  Not even a little bit, she texted.

  Then stop wasting time and get out of there.

  Look who’s talking. Why don’t you stop texting and get yourself to safety?

  My best chance is to lie low and wait. Back to you. Are you surrounded?

  Yes, and no, she replied. But my objective isn’t escape at the moment. I can’t risk losing this opportunity. Enforcers are an endangered species. We may not get another chance like this.