Page 25 of Final Exit

Kade swallowed, hard.

“You expect me to believe that?” she asked.

“It’s the truth. I asked my boss about the facility last night. He wouldn’t tell me where it is, for security reasons. But I asked him about your friends, Sebastian and Amber. He’s going to get their status so I could let you know how they’re doing if I saw you again.”

Her lips curled like a feral animal. “Did you miss the part last night when I told you I went to their funerals? I saw Sebastian die. One of your men slaughtered him.”

Everything about her posture, her tone, told him she was telling the truth, or at least, what she believed to be the truth. But he couldn’t accept that she was right. If she was, then everything he believed was wrong.

“None of the Enforcers have been killed,” he assured her, hoping he was right. Hehadto be right.

“Strike two.”

“I’m not lying,” he said. “It’s what I believe. I would never have taken this mission if part of it was to murder people. That’s not who I am.”

Confusion crinkled her brow. “You really believe that, don’t you? You think you’re the good guy here? And that I’m the bad guy?”

He wouldn’t touch those questions if his life depended on it. And he was pretty sure it did.

“We were in a house together,” she said. “Sebastian and me. A team of men dressed all in black ambushed us. You know, the ones with those big white letters on the backs of their flak jackets, the ones that spell out FBI?”

Refusing to take the bait, he waited in silence.

“I escaped. I was running from the house and looked back in time to see one of the men put a gun to Sebastian’s head and fire.”

Careful to hide his shock, he asked, “Was it dark?”

She blinked. “Dark?”

“When you saw Sebastian get shot. Was it at night or during the day?”

“At night, of course. Your men always attack at night, don’t they? To reduce the chance of there being any witnesses? And so you can catch us when we’re asleep?”

“They weren’t my men, Bailey. I wasn’t working this mission when Sebastian and Amber were captured.”

“You mean killed.”

He sighed. “How far away were you when you supposedly saw Sebastian get shot?”

“Supposedly? What the—”

“Bailey, I’m just trying to figure out the disconnect here. Please. How far away were you?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. Fifty, sixty yards. I ran from the house to the tree line, then turned around, andboom.” She frowned. “Actually, I didn’t hear a gunshot. But the shooter probably had a suppressor so the neighbors wouldn’t hear it.”

“Our teams don’t use suppressors.”

“It wasn’t your team, though, right?” She smirked.

He nodded, conceding the point. He couldn’t speak for how things had been run before he’d taken the job. But the FBI wasn’t in the business of buying silencers for their weapons.

“I saw him point the gun at Sebastian and then Sebastian fell to the ground. The gunshot probably made a sound and I was too shocked to register it. Doesn’t change anything.”

“He could have fallen down because he was unconscious,” Kade argued. “One of the men could have used a tranquilizer gun. That’s one of our tools of the trade. Or he could have Tased him.”

“There was no Taser. Sebastian didn’t move, at all, after he hit the ground. And tranks take a few seconds, even if they’re really strong. He was out.” She snapped the fingers on her left hand. “Like that.”

“Okay. So instead of someone tranquilizing him right then, maybe they got him a few seconds before he ran outside. The meds took effect and he dropped to the ground, unconscious, not dead.”