Page 77 of Final Exit

“Time to go,” he said, motioning for Kade to step outside.

Kade nodded and gently pushed Bailey back. He reached his hand up as if to touch her face but she jerked away from him. He gave her a sad smile.

“Lock the door after we leave,” he said.

“Yeah, no problem with my hands bound behind me,” she sneered.

“Just kick the bar. It will fall down across the latch. Kick it up once you know it’s safe to come out.”

She turned her head, refusing to look at him.

“All right,” Kade said. “We’re leaving the control room now.”

Bailey frowned at his odd choice of words. As soon as the door closed, she hurried forward and kicked the bar. As Kade had said, it dropped down into place, locking her inside.

She plopped down on the ground and contorted her arms and body until she worked her handcuffed arms under her legs and in front of her. Breathing hard from the exertion, she looked around the room for something to break the cuffs. But there was nothing she could use.

No time, no time. She had get to a computer and warn the other Enforcers before Kade tricked them into heading toward their deaths. She jumped to her feet, swiping at the tears flowing down her cheeks. Damn it. She wasn’t a crier, didn’t want to cry. But Kade had broken her heart. Not only broken it, but smashed it into a million jagged pieces. He’d used her to kill her friends. How was she supposed to live with that kind of guilt?

She looked at the control panel. Was it wired to a security system? Were there camera views she could see so she’d know whether Kade and the gunmen were gone yet? Even though she’d tried to keep her gaze averted from the horror in the other room, she couldn’t resist one quick look. She blinked. What the hell? She leaned closer to the glass, looking right and left. The lab was empty! She looked toward the lab door. It was wide open. What was going on?

Thump, thump, thump.Someone was pounding on the control room door.

“Bailey! It’s Jace. Open up.”

Jace? It couldn’t be. And yet, that was his voice. And the lab was empty.

“Bailey!”

She ran toward the door and jammed her cuffed hands beneath the bar, lifting it up and out of the way.

The door flew open and Jace ran inside, sweeping his pistol around the room.

“It’s empty,” Bailey whispered, her throat so tight she could barely speak. “They’re all gone.”

“All clear,” he yelled to the warehouse behind him. Then he holstered his pistol and grabbed her in a hug. “You okay?”

She froze in shock for a moment, then pulled back and said, “I don’t... I don’t understand. You... you died.”

Mason and Terrance filed into the control room, with Austin wheeling in behind them. She stared at them in wonder.

“I thought you were all dead.”

“So did we,” Jace said, giving a nervous laugh. “Kade had us all fooled, until he mentioned the white cloud of gas. Then we knew.”

She frowned. “Knew what?”

Mason cocked a brow. “Sarin gas is colorless. Kade was warning us that he was trying to trick the gunmen. So we played along, played dead.”

“There wasn’t any Sarin gas?” She knew it was true, or none of them would be alive. But she couldn’t quite wrap her mind around it.

Mason shook his head. “Remember he kept up with the investigation. He told us all about it. He must have known they had some kind of test canisters in this place and he could use them to fool Faegan’s men. The FBI sure as hell wouldn’t leave deadly Sarin gas in a warehouse, even if it was part of an investigation. Those mercenaries were too stupid to know that, and thank God they didn’t know that Sarin gas didn’t have a color. I knew of course, and so did Jace since he used to be a Navy SEAL.”

“And Kade knew that you knew,” Bailey finished for him. “Because you told him the other day, that you’d been on a mission involving Sarin gas.”

Mason nodded.

Bailey looked from Austin, to Jace, to Mason, and finally Terrance. “Then, it was all a ruse. But... how did you get out of the lab?”