While young doctor Adam Morrow resigns himself to an uninformed existence, world-weary assassin Ian Abbott struggles with a life he never asked for. When the two strangers meet by chance, the attraction is immediate. And deadly, as Adam walks in on Ian in the middle of a hit. The situation spirals out of control once Ian discovers he and Adam share a connection far more profound than either imagined. Shocked by the discovery, Ian makes the hasty decision to kidnap him. Overnight Adam is torn from his promising career and a family who believes him dead. Things go from bad to worse when he finds himself reunited with a mother he never knew who is now head of a covert and shadowy group of killers for hire. Forced into joining their ranks, with Ian as his reluctant trainer and handler, Adam is given a series of impossible tasks to complete. To survive, he must fight with everything he has to keep his life, his sanity, and his very soul from being swept up in a violent and chaotic world even as he battles his unwanted and complicated feelings for Ian. For his part Ian, a man with dark secrets of his own, has a past he isn't ready to share with Adam even as the other man worms into his life in more ways than one. The two grow closer and lines blur -- between good and evil, friend or foe, enemy or lover. But something, or someone, plots against them, determined to do everything in their power to keep them apart. Even if it means destroying them both.

The Dead Don't Lie

The door opened, and Adam stepped in, unaware of someone else in the elevator. He stared into the cup he held, lost in dark thoughts when a man interrupted.


Adam startled, turned to the other occupant standing across from him. Their gazes met and held a beat past comfortable. To be honest, this wasn’t someone who’d have escaped his attention on a typical day. He towered over Adam, a dark revelation in black. Only thirty-five, give or take, but he had the posture of someone older. There were faint worry lines around his sensual mouth and hooded eyes. An expensive leather coat and matching gloves completed the ensemble.


“Yeah, something like that,” Adam managed, struggling to swallow around the lump forming, his throat too dry.


“Well, that’s too bad,” the stranger murmured, making a deliberate sweep over his body. Once, twice, before settling on his face.


Chapter 7