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

When he met Edmund, life went from black and white to Technicolor. Edmund, a brilliant, blinding light. He was dazzling with his curly brown hair, black frame glasses, and his infectious grin made Adam weak. They became fast friends at once. Adam, a loner by nature, had always found it difficult to relate to his peers. But his friendship with Edmund blossomed immediately, and soon they were inseparable.


The first year of college had been a whirlwind of activity. Throughout Adam’s first year, he and Edmund hooked up with increasing regularity. More often than not, when intoxicated, though they’d never progressed beyond handjobs and the occasional bit of sloppy head. Over time their encounters grew more intimate, often ending with them waking up entwined in each other’s arms, bashful and unsure. All of it came to a head one night in May. Drunk and emotional, Edmund admitted he was in love with him.


Chapter 8