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

“Your form is getting better,” Ian remarked out of the blue during one of their afternoon training sessions.


The comment bowled Adam over as it was the first bit of praise he had ever gotten.


Ian didn’t allow him time to bask in it. They continued through another grueling round. By the end, both he and Ian were soaked to the skin and worn to the bones.


“That’ll be all,” Ian dismissed him.


Relieved, Adam retreated to the far end of the mat for a much needed drink of water.


Ian joined him. Adam, well-aware of his watchful gaze from out of the corner of his eye. He draped the towel in hand around his neck, turning in Ian’s direction.


“Excuse me?” Adam returned, baffled by the question.


“I need a plus one for tonight,” Ian explained. “And I assumed since you haven’t been past the gates in a while, you might appreciate the invite.”


“Let me get this straight. You’re asking me out on a date?”


Chapter 22