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

Adam’s emotions were an unwelcome truth, poking holes in his attempts to stay professional. Overcome when faced with a patient who, against all rhyme or reason, he couldn’t bear to lose. Then Adam’s training kicked in and overrode his fear.


Adam drew a few shaky breaths, trembling as he moved on autopilot cleaning and bandaging up each wound. There were tears in his eyes as he worked. It stunned him, the realization, unaware until now of how frightened he’d been of losing Ian. Someone he considered near invincible reduced to a mangled shell, and yet he still lived. Adam could only be in awe of someone with that kind of supernatural willpower. Not realizing until now how much he admired Ian’s strength and self-discipline.


“How is he alive?” Mei asked, breaking the silence.


“I don’t know,” Adam answered, and he didn’t. “He’ll need an MRI, X-rays, an EKG. I want to make sure his heart didn’t sustain too much damage, but first, we need to keep him from bleeding to death.”


Chapter 39