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

Ian ducked and said fist smashed into the wall behind him. Ian stepped out of the way, giving himself time to get his hands up. A flurry of blows rained down on him, each one hard enough to make his head spin. Ian pivoted and got his hands in place, able to block most of those savage blows. Ian managed a few of his own, landing far more than he took. Too bad, he had to knock down a tank and not a man. This bastard appeared unstoppable as he took everything Ian threw at him and came back at him.


Ian spun away from him. His attacker chased him. He was in a rage now, and drained, he bellowed and grunted as sweat poured down his strained, red face. Ian had him right where he wanted him. All Ian had to do was tire him out before sustaining any further injury. Ian went at him harder, hurling punch after punch, beating him back as he came at him renewed, desperate. Then his attacker dropped his hands, and it was all over.


Chapter 69