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

“I know. It’ll stop soon,” Ian soothed, stepping away as Mei approached. A syringe in hand as she pushed up the tattered sleeve of his ruined shirt and slid the needle home.


“Your shoulder—are you okay?” Adam tried to ask, but words failed him.


Ian appeared to be in as terrible shape as himself, maybe worse. He stood, posture stooped, his clothing filthy, torn, and stained with blood. His face bore the marks of a brutal confrontation, a vicious array of cuts and bruises, many still raw and open. On instinct, Adam moved to touch them, but Ian caught his hand.


“Yes, I’m fine,” he reassured as darkness rose, encroaching Adam’s edges of consciousness, a rising wave. “I’m fine now,” he repeated, glassy eyed as he coughed and lowered his gaze, though the hold on Adam’s hand tightened.


There was something in his expression; Adam wondered if he might have imagined. A look brief but tender—a sense of peace echoing the tune of Adam’s weary but grateful heart.


Chapter 71