Chapter One
Greek God of Erebus—“The personification of darkness and shadow.”
S nick.
A bullet punched a hole in the center of the perp’s forehead, sending the guy falling backward. The man was dead before he hit the ground.
Fisher snapped a glare at his partner.
Every single time they cornered a mark and made a plan to take their target out, Justice always jumped the gun.
Fisher could have brought up the fact that they had agreed on who would take the first shot. Or that they had, just last night, made a plan.
But none of that would have mattered.
Justice had a habit of taking charge on his own. And Fisher wondered why they’d gone through the trouble of making a plan in the first place when it didn’t matter in the end.
He ran his eyes over his partner. Justice was all power, deadly, and always approached most things with sheer brute force. For a guy who was pretty much low-key, quiet, and patient, Justice had his own brand of menace.
Those looking at them would say they were a perfect match. But that was not the case. They were exact opposites and not only in height. Justice with his big, powerfully muscled body at six feet four inches dwarfed his own slender frame. Of course, his slightness in no way diminished his ability to accomplish his job. What he lacked in girth he made up for in speed.
“You just couldn’t help yourself,” Fisher said, and he received a shit-eating grin that accompanied a long, stalking stride as Justice approached the dead guy.
The problem was that Fisher could have watched that sexy swagger all damned day. He shook himself. Don’t go there .
“Just this once, I wish you’d stick to the plan,” he grumbled.
“Where’s the fun in that?” Justice crouched next to the dead guy.
“I want a new partner.” That got a rise out of Justice like he knew it would.
“Not happening.” The man flipped over the perp and pulled the guy’s wallet from his back pocket.
“I have a say,” he warned.
“Keep telling yourself that, Slim.” Justice let the body roll back to the floor and pulled the ID from the mark’s wallet.
He hated nicknames that call out his size. The asshole.
“I could kill you with my pinkie.”
Justice snorted, or was that a snicker?
Damn the man.
Justice had been all up in his shit for the past two weeks and it was…irritating? Exasperating? Certainly not exhilarating.
“This isn’t our guy,” Justice muttered.
The hair on the back of Fisher’s neck stood and he dodged to the right, taking cover behind a heavy sheet of plastic that hung in the warehouse. As much good as the plastic would do against a bullet, he shifted closer to a stack of plywood. The five-foot-high stack of wood would give him time to scope out the place.
The warehouse was under new construction and Justice, who had the same thought as him, was able to roll and find cover behind a stack of supply boxes.
Pulling his silencer, Fisher crouched and gestured to Justice to come to him. The man shook his head and motioned him to come to the other side. They were always at odds… again. And when that happened, it was almost always Justice who won.
Control freak.
Right then, Fisher doubted the higher-ups’ decision to have assassins partner together. It was a loner job. A job that should be handled quietly, quickly, and alone.
He still remembered the phone call with his boss after the third day of being partnered with Justice.
What was the sense in having a partner if they didn’t work together, he’d complained? “It was early days,” their boss had told him.
So here he was almost two weeks later and he spent most of his time with his weapons holstered because Justice had to be the one to save the fucking day.
To say he was surprised when he’d been partnered with Justice would be an understatement. He was a former Navy SEAL. How the hell had he gotten partnered with an ex-Army Special Forces medic? It didn’t make sense except maybe for the fact they were both former military.
Fairly quickly, Fisher discovered that Justice had personally made the special request to partner with him. That, in fact, Justice had told Savage he would only partner with him and nobody else.
Exactly why? Well, Justice’s reasons remained a mystery.
What Fisher had discovered within the first twenty-four hours was that Justice was a control freak. The man wanted…no, needed to be in control.
Fisher hated that.
He hated others making decisions for him. He moved to his own beat, he walked his own path. He hated being fenced in.
But most of all, he hated being forced in any capacity.
And after twelve days of fighting with the man’s need for control, Fisher was just about done. He neither wanted nor needed a babysitter.
Justice gestured again and Fisher shook his head. He was going to win this argument.
He glared across the distance at Justice, giving the man a warning look he didn’t use often. The moment resignation crossed the man’s face, Fisher felt like crowing at the win.
The enjoyment didn’t last long.
A dark shadow lunged out and barreled into Justice—which probably wouldn’t have happened except Justice had been distracted by him.
Oops .
The two men went down, crashing into a stack of supplies, sending metal tools, nails, and fuck knows what clanging to the concrete floor.
Fisher aimed his silencer, but couldn’t get off a clear shot. He shoved his gun away and reached behind his shoulders to pull out both short swords he wore tucked into his custom holster.
The two men were locked in a battle of sheer muscle and while his money was on Justice, he wasn’t taking any chances.
He charged across the distance. Swiping one blade, he caught the mark on his calf. The razor edge of his sword opened the guy’s skin to the bone.
The perp yelled and stumbled. Justice wrapped a powerful arm around the fucker’s neck and squeezed.
Fisher gestured and when Justice lowered his arm a fraction, he swung with his second blade and sliced open the perp’s neck—cutting the jugular.
When the blood sprayed, Fisher danced lightly away.
“You almost cut my arm.” A frown creased Justice’s forehead beneath that fall of blond hair.
“No, I didn’t.” His aim was so precise that he might have given Justice’s arm hair a trim, but he certainly hadn’t cut him and he never would.
Now, shoot the man? That might be doable.
Justice released his grip and the man toppled to the ground with a gurgle. Studying his arm, Justice ran a hand over where the blade would have touched. Finding nothing, Justice snorted with a cocky brush of his hands together. The man shot him that damned smirk again—like he’d been the one to take down the mark.
“You shot the wrong guy,” Fisher pointed out, walking over to check the face of the throat-cut guy against the photo of their mark on his cell phone.
“That was his partner.” Justice gave a nonchalant sweep of his hand to the other dead guy.
“And you know that, how?” he asked, letting annoyance seep into his voice.
“Makes sense.”
“Your sense and mine don’t jive.” He wiped his blades on the mark’s shirt, tucked his swords away, and stood.
“Birds of a feather and all that.”
Fisher rolled his eyes.
Two weeks. He clung to that thought.
That was all the time they’d been allotted as partners.
Their boss, Commander Savage Markel, had given them two weeks and then they would reassess the partnership.
Two weeks were up the day after tomorrow.
And he still hadn’t decided what to do. He’d probably end it, though.
Going it alone was better all the way around.
For everyone.
And it wasn’t like he felt crowded by Justice, because he didn’t. Out of all the people Savage could have paired him up with, Justice was probably the one and only person he wouldn’t end up killing.
Then why go it alone?
He was the problem, not Justice.
He cherished his freedom more than a normal man and that was because of his past. A past he refused to talk about.
Justice didn’t like that he didn’t talk about himself much. But honestly, there wasn’t all that much to say. Plus, the reality was that he couldn’t remember a lot of it.
That was a fact.
And his memory loss wasn’t something he was going to share. Not even with Justice.
It was better they finished out the next two days and called it quits.
“Fisher?”
It took him a moment to realize Justice had called his name and probably a few times.
“We ready?” he said to cover up the fact that he’d spaced out.
“Text the cleaners?”
“Oh, yeah.” He lifted his phone and shot a text to the number that would have a team here in less than fifteen minutes. Usually sooner, but never later. If they came any later, then there was a good chance law enforcement would arrive first. When the cops and cleaners happened on the same crime scene, it was never a good thing and as far as he knew, it had never happened. Or if it had, his boss’s boss’s boss would make it all disappear.
It was nice to have people in high places, and the order of assassins they belonged to answered to a very powerful man.
“Fish!” Justice hissed. “Let’s go.”
“Yup.” He snapped to and hurried to their exit.
It was never the stairs or the elevator, an exit was always an alternative unless he was out of time and then anything went.
Fisher climbed out the window and caught the rope they’d earlier used to climb up the building’s exterior. Shoving off with his feet against the building’s outer wall, he rappelled downward with Justice coming quickly down after him.
When Fisher hit the ground, he glanced around.
Justice’s beast waited for them.
Axel looked like one of those black and brown police dogs, he couldn’t remember the name of the breed. The animal had been waiting in the shadows just below the window but upon spotting him, the dog leaped to his feet.
Justice joined them and jerked the rope free. The man coiled it around his arm, did some hand signal to Axel, and they headed through the dark and across a nearby field to where they’d left their nondescript vehicle.
Hemet’s weather in mid-July ranged from the nineties during the day and got into the lower sixties at night. The desert town was not one of the safest in the country with a violent crime rate of one out of every thirty-nine. It was no wonder the now-dead sex trafficker had bought a building there to establish his growing business.
They hadn’t taken out all of them, but with the boss dead, perhaps the others would scatter like the wind.
Or maybe Savage would have the assassins round them up.
He smiled at that idea.
“What?” Justice asked and slung an arm around his shoulder as they walked.
He jumped like he had when Justice had first started with the unexpected touches. An arm slung here, or hands on his waist to move him out of the way, or cupping the back of his neck when he wanted his full attention. At first, he’d been freaked out at the touches, but after a while, he understood that it was just the man’s way.
Justice ignored his involuntary jerk and wrapped a hand at the top of his arm to keep him in place. Fisher wasn’t sure why he allowed the touch, but he figured it had something to do with trust.
While he could have done without contact for the entirety of his life, Justice, on the other hand, was a toucher.
“Just thinking about our next job,” Fisher lied and lengthened his stride to keep up.
Justice squeezed him and slowed his steps. “Why don’t we take a break and have dinner?”
That was another thing they didn’t have in common. Justice could eat like a linebacker after a game. He, meanwhile, only ate maybe once a day, if that.
“Fisher?”
“Yeah. I could eat,” he agreed.
“You hungry, boy?”
It took him a moment to realize that Justice was talking to his dog. That was another thing. He wasn’t an animal person, whereas Justice talked to Axel like he was human.
Fisher rolled his eyes when the dog acted like he understood.