Chapter One

Goddamn it, Nick hated it when he was out on a job and it started fucking raining. All that moisture made the roads slick as snot, all of the oil and grit beading up like little pond scum monsters, out to get his ass. The car slid around the corner and into the alley like a first baseman sliding into third, all steam with a lot of weight behind it.

The tinted window slid down at the barest touch of his finger, and Nick checked his target. Fucking perfect. All he had to do was pull the trigger. The target was in plain sight, and nothing blocked his aim. With any luck, everyone would think the guy was just a victim of a gang bang drive by.

Just as he took a deep breath and let half of it out, his finger starting to squeeze the trigger, something hit the hood of his car. Hard.

“Shit!”

Nick stared through the rain-dappled windshield, right into scared eyes staring back at him.

“Help me, please?” the kid shouted, banging his hands on the hood again. “They’re gonna get me.”

Fuck a duck. Nick didn’t know who the kid was, and he didn’t give two shits who “they” were. All he knew was that the kid’s banging and screaming had sent his target skittering into the dark beyond the alley like a giant cockroach.

Goddamn.

“Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kick your ass, kid,” Nick growled through the open window.

“Because I need your help!” the kid replied, slip-sliding around to the window and reaching through to touch his arm.

The touch burned like fire. Literally. Nick felt blisters rise on his skin, the edge of his shirt sleeve smoking.

“Jesus!” He jerked his arm away from the hot touch, sticking it out to let the rain fall on it. “Look, I’ll give you a ride, okay? Just don’t touch me again.”

He got a panicky idiot look from big brown eyes before the kid nodded and slipped around to the passenger side. The kid buckled up and grabbed the ‘oh shit’ handle. “Can we go? Now?”

Nick spent a second studying the kid, who wasn’t as young as he’d thought originally. It was the shock of messy brown hair and big almost black eyes that made the guy look like an underage anime character. Close up, though, the guy had to be in his mid-twenties, and hard up, from his too-skinny, rough clothes look.

“Please? Go!”

Nick saw the two men pop out of the back of the Chinese restaurant that dominated the alley just in time. Throwing the car into reverse, he squealed away, the noise making a great harmony with the pop-pop-pop of two handguns going off. Right at them.

“Get out of here,” he said through gritted teeth as he sent the car into a spin so he could hurtle down the road nose first. “Sure. I guess I got nothing better to do…”

Continued in First Section