Driving around the snow-capped embankment, Kit Runehart tuned out the click of the windshield wipers as they swept back and forth, clearing the flurries that collected there.

The woman sitting next to him—Aidra, her name was—held a tablet in her lap, scanning over the ten requests that had been sent over the last twenty-four hours.

“Here’s one you might want to consider,” she said, using two fingers to enlarge the text and picture. “Do you remember Martin Fitzgerald? He’s asked that you find his missing shipment of weapons.”

Kit glanced in her direction. “That doesn’t sound terribly interesting.”

“His fourth shipment in as many months, but he can’t find where the problem is. He fired the movers, even killed a few of the dock workers, but no one has any new information for him.”

That was because he was looking in the wrong place if the guns were where Kit thought they could be—this wouldn’t be the first time someone double-crossed their partner. “Send him our fee—tell him I’ll take it.”

“Of course.”

Another fifteen minutes in the car and they were finally arriving at the picturesque cabin, nestled deep within the mountainside—if one wasn’t looking for it, it could have easily been missed.

Pulling around, he parked directly in front of the cabin, the SUV trailing him followed suit. Kit climbed out, foregoing the heavy gray coat in the backseat of his car despite the chill in the air.

The cold assaulted him the moment he was outside the car, his riding gloves only helping slightly, but Kit didn’t let the frigid temperature bother him as he headed around to the boot of the car. With one press of the button on his key ring, it popped open, revealing the man inside whose wrists and ankles were tied together and a strip of duct tape covered his mouth.

Reginald Branson was a wanted man, not just by US authorities, but by the very couple Kit had brought him to. There were questions that needed to be answered, and he’d taken the job so they could be provided.

“Get him out,” Kit directed one of the four enforcers he kept with him.

The Wild Bunch, they liked to be called—though once, in a different life, they had been known as Winter’s Children. But Kit understood the need to bury one’s past.

Especially when it was as dark as theirs had been.

Though he didn’t need the extra level of protection—he had spent more than a decade training with the Lotus Society—it made his life easier when he didn’t have to get his hands dirty anymore.

Up the stairs they went, the door already swinging open before Kit cleared the landing. The security who opened it barely made eye contact—probably remembering the last time they had met like this.

The man had thought to disarm him, so Kit made it a point to show him why that wasn’t such a good idea.

A fire raged inside the hearth across the room, flames licking at the iron that encased it. Two other guards in dark suits, wired comms in their ears, stood on either side of it, but it wasn’t to the pair of them that Kit directed his attention, rather the man he had come to see, and his wife.

The two were as clean cut as they came, and didn’t look anything like the people Kit ordinarily dealt with, but their case had been special—and for once he lowered his fee and accepted their offer.

“Mr. and Mrs. Clarkson, so sorry we had to meet under these conditions,” Kit said with a wave of his hand to the door.

He didn’t think they truly cared that it was snowing outside and below freezing temperature, their attention was on the man currently on his knees, wide eyes darting around the room.

He might not have known why he had been targeted, at first—or he might have, considering his crimes—but the he was probably wondering why he hadn’t been handed over to the legal authorities.

But he didn’t know that Kit had never cared much for doing things the legal way—or he’d be out of a job.

Mrs. Clarkson was the first to speak. “How did you … No one has been able to find him.”

“A friend of an enemy, I should say,” Kit answered, while not giving an answer. “Old habits die hard—isn’t that right, Reginald?”

Kit didn’t usually involve himself too deeply in the contracts he decided to take, rather enjoying the hands-off approach that had proven lucrative to him over the last couple of years.

But there were some men that just needed to die, and he was willing to offer a helping hand.

Reginald Branson was a case he had taken on two months prior, nearly to the second that it had taken the man to flee the country. The Clarksons were upstanding citizens—at least they had been—that had fully expected for justice to be served against the shaking man on the floor.

He was arrested, and meant to be tried in a court of law for his crimes. But the criminal justice system didn’t always ensure justice for the victims—and it was for that reason that men like Reginald got off on technicalities and fled before minds could be changed. By the time anyone had realized he was gone, he was already far enough away that he couldn’t be found.

He had been a ghost in a matter of twenty-four hours.

But Kit was in the habit of finding ghosts—it was his specialty.

Kit snapped his fingers, setting his enforcers into movement, dragging the man further onto the tarp covered floor. It was only then that the Clarksons seemed to realize just who they were in the room with.

His enforcers wore masks that ensured their anonymity, especially considering when they weren’t working for him, they robbed banks in their past time.

Had they not been as good as they were—and they only made it a habit to steal from those they knew wouldn’t report it—Kit might have been worried that they would compromise his operation.

Two held Reginald in place while the other duo guided the Clarksons forward, taking one of the guns from each of their belts to slap into their hands.

Mr. Clarkson stared down at the weapon as though he had never seen one before, his tremors visible. “Perhaps we should turn him into the police?”

Kit didn’t get upset by the man’s hesitation—he understood that the decision he’d made was not one that was easy.

Everyone had last minute doubts.

“We could, but he was acquitted once, no? I would hate for it to happen a second time.”

Their case was recent, within the last year, but Reginald hadn’t become a predator overnight. No, his predilections were years in the making.

Five years ago, he had been charged with the rape of an underage boy, but he had been found not guilty because the boy had been drunk and disoriented. Unfortunately for the rest of society, he was released and free to do as he pleased.

And years later, he had struck once more.

Except, this time, he hadn’t stopped at rape when it came to the Clarksons’ son.

No, in a bid to keep his victim silent, he killed him.

That was his mistake.

Because had he not taken the only thing that mattered to the Clarksons, they might not have set Kit onto him.

Reginald jerked his head back and forth, screaming behind the tape, turning pleading eyes to desperate parents.

But he would find no sympathy in the eyes of Mrs. Clarkson.

The second they made eye contact, his muffled pleas fell on deaf ears. She was thinking about her son, Kit knew—the boy who would never grow up and experience everything life had to offer.

She raised the gun, a single tear falling before she pulled the trigger, then again, and one final time until Reginald was slumped on the ground, no longer fighting, no longer pleading.

Kit barely blinked, though he did pull his vibrating phone from his pocket to check the caller ID.

Unknown.

Which meant it could only be one person.

“My men will clean this up,” he said gesturing to the body, “and Aidra will walk you through what happens next.”

With a nod, Kit walked back out the way he came, accepting the call before he’d even made it out the door. “Uilleam.”

There was a smile in his brother’s voice as he said, “Must you always sound cross with me, brother?”

Though they shared the same DNA, Kit didn’t think they had much else in common besides their predilection for certain work. When Uilleam said, ‘brother,’ there was no affection in his tone, but rather a hint of wryness that always made Kit frown.

“Only when you call me while I’m working. What is it that you want?”

“I need a favor.”

Absolutely not.

The last time Uilleam had asked for a favor, an army of men had been taken off the grid and slaughtered—he was in no mood for whatever his brother was intending to do.

“You’re all out of those,” he settled on saying, watching the bird overhead swoop down before perching on a branch.

“I assure you it is nothing like the others,” Uilleam returned. “I’ve bought one of Emmett Kendall’s girls, but I’ll explain everything once I see you.”

Kit cast his gaze skyward, as though that might provide him answers. “You bought a whore, Uilleam? What on earth for?”

“Whore is such an ugly word, isn’t it? But, as I said, we’ll discuss when I see you next.”

For fuck’s— “My answer is no now—it’ll be no later. There’s nothing to talk about.”

“We touch down in four hours. I’ll see you then.”

Kit didn’t get a chance to say anything more before his brother had hung up. There was no point in calling back—Uilleam wouldn’t answer.

Tamping down his annoyance, Kit turned back to the cabin in time to see Aidra walking toward him with a curious expression on her face.

Already, he didn’t like the sight of it—he knew that expression spelled trouble. “What’s happened?”

“The Kingmaker,” Aidra said—she never called Uilleam by his name. “Apparently, he took out Emmett Kendall.”

Now more than before, Kit knew that whatever favor his brother would ask of him, he wouldn’t like.