Page 1 of Hunting Snow

CHAPTER 1

THANE

The bourbon is decent. The bar is quiet. Two things that almost never align on the same night in Chicago.

Signs I’m in for a quiet time. Something else that hardly ever aligns for me.

I’D rather have a raven-haired beauty with sinful curves and beautiful eyes occupying my time, but we can’t always have what we want. My life has taught me that. There are rules in my world and they usually keep me tied to my work with little time for playing.

I sit at the far end of the counter with my back to the wall and a clean line to both exits. Out of habit, rather than paranoia. If my older brother Ryth was here, he’d have you believing otherwise, but the fucker decided to have babies with his partners and their shared wife.

I check my watch. He’s probably home right now changing diapers and loving every minute of it. Domestic bliss has bitten him on the ass and converted him into white picket fence material.

Frankly, I’m not sure which one of us is happier, but that fucker hasn’t stopped grinning for months after knocking up his wife, Nyx.

Meanwhile, I’m the single brother who’d rather have a quick fuck with no strings attached and the pick of any woman who catches my eye.

I knock back a mouthful of bourbon and let the heat ease over my tongue before I swallow. It’s easier to stay disconnected than let someone into my world. How would I even begin explaining what I do for a living?

The cold fact of it is, I kill people for money. It’s not as fancy and glamorous as the movies make it out to be. Believe me.

I'm the man you hire when the problem needs to vanish and nobody can ever prove it existed in the first place. The richest dead man in Chicago, and I've earned every dollar and every scar that comes with the title.

If I dolled it up, the fancy version is I'm a runner for Club Genesis, operating off the Dark Floor where Chicago's criminal elite come to make their problems disappear. Contracts come through the undertaker, Sapphire Constantine.

The undertaker passes runners those contracts with the target name, photo, conditions, and a fucking hefty fee. I take the ones that require precision and silence, the jobs other runners botch because they lack the patience or the discipline to do it in a clean manner.

Twenty years of this work and I've never left a trace. No witnesses, no loose ends, no echo of me in any room I've walked through. Blood-in, blood-out loyalty to the Northern Alliance bought my access to the million dollar contracts. And sure, having the Cross surname helped, but skill kept me breathing long enough to build a fortune I've never touched. Accounts in three countries, hoard more money than most men see in ten lifetimes. When it’s my time I’ll either donate it or let my brother have it.

I don’t do this for the money. I put bodies in the ground because it’s easier than facing the truth.

I signal the waitress over to my corner and she brings a fresh drink. She leaves as quickly as she came. Good. I tip well for the privilege of being invisible.

Between jobs is the closest thing to peace I get. The last contract closed six days ago. Clean, quiet, untraceable. The reputation I've spent two decades building demands all three. No loose ends, and definitely no ties left behind when the dust settles. I'm a ghost in every way that counts. No public profile. No digital footprint. No one waiting up, worrying, wondering where I am.

All I have waiting for me is a prepaid gravestone and a piece of dirt. That is if someone doesn’t pop me off and dump me in the woods first.

Why Ryth has placed himself in the trenches along with all the other sheep is beyond me. What’s so great about midnight feedings and diapers anyway? I’d ask, but we haven’t spoken in more than a year. A man like me doesn’t belong around innocent babies and fresh love. So I keep my distance.

I lift the glass and let the bourbon cut through the cold still clinging to my coat. Rain spits against the windows, streaking neon beer signs into soft, bleeding colors against the glass. The jukebox in the corner plays some slow country tune that would bother me if I planned on staying long enough to care.

And then I look up and pause with my glass halfway to my lips.

The door opens and cold air sweeps through the bar carrying rain and the smell of wet pavement.

Fuck.

Beautiful, young, black hair falling loose and over her delicate shoulders. She shakes rain from her jacket and pushes a wet strand from her face, and my fingers to tighten on my glass. The climate change from cold dampness to the warm interior has left her cheeks flushed, but more importantly her nipples hard against the soft material of her red dress.

Jesus Christ. My balls tighten with need, but I force my eyes off the black-haired beauty before I do something stupid.

A pulse of heat shoots through me. Pale skin glows under the dim overhead lights as she slides onto a stool three seats from mine and drops her bag on the stool to her left without a second glance around the room. She settles, completely unaware that every man here is acutely aware of her beauty.

The bartender sets a napkin in front of her. She orders whiskey, neat, without looking at the menu. Her voice is warm and carries just enough to reach me over the music.

She brings the glass to her lips and sips slowly, deliberately, and I track the movement of her throat when she swallows. The way her tongue catches a stray drop from her bottom lip has my cock throbbing against my zipper. Her fingers turn the glass a quarter inch, pause, turn it again. Slow, absent circles, and my brain imagines those same fingers wrapped around my shaft with the same lazy rhythm. Sad green eyes stare at the bottles lined up behind the bar without seeing them. She's somewhere else, somewhere heavy, and whatever she's trying to drown, the whiskey isn't getting the job done.

I don't approach women much less in places like this. The work doesn't allow for attachments, family or love interests. I torched those bridges because what I do for a living poisons everything it touches.