Slow Heat by Lorie O'Clare

visible behind it, and a breathtaking sunset made the picture captivating.
    He listened to the women while taking in the large room. All he heard was something about him being recently hired, then the conversation shifted to something about handguns. Many might think it odd to overhear two women sipping bottled water in a kitchen while discussing weapons. Micah wasn’t surprised. The Kings lived and breathed the hunt. They were a unique family. If his mother had remained with his father, and they’d had more children, he imagined his family might have been very similar to this one.
    Where the hell did that come from? His upbringing hadn’t been about family. It had been about training Micah to be the perfect assassin.
    Taking in the contents of the room one last time, Micah decided it wouldn’t hurt to do a bit more research on the Kings. There was only one type of hunt that paid well enough to live like this. In fact, it was that exact line of work that had him here, staying low until things cooled down.
    Micah followed the sounds of men’s voices and quickly picked up on Greg King and Ben Mercy talking and laughing. He pushed his way through a door and stared at a door frame set up in the middle of the room, held up with boards. The room was unfinished, looking more like a basement than the rest of the downstairs.
    “Hey, Jones,” King said, turning and grinning. “Glad you could make it. You’re just in time for a reenactment here.”
    “Reenactment?” Micah remained where he was, not just because both men held guns, but because he was once again taking in his surroundings.
    Micah never entered a new environment without knowing all of the exits, and who was in the room as well as what they were doing. His father had drilled that into him by the time he was ten. The hunter must always know the playing field better than the hunted.
    “Marc’s wife took out four security men on the other side of a closed door during a case,” Ben explained while running his fingers over the gun in his hand. He looked at Micah with blue eyes almost too bright to be masculine. “King here swears the story is true. All I had to do was doubt him once and the challenge was on,” he added, grinning and not looking at all reprimanded for calling their boss on a good story.
    “So that’s when I decided it would be good for both of you to step in on this little exercise. And it really did happen. I saw them all crumpled in a pile. Granted, she was scared out of her mind and admits she might not ever be able to do it again,” he added, chuckling. Then, gesturing at the door set up in the middle of the room, he sauntered over to it. “Let me explain.”
    Micah had his thoughts on Maggie ever since he’d woken up that morning. Taking a break from mentally analyzing a person often helped put things in perspective. When Haley had called him that morning to find out if Maggie had come by, Micah had simply told her he’d accepted the job. That’s when King had gotten on the phone and insisted he come by and run through a drill he’d set up. Micah wasn’t going to tell his boss he wasn’t in the mood for a drill. Nor did he need drilling on anything pertaining to weapons or killing. He couldn’t tell King that either.
    “What happened?” he asked. Getting into whatever it was King wanted from him would help get Maggie off his brain. He studied the door, which stood open with the door frame propped up and held in place by two-by-fours.
    King gestured for them to follow as he walked to the other side of the cement room and outside through two double doors. His detached garage, where King kept his Harley, was just outside that part of the house. King opened a side door to the garage, and the two men followed. Leaning over, he flipped open a cooler and pulled out two cold, wet bottles of beer.
    “Sorry, man,” he said to Ben.
    “No worries.” Ben waved a hand in the air and sounded as if he meant it. He leaned against a workbench