"The difference between a hero and an ordinary man is One Step Sideways" When he was sixteen, Kane Diaz went to prison for assaulting the father who had abused him since he was small. Nobody in the system took notice of the hundreds of scars on his body, simply the one on his face that marked him as an enhanced. Seventeen years later on the day Kane gets released, Diesel Rawlings, head of Rawlings Security, meets him at the prison gates and offers him a job. Danny Sullivan served with Rawlings as a medic. After being captured and tortured in a desert hell-hole, his current battles are fought behind a keyboard with only Sadie, his service dog, for company. Danny doesn't do well with change. Being asked to babysit an ex-con who apparently tried to kill his own father because the man tried to stop his son bullying a family dog? Not this ranger. Except Kane isn't all he seems. Danny comes to realize that not only is this gruff man hiding a past worse than his own, but that the greatest battle he must face is fighting his growing feelings for Kane. Then enhanced teenagers start disappearing. To save other boys from going through his same nightmare, Kane might have to face his own demons and go back inside the maximum-security prison he was just freed from. And turn his back on his growing feelings for Danny. Which means Danny also has a choice. Does he join Kane undercover and risk his life? Or does he stay in the shadows and risk his heart?

Shae I was broken. Someone had broken me. Or broken my heart. The mark on my face should mean I was powerful. I could move faster than the eye could track. But thanks to being held against my will and viciously experimented on the resulting scarring to my heart meant I would be lucky to ever run again, even at normal speeds. No wonder Ringo didn’t want me. Ringo As a Marine and specialist bodyguard, feeling helpless wasn’t something I was used to, but the day I’d carried Shae out of that laboratory, his body burned, barely breathing, had just about broken me. Then one innocent kiss finished me off, and I ran. I was too old, too jaded, and the last thing Shae needed. Leaving Shae broke my heart, but coming back might just rip it in two.