Rialto (Unbreakable Bonds 8)

Ian shook his head, though Hollis couldn’t see him. “No, they would get too much attention. Can you imagine getting people to talk to us with Sven in tow? Or the Masters of Mayhem?”

“Don’t you tell him I said this, but I have seen Rowe be sneaky before.”

Ian snorted. “Sneaky is nice, but I was thinking more along the lines of subtle. Those two are about as subtle as a stick of dynamite.”

“True. Very, very true.” Hollis chuckled. “Okay, I’ll have my gun.”

Ian wanted to roll his eyes, but it was a good idea. If this Max was the one out to hurt him, it wouldn’t be smart to approach him unarmed. Still, Ian wanted to help him more than he wanted to hurt him. Mostly he just wanted to know why the man had come after him. “I’ll see you in a few.”Chapter SeventeenWhen Ian and Hollis climbed out of the car, Ian was rethinking his decision not to bring a bodyguard. Cincinnati had started to seriously cool off in the evenings as they closed in on the end of September. The trees were still green, and there were few signs that fall had reached the city besides a handful of stores displaying Halloween decorations.

But then, fall in Cincinnati tended to be an incredibly fleeting thing. Citizens were usually graced with one or two good weekends of colored leaves and moderate temperatures for corn mazes, pumpkin farms, apple picking, and haunted houses before the cold temperatures and gray skies whooshed in to claim the city for the next five months.

Pulling his leather jacket tighter around him, Ian stepped away from the car and took a quick look around him. Simply because it was the closest, he and Hollis had elected to check out the northeast side of downtown. They were outside the trendy reach of OTR and the sophisticated business end of downtown. No, here the streets were a little darker, and there were fewer cars rushing past them. The buildings looked largely empty, as if the business had moved to other parts of the city.

Little clusters of people lurked in shadowy doorways and the entrances to alleys. There were more than a few people stretched out on the sidewalk, wrapped in ragged blankets and sleeping bags, their faces turned away from what was happening around them.

Ian took in his surroundings and couldn’t help but wonder if this was where he would have ended up if Snow, Lucas, and Rowe hadn’t intervened. Would he even still be alive now? He couldn’t imagine surviving on the street. No money. No home. No safe place. Would he have been forced to sell his body just to get by when Jagger was finally done with him? It wasn’t like he’d had a high school diploma, an ID, anything.

No. Ian shook his head as a darker thought occurred to him. He wouldn’t have ended up like this because Dwight Gratton would have killed him before he could have made it to the streets. Gratton had been obsessed with him. When Jagger was done with him, Ian was sure he would have been handed off directly to Gratton. And lost to his obsession, Gratton would have killed Ian.

“GQ?”

Blinking away those depressing thoughts, Ian looked over at Hollis, taking in his worried expression, and forced a smile. “I’m okay. Lost in thought.”

“Do you want to wait a night? You’ve already put in a long day.”

Ian shook his head before he stepped forward and gripped Hollis’s forearm in reassurance. He was sure the contact helped to ground them both. “No, I’m fine. I promise. We can’t put this off.”

Squaring his shoulders, Ian walked to the first group of people he saw loitering on the street. There were three women talking in low murmurs. One was gesturing with a cigarette pinched between two fingers, while her two companions let out rough laughs at whatever she’d been telling them. The temperature might have been in the low fifties, but there wasn’t enough clothing between the three of them to keep a single person warm. And their shoes…all of them wore these monster heels and platform shoes so that they teetered precariously on the fractured sidewalk.

Since talking to Hollis, Ian had mentally rehearsed what he would say, and nothing good was coming to mind. If anything, he just needed to make sure he didn’t appear to be interested in their…wares. Knowing his luck, one would be an undercover cop.

He’d briefly considered printing out Max’s picture, but the only one included in the file that Gidget sent over was his mug shot. Not the kind of thing to convince people to open up to him. So, he had no images to share, and he hoped Max didn’t have a different street name.

“Hi,” he said to one of the women leaning against the brick wall of a building. The heavy layers of makeup did nothing to hide the wear and tear life had taken on her face. Somehow she didn’t shiver in her short skirt and skintight white halter top with the red lace bra peeking through. But Ian wondered if life or drugs had numbed her to the cold. “Would you know if there’s a Max Hodgkins around here?”