“This was a long time ago, Hollis,” Snow whispered. “He got past all that.”
“Because of you, right? You and Lucas and Rowe.” He shoved the pictures at Snow. “I know what Jagger does with teenagers, Frost. I’ve worked on those cases. Just tell me one thing. Did he…” His breath hitched and he cleared his throat. “Did he buy Ian from an auction like the one we shut down? Did he?”
“No. Ian believes he was intended for one of those but Jagger kept him.” Shit, this was not his story to tell, but they owed the cop a lot. And now that he was taking down evidence—disregarding the law completely… He was a good man. Shit. “Hollis, Ian wasn’t a runaway or an abducted kid. His parents sold him to the man when he was sixteen. I thought my family was bad but they had nothing on Ian’s.”
Hollis made that hitching sound again before he walked away from Snow. He stood silent, broad shoulders slumped, for the longest time before Snow walked up to him and placed his hand on his shoulder.
“I get why you guys are so protective of him now,” Hollis said, his tone still broken. Thready. “Jagger is under heavy surveillance and still we haven’t been able to catch him in the act.” He crumbled the last image in his hand, turned back around. “We still haven’t found anything to tie him to that auction, Frost.” He stared at Snow, his face white as ghost. “You guys saved Ian, didn’t you?”
Snow nodded. “We made a deal with Jagger that Ian doesn’t even know about. We’d met Ian at a party before we knew what the party was about. He was actually cooking for it. Jagger gave him run of his house in some ways, so Lucas thought he was the man’s son at first. We found out the truth by accident.” His lips thinned. “I won’t share those details with you or the ones that came after. We did what we had to. You saw it instantly when you met him, didn’t you?”
Hollis balled his hands into fists. “He’s…he’s just so…” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Yeah,” he whispered. “I saw it instantly.”
“There isn’t anything we wouldn’t do for him.” Snow took a step toward Hollis, waiting until the other man’s eyes opened. “And Banner, Ian can’t know about us making a deal with Jagger. All he believes is that he started to look too old for the man and was given to one of his enforcers. What really happened is that Gratton found out about the deal and none of us knew that he had a sick fascination with Ian that was obsessive. He took him. We combed the city looking for that kid and I’m the one who found Gratton first.” Snow’s grin held no humor. “With a baseball bat.”
The cop stared at him for the longest time before he nodded. “Good. I’m glad you did that.” He pointed to a section of photos Snow hadn’t seen yet. “And over there is enough proof to completely exonerate you in that murder. The stupid fucker took pictures. He’s going away. For good. Now get the hell out of here so I can come up for some bullshit reason I’m here and call this in. And take the damn fireplace poker with you.”Chapter 22Snow sat in the car, staring at the winter mix falling onto the street, creating drifts in the wind that looked soft and pretty. Yet the view did nothing to pull him away from the horrific images rolling through his mind like they were caught in some evil film reel. They made him feel dirty and disgusted that people like Gratton existed in the same world as those like Ian.
He should have continued to bash his head in with that bat even though at the time, his loss of control had horrified him. But how many had suffered just so he could keep his soul clean? How many of those kids might still be at home today? Or even alive?
Foul, rancid anguish burned in his throat and Snow choked on the lump it left. He closed his eyes, swallowed it back. Hell, the last time he’d cried he’d been seven years old, when the only person who truly loved him had died and left him with his father and his father’s cruel family.
What he hadn’t told Jude earlier was that if it hadn’t been for Lucas…he never would have made it through his teen years, not once his family learned outright that he was gay. He’d been a sad ghost confined to a bedroom and trotted out only when aunts and uncles arrived to pray his gay away. Like he could change who he was just to appease their own over-inflated senses of self-worth. They had loved to use words like condone and sin and other ridiculous phrases that were supposed to disguise what they really meant. What they thought.