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Jiyms in the world: co color scheuys with John Mayer carp tattoos purips You were expected to wipe down the machines after you used them and chirpy, spray-tanned trainers checked you in as you caht after he&039;d left XOps It had nearly o couch potato

The old school was more up his alley and that was exactly what he and Adrian and Eddie walked into in South Boston Mike&039;s Gym was a man&039;s world, baby: Place smelled like an ar with faded pictures of Arnold frohts were iron, and the single stationary bike in the corner was one of those wind-resistant jobs with the caged fan

Da was a relic and had dust on the seat

Theit were big, quiet, and had tattoos of the Virgin Mary and Jesus and the cross There were a lot of broken noses that had healed up cockeyed and soritted front teeth that were no doubt frohts

Undoubtedly everyone knew everybody else because they were all related soht at home as he came up to the front desk Guy behind it was sixty, maybe sixty-five, with ruddy skin and pale blue eyes and hair that hiter than the froth on a Bass Black & Tan

"What can I do for you boys?" thethe Boston Herald

A couple of theJihts, but they were unknohich put them into what- the-hell? territory

"I&039;uy," Jim said as he took out the flyer with Isaac&039;s pic on it and spread the thing flat on the chipped Formica counter "You seen hiuy replied without looking down "I ain&039;t seen nobody"

Jihts pausing Clearly, pushing the old et bum-rushed

"Okay Thanks"

"No problem" The Herald snapped up into place

Jim turned away and refolded Isaac&039;s picture As he went for the door, he cursed under his breath This was the third place they&039;d tried, and they&039;d gotten nothing but stonewalled--

"Hey I know hiuy with a Boston Fire Department T-shirt caet involved" The guy nodded down at the flyer "Who is he to you?"

"My brother" And that wasn&039;t a total lie They were related in a visceral way because of what he and Isaac had been through in XOps--plus there was that whole debt thing

"He was arrested last night"

Jim&039;s brows shot up "No shit?"

"Bunch ofYour bro&039;s a straight-up killer Only reason anyone ever got into the octo with hi purse, but he never lost Not once"

"How long he been in town?"

"I only saw hiht, like, three times" Saas pronounced sore "Listen, &039;round here, bunch of fuckers want to get together and beat each other, we&039;ll let &039;eotta keep it honest--that&039;s why they were raided The pro the bouts except for the ones your boy was in "

Fuckin&039; A Isaac in the syste

"Pops, leuy reached over to his dad and took the newspaper, looking through it "Here"

Ji, blah, blah, blah--Isaac Rothe? Wait, he was in under his real naet on his chest: Matthias could easily just send someone into the penal system to off the SOB

"If you want to find your brother" The firefighter&039;s face grew calculating "I can tell you where he&039;ll be as soon as he gets out"

Not more than two hours after Grier left her client and went to the judge, she was back behind the wheel of her Audi A6 and stuck in traffic around the Boston Coh Chinatown and then she was out the other side on Tremont Street

Part of her rush was that she didn&039;t really have ti with a Fortune Fifty company at one o&039;clock in her office in the Financial Districtand all those skyscrapers were at thesmaller

But she needed to knowhurry

As she cursed herself, she braced for Daniel to lanced into the backseat When he didn&039;t show up, she took a deep breath

She really didn&039;t need her metaphysical editorial board at the o and he first caht before his funeral It had been such a relief to see him healthy and clean and not in a heroin nod, and in her sleep, they had talked as they&039;d been able to before the addiction had really ground him down The jump to "real life" had occurred about sixto hi twice about it, she&039;d reached over and silenced the thingonly to realize she ake and he was still very much with her

Daniel had sht--like he was proud of himself And then in his chilled-out way, he&039;d infor her mind There was, in fact, an afterlife, and he was in it

It had taken soer questioned his periodic hi-how-areyas--although she did keep his visits to herself After all, just because she didn&039;t think she was crazy, that wasn&039;t to say others ree--and who needed that? Besides, if he was a hallucination and she was turning into so out of A Beautiful Mind, wellit worked for her, so to hell with the mental-health experts: She had missed Daniel soon the brick walk-ups that rose on either side of Tremont Street, she tracked the numbers when she could see them around the doors On sootten her client bail, but then, his lack of priors and the general overcrowding in the system had worked in their favor

Mr Rothe, on the other hand, had seemed neither surprised nor pleased when she&039;d told hio to his apartet twenty-five thousand dollars in cash--because there was no one he could call to ht Because handling ill-gotten cash didn&039;t make her an accomplice or threaten her bar status in any way

She was still shaking her head at the situation as she slowed down in front of a three-story house that had been cut up into apart space for miles--naturally With a curse, she went around the block a couple of ti if she dared double-park it, when--hallelujah --someone pulled out across the street It took her a second and a half to do an illegal U-ey and wedge her sedan into the spot She didn&039;t have a residential parking sticker, but she wasn&039;t going to be long, and at least she wasn&039;t in front of a hydrant

Getting out, she huddled into her thin wool coat April in New England on the ocean translated into thirty days of bitter, ind that chilled you to the bone and wreaked havoc on your hair And that wasn&039;t the worst of it--there were puddles all over the place, even when it hadn&039;t rained Everything in town seee that had surpassed its capacitythe cars, the buildings, the spindly trees, all of it wicking theit down onto the perma-damp asphalt and concrete beneath your feet

Definitely more LL Bean than Louboutin

At the front door of the house, she craned in for a closer look at a seventies-era intercom that had three little buttons Per Isaac&039;s instructions, she punched the one on the botto was answered by a wohan the size of a bed-sheet Her hair was cranked into corkscrew curls the color of a Halloween puertips of her right hand

Evidently, her look had gotten stuck in the same era as the intercoirl?"

Grier stuck her hand out and did not correct the stateured it was better than "attorney" "I&039;m Grier"

"He called here" The woman stepped back "Told me to let you in You know, you don&039;t seee of the h Grier&039;sa Beretta

"Opposites attract," she said as she looked over the landlady&039;s shoulder Down at the end of the tight hall, the staircase loomed in the distance like a spiritual beacon, at once apparent and yet unattainable

"Well" The landlady lounged against her flocked wallpaper "There&039;s opposites, like one person is a talker and the other isn&039;t And there&039;s opposites How did you old necklace, there was the temptation to answer, "the penal syste "We were matched up"

"Oh, like eHarmony?"

"Precisely" Theso a JD from Harvard "Will you let me in his place now?"

"You&039;re in a hurry You know, uy she met was a frickin&039; jerk"