R G Ryan

The First Stone R G Ryan

Bartholomew Bennet hadn't planned on living on the streets of the Burnside Triangle, addicted to heroin and pimping himself out. Far from it. A newly minted MBA in hand and a job with one of Portland, Oregon's most promising tech start-ups, Bart had arrived with hopes and plans for the future. And then, it all fell apart. The once bright, engaging twenty-two-year-old hipster was now a skinny, desperate, dying drug addict who would do anything for twenty bucks. And the saddest part of all? No one would be there when he died...not his mother, or his grandfather... Father Jack Mahoney. A thousand miles away in San Diego, Father Jack turns to his good friend, Jake Moriarity to find his grandson. What begins as a favor for a friend becomes a life and death dance with a master of the game as Jake stumbles headlong into a web of intrigue involving prominent members of Portland's wealthy elite, the judicial system, and the Russian mob. At the center of that web Jake finds Bart hopelessly ensnared, but he's not alone. Adolescent and pre-adolescent girls-some kidnapped, some sold by families, but all trafficked for sex-are also there, hidden in plain sight in the City of Roses. With action that is both taut and terrifying, this fast-paced thriller follows Jake Moriarity on a journey through the dystopian darkness of Portland's underworld where he comes face to face with a foe as formidable as Jake is fearless.