Page 111 of Shattered Pieces

“C’mon, who lets a little murder allegation get in the way of love?” I said brightly, and Hunter snorted, giving me an amused look.

“Normal people.”

“Hey, my baby is innocent. You’re single though, right? Maybe you’d like to go to the party?” I stated, and he rolled his eyes.

“Pass. Some of us have jobs, Velcro.”

The girl didn’t even say anything before walking off, realizing her free ride wasn’t going to happen, and Hunter started scanning the room as if it had all the answers about Marla.

His eyes narrowed when a man started walking towards us, his eyes on me.

“You’re Tyler Johnson,” he said, seeming a little unsure. “Aurora’s boyfriend?”

“Who’s asking?” Hunter asked before I could answer, the man wincing.

“Sorry. Peter. I dated Marla,” he clarified. “Aurora was here looking for answers back in October. Did she find out anything? I saw on the news she was arrested for murdering Max.”

“Not really. Lots of dead ends. There’s no proof Max is even dead, so she’ll be out soon. The snake just slithered underground again, that’s all,” Hunter grumbled. “We were visiting her and figured we’d stop by. I was hoping to find answers for her before she got out, but we don’t know where to start.”

“I hope the bastard’s dead. Good for her if she did it,” he muttered.

“You can’t think of anything else that might help us find her?” I asked, and he shrugged.

“Not particularly. I told Aurora I tried looking for her mother, but the cops claimed she’d just gone home. There was no way she went back to him willingly, but they refused to listen. For a bankrupt man, he still had a lot of power.”

“If he threatened Rory, she might have gone to him,” I said as I glanced at Hunter, wondering if he could hack something to try and trace old messages.

“If there was, the cops probably buried it. Either that or the lazy fuckers didn’t even look and just took Max’s word for it,” Hunter scoffed, seeming deep in thought. “Did she leave her phone behind or something like that? I’m good with tech, I could try and pull something from it.”

Peter shook his head, looking defeated. “She left and took every trace of her existence with her. It’s like she was never here.”

“We did find her younger brother,” Hunter said carefully, Peter seeming surprised.

“Axel?”

“Yeah. He’s over in Fairview Prison too. He’s not a nice guy from what we can gather,” Hunter replied.

“Marla tried reaching out to him a few times but never got a response.”

“He’s in with a pretty nasty gang. It’s probably best he didn’t come looking for her,” I replied, looking at Hunter. “Maybe you should visit him to⁠—”

“He’s likely to lie out his ass, tell his boss I was bothering him, and add more problems to our plate,” Hunter said dryly, our food arriving.

“I’ll leave you to your meal,” Peter said, going to walk away before pausing. “Tell Aurora I’m thinking of her.”

I nodded, watching him walk away as I picked at my fries.

“Not sure if he’s nice or nosy. What if he’s acting and was the one to make her vanish? He could be fishing for details to see if we’d connected any dots to him,” I said quietly, and Hunter grunted his agreement as he started eating too.

We took our time to eat, but Peter didn’t seem twitchy about us being there, so Hunter was pretty sure it wasn’t him.

The burger was so good, and I noticed the waitress looked pissed when we left and she found her standard tip on the table. If she thought I’d leave a stack of money for her, she had another thing coming.

“I think you should visit Axel,” I said as we walked back to the car, not seeing how it could possibly make our problems worse.

“Skeet should’ve done it before Rory was arrested. It could cause her problems on the inside and make her a target.”

“She’s already a target.”