Page 160 of Piece Us Together

At least, for a while.

Chapter Thirty-One

Maison

It’s a pair of brothers, in the end. Of course it is.

There’s an updated file waiting for me when I step onto the plane, Travis and Keats already lounging in their seats scanning their own copies. Travis looks up at me with a raised brow when I fall into the chair across from him with the file in hand.

I frown at him. “What?”

“Where were you?”

“Sleeping, unfortunately.”

“Not at your house,” he counters. “I dropped Carter off before heading here. Guess who wasn’t there? Who hasn’t been for most of the week, it sounds like.”

I glance over at Keats to find him hiding behind his open file like a kid trying to cheat on a test. I sigh. “How about you tell me what you already know and we go from there?”

“I know you and Nolan are up to something. I know it’s apparently not dangerous.” He narrows his eyes. “I know you think I wouldn’t like it, since it seems you’ve told just about everyone except me.”

“You or Carter,” I mumble, not even sure why I do.

He nods slowly. “I see. So, are you keeping it from me, or keeping it from your brother?”

I look down at the file, my throat tight.

Brothers.

These brothers are named Aaron and Alex. The first to go missing was Aaron, only fourteen at the time, just over two years ago. The second was Alex, the older brother by three years, just this past September. He’d left a note for his parents, writing that if they wouldn’t take finding his brother seriously, he’d do it himself.

It only took four days for all signs of Alex to be wiped from the face of the Earth. No nineteen-year-old from a small town in Connecticut knows how to do that. Even without a paper trail, presumably using cash for everything, there was no digital trail either. He was just gone.

Four days.

“He knew something, you know,” I tell them. “Alex, I mean. Four days is too fast. There’s no way he got deep enough for them to disappear him that quickly, not without a head start. He knew something.”

There’s a moment of silence before Keats says, “Yes. Next page. His brother was hanging out at a bar with a biker club connection. Kid was seeing an older guy there. He got in way over his head. The brother thought maybe they ran away together, but he knew if that was it that he’d have called him by now to tell him he was okay. That long without a word meant something went wrong. Alex went nosing around. Asking questions.”

“Last known whereabouts was at the bar that the club’s president owns. About six hours away from their hometown. Alex had paid for another two days at the motel he was at. Never checked out. Still had his bag in the room.”

I flip to that page, scanning it.

It’s stupid, really. There’s no reason to look so deeply into any of this. Ash already found him. He found both of them, actually. He just needs us to help him go get them.

This is safer to focus on though. Much safer than—“Speaking of last known whereabouts,” Travis muses pointedly. “Where did you say you were?”

“Travis,” Keats chides. “Ease up. Not before a mission.”

Travis sighs, but relents with his hands up. “Sorry. I’m being an asshole. Let’s talk logistics. The last page of the file has the layout of the building they’re in.”

We rendezvous with Ash an hour outside of the town where our target is, at a private airstrip where he has his black SUV parked, his body stretched out on the hood of it with his head against the windshield, one knee bent up, booted foot horizontal, cigarette smoke swirling in the air.

“This motherfucker,” Keats says with a chuckle.

Travis grins. “I already love him.”

“Just wait,” Keats warns. “He only gets better from here.”

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