Chapter One #2
“It’s late.”
“So?”
“So he’s in the hospital.”
“I know how hospitals work.”
“Then you know you’re not just walking into his room.”
“I’m not asking to break into intensive care.”
Prime’s jaw tightened slightly.
My stomach dropped again. “Is he still in intensive care?”
“No.”
“Was he?”
Prime stared at me.
“Jesus Christ.”
“Come on.”
He turned away from me.
“Where are you going?”
“Clubhouse.”
“I asked to see Bob.”
“And I said not tonight.”
“You don’t get to make that decision.”
“Actually, right now, I kind of do. But you can ask Anchor if you don’t like my answer, but I don’t think you are going to like his answer either.”
I stared at his back. “You’re incredibly irritating.”
He glanced over his shoulder. “So I’ve been told.”
I flipped him off, and he laughed.
I stayed where I was.
Prime took a few more steps before stopping. “You coming?”
“No.”
His eyebrows lifted.
“I’m not following some stranger into the woods when the person I came here to see isn’t even there.”
Prime looked toward the darker path beyond the parking lot and then back at me. “Fair.”
“Thank you.”
“You can stay here with your dead RV if you want.”
I narrowed my eyes as he smiled.
Asshole.
I glanced back at the RV, then at the road leading off the island. Then toward the lights deeper in the trees.
I had nowhere else to go. That realization pissed me off. “Fine.”
Prime started walking again.
I followed.
“I still don’t like leaving my RV.”
He glanced back at it. “Pretty sure it’s not going anywhere.”
I looked at the RV again.
“No, unfortunately, but everything I own is in there.”
His expression sobered a little. “Nobody’s touching it.”
“You can guarantee that?”
“Yeah.”
Something about the way he said it made me believe him.
I adjusted the bag on my shoulder and walked beside him.
The farther we got from the parking lot, the stranger Skull Island became.
Fog machines sent white mist rolling between buildings while colored lights flashed against the trees.
Music thumped somewhere ahead of us, mixed with screams, laughter, and the occasional burst of a horn from the direction of the water.
People lined up outside a huge building that looked like somebody had taken an old Victorian mansion, made it slightly more crooked, then decided it needed blood smeared across the front.
I slowed.
Prime glanced over. “What?”
“Is that the haunted house?”
“Yeah.”
“Ashland owns that?”
“The club does.”
I stared at it.
A man dressed like a corpse suddenly slammed both hands against a window near the entrance, making a group of teenage girls scream.
I jumped.
Prime laughed.
“Shut up.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to.”
He led me around the edge of the house toward a darker path that disappeared between the trees.
I stopped again.
Prime turned.
I pointed toward the path. “You want me to follow a strange biker into the dark woods on a haunted island?”
“Yes.”
“Do you hear how that sounds?”
“Clubhouse is back there.”
“That’s exactly what the murderer says in the first ten minutes of a horror movie.”
Prime stared at me.
I stared back.
Then his mouth twitched. “You’re gonna fit in fine.”
“I am not trying to fit in. I’m trying to see Bob.”
His amusement disappeared slightly. “Tomorrow.” The answer landed heavier than it should have.
Tomorrow. I had spent all day driving toward him, and now Ash was sitting in a hospital somewhere while I was stuck on his haunted island.
Fantastic.
I reluctantly followed Prime.
The path didn’t stay dark long. A low building came into view through the trees with lights glowing from the windows and motorcycles parked outside. A lot of motorcycles.
I glanced at them. “How many of you live here?”
“Enough.”
“That doesn’t answer anything.”
“You ask a lot of questions.”
“You answer almost none of them.”
“You’ll get used to it.”
“I don’t plan on being here long enough to get used to anything.”
Prime looked over at me but didn’t say anything.
I tightened my grip on my bag. A few days was all I needed. That was the plan. Get the RV fixed, talk to Ash, and figure out what the hell I was going to do next. Then leave. Simple.
Except Ashland was apparently in the hospital and judging by Prime’s careful answers, whatever had happened to him hadn’t been simple at all.
Prime climbed the porch steps and pushed open the door.
Warm air hit me first, followed by the smell of coffee, beer, food, and something fried. The room was huge, with couches, tables, a pool table, and a long bar running along one wall. Men wearing the same Kings of Anarchy cut as Prime were scattered around the room, along with a few women.
Conversation slowly died. Within seconds, everyone was staring at me.
I moved closer to Prime. “Why is everyone staring?”
“New face.”
“Tell them to stop.”
“No.”
“Great hospitality.”
A huge man standing near the end of the bar looked between us. “Who’d you bring home?”
Prime grinned. Something told me I wasn’t going to like whatever came next. “Found her in the parking lot looking for Ashland Moore.”
Silence. Complete, absolute silence.
I closed my eyes.
“You son of a bitch,” I whispered.
“What?” somebody asked.
Another man frowned. “Who the fuck is Ashland Moore?”
Prime looked like Christmas had come early. “Bob.”
The room exploded.
“No fucking way.”
“Bob’s name is Ashland?”
“Ashland?”
A man near the pool table started laughing so hard he had to put his beer down.
I pointed at Prime. “I hope you’re happy.”
“Very.”
“Asshole.”
“I told you I was telling them.”
“Technically, you said you were thinking about how long you were going to wait.”
“I decided.”
“Clearly.”
A man near the doorway wasn’t laughing.
He watched me with a steady expression while everyone else enjoyed Bob’s apparently humiliating legal name.
There was something about him that made me think he was the one in charge before Prime walked over to him.
“Anchor.”
Yep.
That sounded like the guy in charge.
Anchor glanced at Prime.
“This is Ramona Hill. Says she’s known Bob since high school,” Prime explained.
The room got quieter.
Anchor looked at me.
I lifted one hand. “Hi.”
“High school?”
“Yes.”
“How long since you’ve seen him?”
“Twenty years.”
A man sitting on the couch whistled.
I looked toward him. “Thank you for making that sound even worse.”
He lifted his beer. “Welcome.”
Anchor didn’t smile. “What are you doing here?”
Apparently, everyone on Skull Island asked questions before saying hello.
“I came to see him.”
Prime moved closer to Anchor and lowered his voice, but not enough. “Her RV died out in the lot.”
Anchor glanced toward me again.
“Of course he told you that.”
Prime ignored me.
Anchor looked at my bag. “You staying in the RV?”
“That was the plan.”
“No,” Anchor said.
I blinked. “You people really like that word.”
“You’re staying here tonight.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“I know your RV doesn’t run and you drove here looking for one of my brothers,” Anchor explained.
“I can sleep in it without the engine running.”
“No.”
I looked at Prime. “Is this a club requirement?”
“What?”
“Being bossy.”
A woman sitting on one of the couches laughed.
Anchor rubbed a hand over his jaw. “You can argue about it tomorrow.”
“I’m sensing a theme.”
The woman laughed again.
I looked at Anchor. “When can I see Bob?”
The humor disappeared from the room.
Anchor’s expression changed too.
Not dramatically, but just enough.
“Tomorrow.”
There was that word again. “Why not tonight?”
“He needs rest.”
“How bad is he?”
Anchor looked at Prime. Prime looked back.
I crossed my arms. “Please stop doing the silent biker communication thing and answer me.”
One of the women covered her mouth.
Anchor’s mouth twitched slightly, then he looked at me. “Someone attacked him.”
Every muscle in my body locked. “What?”
“That’s all you need tonight.”
“Bullshit.”
Prime coughed.
Anchor didn’t flinch.
“What happened?”
“He got hurt protecting someone.”
My throat tightened. Of course he did. Twenty years ago he had protected me, and apparently some things really didn’t change. “How hurt?”
Anchor hesitated. “He almost died.”
That knocked every smart remark straight out of me. I stared at him.
Nobody laughed. Nobody moved.
I suddenly didn’t care about the RV. The campground. The last six months. Any of it. “Almost?”
“He’s still here,” Anchor said. “And stubborn as ever.”
Prime snorted. “Threatened to leave the hospital today.”
My head snapped toward him. “What?”
“Against medical advice,” Prime added.
Anchor glared at him.
“What? She asked.”
A laugh escaped me before I could stop it.
It wasn’t because anything was funny. It was because that sounded exactly like Ashland.
Stubborn. Pissed. Refusing to stay where somebody told him to. I pressed my lips together. “He really did that?”
Prime nodded. “Made Skull wheel him down to another floor because he wanted to know what was going on.”
Wheel him.
My smile disappeared. “He’s in a wheelchair?”
Nobody answered fast enough.
My stomach dropped. “Is he paralyzed?”
“No,” Anchor said immediately.
The breath rushed out of me.
“No. He’s weak. Still recovering. He lost a lot of blood.”
I nodded slowly, trying to put everything together without actually knowing enough to put anything together.
“When can I see him tomorrow?”
Anchor glanced toward the clock. “I’ll take you.”
“What time?”
“Morning.”
“That isn’t a time.”
“After he’s awake.”
“How will you know?”
“Because we’ve been spending enough time at that damn hospital to know his schedule.” Something in his voice shifted. Tired. Angry. Worried.
These men cared about Ashland. That shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did.
The man I remembered had been eighteen with no idea what he wanted beyond getting out and finding something that felt like his. Apparently, he’d found it.
I looked around the clubhouse again.
The men. The women. The motorcycles outside. The weird, haunted island. His life. And I knew almost none of it.
“Okay,” I finally said.
Prime blinked. “That easy?”
“No. I’m just too tired to fight all of you tonight.” This was not at all what I thought would happen once I got to Skull Island, and I needed a second to wrap my head around it all.