Chapter Fifteen
Ramona
I had no idea what Skull was looking at. That didn’t stop the hair on the back of my neck from standing up.
One second, Bob had been beside me, looking through a shelf full of old masks and fake rats, and the next, Skull’s voice had changed. It wasn’t loud. He hadn’t yelled or even sounded scared. If anything, he’d gotten quieter.
That was worse.
I leaned slightly to the side, trying to see around Bob. “What is it?”
Still nothing.
The fun we’d been having five minutes ago disappeared so fast it was almost like someone had flipped a switch.
Shay wasn’t making jokes about scary boxes anymore.
Pearl had moved closer to her, and McKayla was staring past Bob with the same focused expression I’d seen on her face whenever the conversation turned to her sister or everything that had happened on the island.
I looked at Skull again.
He was staring at the narrow space between the end of one of the shelves and the wall.
“Skull?” Bob rasped.
Skull pointed. “That wasn’t there before.”
My eyes followed his finger.
At first, I still didn’t see anything.
There was a shelf. A wall. Some boxes stacked on the floor. Nothing that looked particularly interesting, let alone something that had made three bikers suddenly go quiet.
Then I saw it. Something black was wedged into the narrow gap. “What is that?” I asked.
Bob’s hand shot out and caught my arm when I started to move closer. “Stay here.”
“I was only trying to see,” I huffed.
“You can see from there.”
I looked at him. “Actually, I can’t. You guys are all the size of refrigerators.”
His eyes moved to mine. Normally, that would’ve gotten something out of him.
A smart-ass comment. A smile. Something. This time, nothing.
That was when the little bit of humor I’d been holding on to disappeared too. I stayed where I was.
Prime moved closer to Skull but didn’t touch whatever was wedged behind the shelf.
“That what I think it is?” he asked.
“Looks like it,” Skull muttered.
Bob stepped around me.
I grabbed the back of his shirt. He stopped and looked over his shoulder. “Just stay here, doll.”
“Just be careful,” I whispered.
Skull pulled his phone out of his pocket and took a few pictures before moving closer. Prime grabbed a pair of work gloves from a box on one of the shelves and handed them to him.
I watched Skull pull them on. The room that had seemed ridiculous five minutes ago suddenly felt creepy as hell.
I glanced toward the mannequins.
Nope, nope, nope. Still hated those fuckers.
Skull crouched beside the wall and reached carefully into the narrow opening. He grabbed the edge and slowly pulled.
It caught on something. He stopped, adjusted his grip, and then pulled again.
Black leather appeared.
I’d been around these guys long enough now to know what it was.
A cut.
Skull pulled it completely free and stood. Dust drifted off the leather, and he held it out in front of him.
The thing looked old. Really old. The black leather had faded in places, and the edges were worn. One side was creased like it had been folded for a long time, and the leather was ripped in one section.
Kings of Anarchy MC.
I sucked in a breath.
“Oh, shit,” Shay whispered.
That pretty much covered it.
Skull held the cut away from his body and turned it slightly.
Bob stepped closer. Prime did too.
I stayed where Bob had told me to stay, though every part of me wanted to walk over there and get a better look.
“That’s ours,” Prime said.
“No shit,” Bob muttered. “Old as shit, though.”
Skull’s eyes moved over the patches. “Old colors.”
“How old?” I asked.
Nobody answered right away.
Pearl stepped up beside me. “It has to be before them.”
I looked at her. She nodded toward Bob, Skull, and Prime. “Before the current club.”
That got my attention.
I’d heard enough since arriving on Skull Island to know there had been Kings here before the men standing in this room. The original club. The men who had been here before Anchor and the others took over the island.
The men nobody seemed to know enough about. Or maybe nobody wanted to talk about them.
Bob moved closer to Skull. “Turn it around.”
Skull did.
The back of the cut faced us.
The Kings of Anarchy patch covered most of it, faded but still clear enough to recognize. The leather around it was scratched and worn, and one corner of the patch looked like it had been repaired at some point.
Bob stared at it. “You ever seen this before?”
“No,” Prime muttered.
“Me either.”
Skull shook his head.
I looked between them. “You don’t know who it belonged to?”
“No,” Bob answered.
“Why isn’t there a name on it?” Pearl asked.
Bob pointed toward the front of the cut where it was ripped and tattered. “Should be.”
Skull sighed. “Something was there.”
“Had to have been the road name,” Bob replied. “But it’s not like the patch fell off. It was fucking ripped off.”
The leather around the stitch marks had been sliced. Small cuts ran through some of the old thread, and there were tiny pieces still caught in the holes.
Skull turned the cut slightly toward the overhead light.
“Yeah.”
Prime swore under his breath.
A chill moved across my skin. The missing name bothered me more than I thought it should.
If somebody had left a random old Kings cut back here, that would’ve been creepy enough. But they hadn’t.
They’d hidden it behind a shelf.
And whoever had put it there had made sure the one thing that could tell the guys who it belonged to was gone.
“Why?” I asked.
Bob looked at me. “Why what?”
“Why take the name off?” I asked.
“Don’t know.”
“That’s the million-dollar question,” Prime growled. “Add it to the fucking growing number of unanswered questions we have.” His jaw tightened.
I didn’t know much about motorcycle clubs beyond what I’d learned since coming here, but I knew enough about people. If you didn’t want something found, you didn’t put it inside a building people used every day.
You buried it. Burned it. Threw it in a lake.
You didn’t tuck it behind a shelf and leave everything except the person’s name.
Unless the point wasn’t to hide it forever. Unless the point was to make someone wonder.
“They want you to figure it out.”
Nobody said anything.
I immediately wished I’d kept my mouth shut, then McKayla looked at me. “I think she’s right.”
Bob rubbed a hand over his beard. “Fucking hell.”
“If whoever did this wanted you to know who it belonged to, they would’ve left the name,” Pearl added.
Prime folded his arms over his chest. “So it’s another fucking game.”
“Looks like it,” Skull muttered.
Shay moved closer to Pearl. “I’m getting really sick of this person’s games.”
“Get in line,” Bob rasped.
I looked at him.
His eyes were locked on the cut. The laughter from earlier was gone. So was the man who’d stood in our room that morning telling me my vagina had somehow cured him.
This was Bob too. The part of him I hadn’t known twenty years ago. The Kings part.
He stepped closer to Skull and studied the front of the cut again. “Anything else missing?”
Skull checked it carefully. “Don’t think so.”
“Any officer patch?”
Prime leaned in.
Skull shifted the leather. “No.”
Bob frowned.
“Could’ve never had one,” Prime said.
“Could’ve been removed too.”
Skull examined the stitching. “Don’t see where anything else was cut.”
“Then probably regular patch,” Bob said.
“Looks like it,” Prime agreed.
I glanced at Pearl. “Is that important?”
She shrugged slightly. “Maybe.”
That seemed to be the answer to everything on Skull Island.
I didn’t know what the hell the cut meant. At this point, I wasn’t sure any of us did. Every clue we found only seemed to give us more questions.
McKayla stepped closer but kept a good distance between herself and Skull. “Can I see the front?”
Skull held it toward her.
Her eyes moved over every patch.
“What are you looking for?” Bob asked.
“Anything unusual.” She leaned closer. “There’s no name, but these patches might narrow down when it was worn.”
Skull nodded. “Anchor will know more.”
“Or one of the older guys,” Pearl said.
“Not here,” Prime reminded her. “Bob is the oldest guy here.”
Bob’s mouth tightened. “Shit had changed by the time I got here. The club was pretty much being rebuilt from the ground up. Anchor turned it into what it is now.”
I knew enough to understand what that meant too.
The current Kings hadn’t started this club. They’d inherited pieces of it. The island. The name. Whatever history somebody was currently digging up and throwing in their faces.
“Can we get the hell out of this room now?” Shay asked.
Everyone looked at her.
She pointed toward the mannequins. “We found a creepy old cut hidden in the wall. I’m officially done hanging out with those three staring at my back.”
“Let’s take this to Anchor,” Skull agreed.
Bob nodded.
Skull folded the cut carefully enough that he wasn’t rubbing his hands all over it, then carried it toward the door.
Prime went first.
Pearl, Shay, and McKayla followed.
I started after them, but Bob caught my hand.
I looked back. He was staring at the place where the cut had been hidden. “What?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“Bob.”
His eyes stayed on the gap. “Somebody was in here.”
I looked at the empty space.
“Yeah.”
“Recently.”
That sent another chill through me. The cut itself could’ve been twenty or thirty years old. The person who’d put it there wasn’t.
Bob finally looked at me. “Stay close.”
I squeezed his hand. “Wasn’t planning on going anywhere.”