Chapter Sixteen
Bob
By the time we walked back into the clubhouse, I was done with fucking clues.
Bodies. Pictures. Notes. Carvings. Faxes. Every time we found one thing, it led to three more questions and no fucking answers. Now we had an old Kings cut with the name patch sliced off, like whoever had left it wanted to make damn sure we knew what it was, but not who the hell it belonged to.
Skull carried it through the door in front of me, still wearing the gloves he’d put on in the haunted house. Prime followed him, and I kept Ramona beside me with her hand in mine.
Anchor was behind the bar with Vin when we came in.
One look at Skull and he straightened. “What happened?”
“We found something,” Skull said.
Anchor’s eyes dropped to what Skull was carrying. “What the fuck is that?”
“Exactly what it looks like.” Skull walked over and carefully laid the cut across the bar.
Anchor came around the other side. Vin moved with him.
Ramona started to pull her hand out of mine, probably figuring this was club business and she needed to give us space.
I tightened my fingers. She looked up at me. “Stay.”
Her eyebrows lifted slightly, but she didn’t argue.
That might’ve been a first.
Pearl, Shay, and McKayla came in behind us, and nobody told them to leave either.
At this point, pretending this shit didn’t involve them would’ve been fucking stupid.
Pearl had been there from the beginning.
Shay was tied to whatever happened twenty-three years ago.
McKayla’s sister had nearly died because of this asshole.
And Ramona? She was with me.
Anchor stared down at the cut. “Where?”
“Back storage room,” Skull answered. “Wedged between a shelf and the wall.”
“How long’s it been there?”
“It wasn’t there before.”
Anchor looked at him. “You’re sure?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve been back there plenty,” Prime added. “I’d remember an old Kings cut stuffed behind a shelf.”
Vin leaned over the bar without touching the leather. “That’s old.”
“No shit,” I muttered.
Ramona bumped her shoulder lightly against my arm. “Easy, handsome,” she whispered.
Anchor studied the front. “Name patch?”
“Gone,” Skull answered. He pointed toward the empty rectangle.
Anchor bent closer.
The outline was obvious. The leather underneath was darker, protected from years of wear by the patch that used to cover it. Little pieces of thread still clung to some of the holes.
“Cut off,” Anchor muttered.
“That’s what it looks like,” I said.
“Recently?”
Skull shook his head. “Can’t tell.”
Anchor swore.
Ramona shifted beside me.
“What?” I asked.
She looked at the cut. “I still think that’s the point.”
Anchor glanced at her. “What’s the point?”
“The missing name.” She hesitated for half a second before stepping closer to the bar.
“Whoever left it could’ve taken every patch off that thing. They didn’t. They left the Kings patches. They left everything that tells you what it is, but they took the one patch that would’ve told you who wore it.”
Anchor stared at her.
Ramona lifted one shoulder. “Seems deliberate.”
“It is,” McKayla said from behind us. “He’s making you work for the name.”
“Fucking games,” Anchor muttered.
“That’s what I said,” Skull replied.
I looked down at the cut again.
Something bothered me.
Not just the fact that it had been inside our haunted house. Not just that some asshole had gotten close enough to plant it without any of us knowing.
Something else. I moved around the bar. “Turn it over.”
Skull looked at me.
“The cut. Turn it over,” I repeated.
He carefully lifted it and flipped it so the back faced up.
The old Kings colors filled most of the leather.
Faded, worn, and not ours. That was the fucked-up part.
I’d worn Kings colors for years. I’d bled for this club. Almost died for it. But the cut on that bar belonged to a version of the Kings none of us really knew.
Anchor stared at it.
“You recognize it?” I asked.
“No.”
“Nothing?”
He shook his head.
Vin leaned closer. “Could be from Razor’s time.”
“Has to be older than ours,” Anchor said.
“How much older?” Ramona asked.
Anchor rubbed his jaw. “Don’t know.”
Shay stepped closer. Prime immediately moved with her. She ignored him. Her eyes were on the cut. “Could it be from when Caleb died?”
The room went quiet.
Caleb Token.
He’d drowned on Skull Island twenty-three years ago.
A death that had been called suspicious but never proved to be anything more.
Except Shay had remembered enough to know there was a hell of a lot more to that night than some guy accidentally falling into the lake.
Bernice had been there. Shay’s mother had been there. Another man had been there.
There had been yelling, fighting, and somebody had said Caleb fucked with the wrong club.
“I don’t know,” Anchor finally said.
Shay stared down at the cut. “But it could be.”
“Yeah.”
She wrapped her arms around herself.
Prime rested his hand on the back of her neck.
I looked away from them and back at the cut. “Circle with the slash,” I muttered.
Anchor’s eyes moved to me. “What about it?”
“The carving.” Vin straightened.
Ramona looked between us. “What carving?”
“The one we found on a tree,” I explained. “Before you got here.”
Her forehead wrinkled. “Another clue?”
“Yeah.”
“Of course there was,” she muttered.
I almost smiled.
Anchor pointed toward the cut. “You see it on there?”
“No. That’s the problem.”
Skull moved closer.
“Pearl’s dad said the biker Bernice was with wore a jacket with that symbol.”
Pearl nodded. “He remembered it because it was weird. A circle with a line through it.”
“And then the same symbol showed up carved into a tree on the island,” Anchor added.
Ramona looked at the cut. “But it’s not on there.”
“No,” I said.
McKayla moved closer. “Maybe it was a different club.”
“That’s what we figured,” Anchor said. “The biker Bernice was involved with belonged to another club. Or at least had something to do with one.”
Shay looked at him. “And the night Caleb died, somebody said he’d fucked with the wrong club.”
Nobody spoke.
Because that was another piece.
Maybe not the piece that gave us a fucking name, but a piece.
I rubbed my hand over my beard. “Say it again.”
Shay frowned at me. “What?”
“What you remember.”
Her face changed. Prime looked at me like he wanted to tell me to back the fuck off.
I didn’t.
“We’ve been looking at this shit one piece at a time,” I said. “Say it again.”
Shay swallowed. “There were people by the lake. Bernice was there. Caleb was there. There was another man.”
“And your mom.”
“Farther back with me,” she whispered.
I nodded. “What did the guy say?”
Her eyes dropped to the bar. “That Caleb fucked with the wrong club.”
“And then?”
“They were fighting. Struggling.” She took a breath. “Someone fell into the water.”
“Caleb.”
She nodded. “I think so.”
“Then he ends up dead.”
“Yeah.”
I looked at Anchor.
He was already following me.
“Twenty-three years later,” I continued, “somebody starts dumping bodies around our island.”
“Four of them,” Vin said.
“Then the skeleton,” Skull added.
“With a note telling us we’re paying for the sins of the club,” Anchor muttered.
I nodded.
“The symbol gets carved into a tree. Same one Bernice’s biker had.”
“Ron,” McKayla said.
Everyone looked at her.
She folded her arms. “Don’t forget Ron.”
I sure as fuck wasn’t.
Ron had been right under our noses. Working on the island. Helping us. Or pretending to. “Ron knew something,” I said.
“More than something,” Anchor replied.
The six notes we’d found under his desk flashed through my head.
DO WHAT I TELL YOU.
THEY CAN’T KNOW YOU’RE HELPING ME.
GET HER ON THE ISLAND. I’LL HANDLE THE REST.
PRINT WHAT I SEND YOU. PUT IT WHERE I TELL YOU.
DON’T FUCK THIS UP, RON. YOU KNOW WHAT THEY DID.
And the one I couldn’t stop thinking about.
BERNICE KNOWS TOO MUCH.
I looked at Pearl. “Ron was the one who told Anchor to hire you.”
Her face went pale. “Yeah.”
“And you brought Bernice.”
“Because she worked for me,” Pearl answered. Pearl stared at the cut and sighed.
I looked at Anchor. “He wanted Bernice here.”
Anchor’s jaw tightened. “Yeah.”
“No.” I shook my head. “We’ve said that, but think about it. He didn’t wait for Bernice to show up. He made sure she showed up.”
“Through Ron,” Vin said.
“Through Pearl,” Skull added.
Pearl flinched. Anchor immediately shook his head. “Not because Pearl did anything.”
“I know,” she whispered.
I looked back at the cut. “He needed Bernice on Skull Island.”
“Why?” Shay asked.
I turned toward her. I knew the answer. Or at least I knew part of it.
The words I’d remembered had been stuck in my head ever since they came back. “Because she knew what happened.”
The room went dead quiet.
Ramona’s fingers tightened around mine. I looked at Anchor. “That’s what this has been about.”
Anchor’s eyes narrowed. “You sure?”
“No.” I wasn’t going to pretend I knew more than I did. “But it fits.”
Vin nodded slowly. “Bernice was there the night Caleb died.”
“She knew what happened to him,” I said. “Maybe she knew who killed him. Maybe she knew why. Maybe she knew what club was involved. I don’t fucking know. But she knew something.”
“And twenty-three years later somebody needed her back here,” Skull said.
“Yeah.”
Shay shook her head. “Why wait twenty-three years?”
“That’s the part we still don’t know,” Anchor said.
“But Bernice knew too much,” McKayla murmured.
I looked at her.
She pointed toward the hallway. “That’s what the note said.”
“Yeah.”
My throat tightened.
Not from healing this time, from remembering. “You should’ve kept your mouth shut,” I said.
Ramona looked up at me.
Anchor’s eyes hardened. “That’s what you heard.”
“Yeah.”
The words settled over the room.
I'd spent weeks wondering what I'd missed that night. Now I was starting to think I'd been looking at the whole thing wrong.
Bernice hadn't been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The motherfucker had come there for her.
And whoever came after her had wanted her dead because of something she’d carried around for more than twenty years.
“What if she talked?” Ramona asked. I looked down at her. “That’s what the person said,” she continued. “‘You should’ve kept your mouth shut.’ That sounds like she told somebody.”
“Who?” Pearl asked.
Ramona shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe Ron,” Vin suggested.
Anchor frowned. “Or Ron told whoever was controlling him that Bernice was asking questions.”
“Either way,” Skull said, “somebody thought she was dangerous.”
I stared at the cut. “Which means this belongs to somebody who matters.”
Anchor nodded. “That’s why the name is gone.”
Nobody needed to explain that one.
The cut wasn’t the answer. It was another fucking question, but for once, it felt like we knew what question we were supposed to ask.
Who wore it, and what the fuck did he have to do with Caleb Token?
Anchor pulled his phone from his pocket. “I’m calling Razor.”
“Again?” Skull asked.
“You got a better idea?”
He shook his head. “Nope.”
“He’s the only person we’ve got who was around for enough of the old shit to maybe recognize this.”
“Send him pictures first,” McKayla suggested. “Front, back, stitching, every patch.”
Anchor nodded toward Skull. “Do it.” He tossed him his phone.
Skull started taking pictures.
I watched him work while Ramona stayed pressed against my side.
For the first time since this nightmare started, I felt like we weren’t just reacting.
We didn’t know why the fuck someone had waited twenty-three years to start dragging old Kings history out into the open, but we knew Bernice was part of the center of it.
We knew Caleb was too.
And we knew somebody was scared enough of what Bernice knew to make sure she died before she could tell us.
Except they’d fucked up.
Because I lived and remembered.
Ramona rubbed her thumb across the back of my hand.
I looked down at her.
“You okay?” she asked quietly.
“Yeah.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“What?” I asked.
“You’re doing that thing.”
“What thing?”
“Where you say you’re okay because you don’t want anybody asking if you’re okay.”
I stared at her. She stared right back.
“That’s annoying.”
“I know.”
“Stop knowing me so fucking well.”
“No.”
A laugh came out of me before I could stop it.
My throat pulled slightly, but it didn’t hurt enough to matter.
Ramona smiled.
Then the clubhouse door opened.
I looked over automatically.
Lost stepped inside and he scanned the room until he found me. “Bob.”
Something about his face made every bit of humor disappear.
“What?”
“There’s a guy at the gate.”
Anchor lowered his phone. “Who?”
Lost looked at me. “Says he’s looking for Ramona.”
Ramona froze next to me. The color had drained from her face, and her hand squeezed mine tightly.
“You know who it is?” I asked her.
Her eyes met mine.
For a second, she didn’t answer. Then she swallowed. “I think so.”
Every muscle in my body tightened. “Your boss?”
She nodded.
That was all I needed right now.
I let go of her hand and headed for the door.