Chapter 2
Chapter Two
McKayla
Every sound felt far away, like I was stuck underwater. My body felt heavy like someone had poured concrete into my veins while I slept.
I didn’t open my eyes, but I didn’t think I could if I tried.
My head throbbed. Sharp pulses radiated through the back of my skull every few seconds, each one making my stomach twist harder. Even breathing felt wrong. The air was cold and smelled strange. Like wet stone and bleach.
Where the hell was I?
I tried to move my hand and immediately regretted it. Pain shot through my neck and across my shoulders. A small groan slipped out of me before I could stop it.
There was the faint hum of electricity somewhere nearby and water.
I could hear water dripping.
Somewhere in the distance.
My brain tried to catch up, but the thoughts moved too slowly. I stayed still and tried to remember.
I had been at the hotel. The cheap one about fifteen minutes from the bridge leading to Skull Island. The place had scratchy blankets, suspicious carpet stains, and a coffee maker that looked like it might electrocute somebody.
I’d been there for four nights. Four nights of staring at the ceiling and getting absolutely nowhere.
Four nights of calling hospitals, local police departments, county dispatch, shelters, and anyone else who might have seen my sister. I didn’t learn a damn thing from any of them.
There was just one group of people I had talked to that seemed to know something, and that road led back to Skull Island.
Back to the Kings of Anarchy.
I swallowed hard against the dryness in my throat.
The damn motorcycle club. Even thinking about them made irritation flare through the pounding ache in my skull. The first time I showed up at the island, I’d gone in too hot, too fast. I knew that now.
I had walked in accusing, demanding answers, and threatening them with the cops. Not exactly the best way to get a bunch of giant bikers to cooperate.
Especially when they already looked like men who trusted absolutely no one.
My sister had been missing for over a month. Over a month of silence, unanswered texts, and dead ends.
That wasn’t normal for Erin. She wasn’t the type to disappear.
Even when we were fighting, she answered eventually.
Always eventually.
My chest tightened painfully. I should’ve protected her better.
The thought came hard and familiar. I’d been thinking it nonstop since she vanished.
As the older sister, I was supposed to be the one who knew how to handle bad situations. That was literally my job. I’d spent years as a private investigator digging into cheating spouses, fraud cases, missing persons, and some genuinely dangerous people.
I knew predators. Could spot a lie from a mile away and knew what evil looked like.
And somehow, I still hadn’t protected Erin.
I’d finally decided I couldn’t spend another night sitting in that crappy hotel room doing nothing. I needed answers.
So I’d showered, thrown on jeans and a hoodie, and headed back to Skull Island. Alone. Which, in hindsight, maybe wasn’t the smartest thing I’d ever done, but grief and exhaustion had started eating away at my judgment days ago.
I remembered gripping the steering wheel too tightly while driving across the bridge toward the island. The water below had looked black beneath the moonlight. The haunted house lights glowed through the trees in the distance, eerie and flickering against the dark.
Tourists had still been wandering around when I got there. People laughing, screaming, and chainsaws revving somewhere deeper in the attraction.
It had almost pissed me off.
How could people be laughing while my sister might’ve been dead somewhere on that island?
I remembered parking farther away this time. Remembered telling myself to stay calm, ask questions instead of making accusations, and to actually think before opening my mouth.
That plan lasted maybe ten minutes.
I’d headed toward the area behind the haunted house where I figured the club lived.
And then I saw him.
Push.
Even in the dark, I recognized him immediately.
Big. Broad shoulders. Solid as a damn wall. The same guy who’d hauled me over his shoulder earlier like I weighed nothing while I screamed at him the whole way off the island.
My stomach twisted as the memory sharpened. He’d been standing near the lower dock and he hadn’t been alone.
A body.
God, the body.
The image slammed back into me so vividly my breath caught.
Push had been standing over the body like dead bodies were normal.
I remembered freezing.
Every instinct I had as a PI immediately kicking into overdrive.
Run. Call the cops. Do something.
But I hadn’t moved because none of it made sense. That was the part my brain kept getting stuck on.
I’d worked cases involving genuinely evil people before. Human trafficking. Domestic abusers. One guy who ended up getting arrested for murdering two women.
I knew what killers felt like.
And somehow… The Kings of Anarchy didn’t.
Jerks? Absolutely.
Aggressive? Definitely.
Terrifying? Without question.
But evil? No. Not in the cold, calculated, murdery way. Even Anchor, the president with the hard eyes and permanent scowl, hadn’t felt evil.
Protective. Suspicious. Possibly violent, but not evil.
And Push…
Push had looked shocked to see me. Not guilty, though. That distinction mattered.
My stomach rolled uneasily. I remembered stepping backward and panic climbed up my throat. Push said my name and then nothing.
My eyelids fluttered open before I could stop them.
Blinding white light stabbed straight into my skull.
“Ah shit-” I jerked and immediately regretted it as pain exploded behind my eyes.
I threw an arm over my face with a groan and squeezed my eyes shut again.
The light was brutal. Every inch of my head pulsed angrily.
“Easy there.” An unfamiliar older male voice came from nearby.
Not threatening but not warm either. Just calm.
I slowly lowered my arm enough to squint. The room around me blurred together at first.
I blinked a few times until the blurry figure beside me finally sharpened into an older man with graying hair and tired eyes.
“There you are,” he said as he leaned over slightly. “You took a little longer than I thought you would to wake up. You must have really hit your head.”
And just like that, the pain in my skull fully registered. “Oh my God,” I croaked.
The back of my head throbbed viciously now that I was awake enough to feel it. I lifted a shaky hand toward it instinctively.
“Wouldn’t do that,” the older guy warned. “You’ve got stitches back there.”
Stitches? “What?” I tried to sit up too quickly and it was an instant mistake. Nausea rolled through me so violently I nearly gagged.
“Easy,” the man said firmly, pressing a hand lightly against my shoulder. “You’re concussed.”
Concussed? Stitches? Panic started creeping in around the edges of my thoughts. “Where am I?” I managed to ask.
The older man glanced to his right. “You might want to answer that one, Anchor,” he said. “I don’t know where you’re planning to take this.”
My blood ran cold. Anchor, the president of the Kings of Anarchy.
My eyes snapped toward the darker corner of the room.
A large figure pushed away from the concrete wall. He was wearing a leather cut, heavy boots, and a dark stare. Anchor.
He hadn’t been there when I fell, but he was here now, and suddenly every terrifying possibility my brain could invent crashed into me all at once.
Oh God, I’d seen too much. That was it. That had to be it.
I saw the body. Saw Push with it, and now they’d dragged me underground somewhere to make sure I never talked.
My chest locked up and for a second, I couldn’t pull in air.
No. No no no.
I needed to calm down and forced air into my lungs.
Think. I just needed to think.
If they wanted me dead, would they have stitched your head up? Would they have an older guy checking my pupils and monitoring me?
Probably not.
Anchor stepped closer, his expression unreadable.
I immediately scooted backward on instinct until pain flared through my head again.
“Relax,” he said flatly.
That did not help at all. “You kidnapped me,” I blurted.
The older guy sighed loudly beside me.
Anchor looked unimpressed.
“We kept you from cracking your damn skull open worse than you already did,” he corrected. “And you were trespassing.”
“I was not!” My voice echoed harsher than I intended through the concrete room. We were definitely underground. My eyes darted around the room more carefully now. Concrete. Metal table. Storage shelves. Industrial lighting. And farther back, a steel door.
What the hell was this place?
A bunker? A basement? A murder dungeon?
God, I hope it wasn’t a murder dungeon. My brain was spiraling again.
“Take a breath,” the older guy said.
“I am breathing.”
“Barely.”
I glared at him weakly before looking back at Anchor. “What is this place?”
Anchor crossed his arms over his chest. “That answer depends on how much you’re gonna freak out.”
“Pretty sure we’re already past the freaking out stage,” I shot back.
The older guy snorted under his breath.
Anchor ignored him. “You’re under the clubhouse,” he said.
I blinked. “Under the…”
His stare stayed steady. “Clubhouse.”
“You have underground tunnels?” I asked, shocked.
Anchor’s expression didn’t change. “That the part of this you’re stuck on in all of this?”
Honestly? A little, because what the hell kind of motorcycle club casually had underground tunnels? A haunted island biker gang apparently. Fantastic.
I swallowed hard and looked between the two men again.
The older guy still stood calmly beside me while Anchor looked like he’d rather be literally anywhere else. Neither one looked especially murdery right now, which somehow made this weirder.
“You saw the body,” Anchor said finally. Not a question, but a statement.
My stomach clenched again. “Yes.”
“You hit your head before Push could explain anything.”
I stared at him.