Chapter Six #2
It made me want to look away, but I didn’t, because looking away felt disrespectful. So I stood there and watched a brotherhood exist in real time.
Anchor, the president, trying to keep his voice steady.
Pearl softens the hard edges.
Push standing like a wall at the foot of the bed.
Bob, unable to speak, yet still somehow very much part of the conversation.
Whatever else the Kings of Anarchy were, they weren’t fake. You couldn’t fake this.
Anchor tapped the bed rail twice. “Skull will be here after lunch. He’ll probably complain the whole damn time, but he’s bringing cards.”
Bob’s eyes closed briefly.
That almost-smile twitched again.
Push shook his head. “Try not to let him cheat you.”
Pearl rolled her eyes. “Bob can’t even talk.”
“Skull would still cheat.”
Anchor nodded. “He would.”
I glanced between them. “Do all of you cheat at cards?”
“Yes,” Push said.
“No,” Anchor said at the same time.
Pearl laughed softly. “That means yes.”
Bob’s shoulders moved slightly like he might’ve tried to laugh and thought better of it.
A machine beeped steadily beside him.
For a few minutes, nobody said much. And weirdly enough, the silence wasn’t uncomfortable. It felt like they were letting him rest while still making sure he knew they were there.
Eventually, Anchor straightened. “We’re gonna head out. Gotta get back to the island and bring McKayla up to speed.”
Bob’s gaze moved to me again.
I didn’t know what to say to him.
Sorry your throat got cut? Sorry your island is apparently a corpse magnet? Nice beard, hope you survive?
None of those felt appropriate.
So I settled for the truth. “I hope you feel better soon,” I said.
His eyes held mine for a second, then he blinked once.
I chose to take that as a thank you.
Pearl squeezed his hand again before letting go. Anchor gave the rail one more tap, and Push nodded toward him. “Later, brother.”
Bob’s eyes followed us as we left.
The second the door clicked shut behind us, the hallway felt too bright again. Too normal like there wasn’t a man lying inside that room who had been dragged into whatever horror show was happening on Skull Island.
We were quiet all the way to the elevator.
Even Pearl didn’t say much.
When we reached the parking lot, the sun was higher and warmer, bouncing off windshields and concrete like the day had no idea it was supposed to feel heavy.
Anchor stopped beside his bike and looked toward the hospital entrance.
“Hopefully next time we come here,” he said, “it’s to bring Bob home.”
Pearl slid her hand into his.
Nobody argued. Nobody made a joke. There wasn’t one to make. I looked back at the hospital, then at Push. His expression was locked down, but I could see it now. The weight behind his eyes. The anger beneath the quiet.
This had shown me something different about the Kings of Anarchy.
I had seen them as suspicious, dangerous, and controlling.
Now I had seen them worried, and somehow that mattered most. Because men like that didn’t hurt women like Erin and leave bodies on their own shore as warnings.
They weren’t soft.
They weren’t saints, but they weren’t killers.
Whoever had hurt Bob, whoever had killed Bernice and those other people, whoever had made my sister disappear, that was the person we were looking for. And for the first time, I fully believed the club and I were pointed in the same direction.
We climbed back on the bikes. Pearl wrapped herself around Anchor like she had before, and I got on behind Push with less awkwardness this time. My arms went around his waist, and he didn’t have to tell me to hold tighter.
The ride back to Skull Island felt different.
Maybe because riding behind Push felt less like being transported by my captor and more like being carried toward answers, which was dangerous thinking.
The island rose ahead of us beyond the bridge, all trees and water and secrets.
I tightened my hold on Push when we crossed back over, and if he noticed, he didn’t say anything.
We rode past the haunted house and toward the clubhouse. In daylight, the place still looked unsettling, but now I knew what waited inside.
Coffee.
Pearl’s pancakes.
A couch that attacked innocent concussed women.
And answers hopefully.
The second we pulled up outside the clubhouse; I slid off Push’s bike and pulled the helmet free.
Anchor had barely killed his engine before I spoke.
“I’m ready.”
He looked over at me. “For what?”
“To hear everything.” I held the helmet against my hip and lifted my chin. “Whatever is going on with this island, whatever happened to Bob, whatever dead bodies you’ve been collecting like the world’s worst hobby, I need to know all of it.”
Pearl’s eyes widened slightly.
Push stood beside me, close but not touching.
Anchor studied me for a long second. Then he nodded toward the clubhouse. “Then let’s talk.”
Inside, the common room was already filling.
Lost stood near the bar with a coffee mug in hand, looking like he’d rather be drinking whiskey even though it wasn’t noon yet.
Vin sat at the table with a laptop open in front of him.
Cross leaned against the wall with his arms crossed.
Pull, Post, Wannabe, and Piney were scattered around the room.
Shay was curled up on one end of the couch, but she sat up straighter the second we came in. Prime appeared from the hallway a minute later and went straight to her side.
Again, there was that automatic pull between them. Like gravity. Pearl and Anchor had the same thing.
I tried not to stare, but mostly failed.
Anchor motioned toward the big table. “Sit.”
I sat. Not because I liked being ordered around, but because my head still hurt, and standing on principle sounded exhausting.
Push took the chair beside me.
That surprised me more than it should’ve. Close enough that if I shifted six inches, my arm would brush his.
I kept my eyes forward and pretended that didn’t register.
Anchor stayed standing at the head of the table.
Pearl sat near him.
Everyone else found spots around us, and for the first time since I walked into their lives like an angry tornado, the Kings of Anarchy looked ready to tell me the truth.
Or at least their version of it.
Anchor started. “First body showed up near the lower dock during a busy night. Man we didn’t recognize. Mouth sewn shut. KOAMC carved into his chest.”
My stomach tightened.
I knew that carved-in-the-chest detail should’ve been shocking.
It was, but somehow the sewn mouth bothered me more. “Kings of Anarchy Motorcycle Club,” I said quietly.
Anchor nodded once. “Message was clear enough.”
Skull took over from near the bar. “We got Doc to look at him. Strangled. Mouth sewn after death. Carving was postmortem too.”
The older man leaning over me after stitching my head. “Doc is your doctor?”
“Sort of,” Piney said.
“That is not comforting.”
“He’s not comforting,” Lost said. “He’s useful.”
“Also not comforting.”
Piney grinned. “You get used to it.”
I doubted that.
Anchor continued before I could ask twenty follow-up questions. “We didn’t know who the first guy was. Still don’t. No ID. No phone. Nothing. Then more bodies showed.”
“How many?” I asked.
The room went quiet.
Not good.
Pearl looked down at the table and Push’s jaw tightened beside me.
Anchor answered. “Four dead bodies were left on the island before Bernice.”
I looked at Pearl because I remembered the name Bernice.
Push had almost said something about her last night and stopped.
Pearl’s face softened in a way that told me this was not just a name.
“She was with you?” I asked quietly.
Pearl nodded. “She worked with me. She was… family by the end.”
Anchor’s hand settled on the back of Pearl’s chair.
Pearl drew in a slow breath. “The killer used her to get to us. He sent a USB drive with pictures of women. One of them was Bernice. We found her too late.”
My throat tightened. “I’m sorry,” I said.
Pearl nodded once, but she didn’t look away. “Me too.”
Prime spoke next, his voice low. “Shay’s picture was on that USB too.”
I looked toward Shay.
She held Prime’s hand tightly, but her chin stayed lifted. “Mine was recent,” Shay said. “Taken without me knowing. Prime found me and brought me here because they thought I was next.”
I blinked. Okay. That explained a lot about why Shay looked at the clubhouse like it was safe instead of insane. “You were on the killer’s list?”
“Pretty much,” she said.
“That sucks.”
Her mouth twitched faintly. “Yeah. That about covers it.”
Anchor nodded toward Vin. “Vin started digging through footage, old records, anything we could find. We figured out Shay had been on the island as a kid.”
Shay’s grip tightened on Prime’s hand.
“She had memories,” Pearl said gently. “Not clear ones at first. Water, lights, screaming. Bernice knew her when she was little.”
“Bernice knew Shay?” I asked.
Pearl nodded. “Yeah. Shay’s mom to Bernice’s daughter and something that happened here years ago.”
Push leaned forward slightly beside me. “There’s an old drowning tied to the island. Caleb Token. A skeleton was found too.”
My brain immediately shifted into investigator mode.
Bodies.
Staged murders.
Old drowning.
Skeleton.
Women in photos.
Missing sister.
Possible past event.
This wasn’t random.
Random didn’t build this many layers.
“Who was Caleb Token?” I asked.
Anchor’s eyes narrowed slightly, not at me but at the name. “A kid who drowned on the island decades ago. At least, that’s what the official story said.”
“Official stories are usually bullshit,” I muttered.
Skull grunted. “Starting to like you.”
“Get in line,” Piney said.
I ignored them and looked back at Anchor. “You don’t think he drowned?”
“We think a lot of things don’t add up,” Anchor said.
Vin turned his laptop slightly but didn’t show me the screen yet. “There’s more. We’ve got footage of someone wearing Kings gear moving through blind spots. Could be trying to frame us. Could be someone connected to the old club.”
“Old club?” I asked.
“Before Anchor,” Push said. “Before most of us had say over shit here.”
The room shifted again.
“Razor used to run things before Anchor,” Cross explained. “He’s out. Venom was tied to the old days too. Bad blood. We thought maybe he was involved.”
“Is he?”
Nobody answered immediately. That was becoming one of my least favorite things. “Maybe,” Anchor finally said. “Maybe not.”
I leaned back in my chair. “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one we have.”
Fair. Annoying, but fair.
Pull spoke from the other side of the room. “We found an old Kings patch on the north side of the island. No name, just the crest. Looked old enough to be from Razor’s time or earlier.”
“A planted clue?” I asked.
“Probably,” Vin said. “But planted clues still tell you something.”
“Yeah,” I said. “They tell you whoever planted it wanted you looking backward.”
The room went quiet.
Everyone stared at me.
I lifted both hands slightly. “What? I’m concussed, not useless.”
Push’s mouth twitched.
Anchor stared at me for a long moment, then nodded once like I’d passed a test I hadn’t known I was taking.
“Keep going,” he said.
I blinked. “Me?”
“Yeah. Tell us what you think.”
I looked around the table, suddenly very aware that every biker in the room was watching me.
No pressure, just a room full of dangerous men waiting for my opinion on their island murder nightmare.
Totally normal Tuesday.
I drew in a breath and tried to put the pieces in order.
“Whoever is doing this wants you looking at the club’s past,” I said slowly.
“Old patches. Old deaths. Old connections. But he’s also targeting people connected to now.
Bernice. Shay. Bob. Maybe Erin. He’s not just punishing the past. He’s using the past to hurt people in the present. ”
Pearl’s face went pale.
Shay looked down.
Anchor didn’t move.
Push gazed at me like I’d just said exactly what he’d been thinking but hadn’t wanted to put into words.
“What happened to Bob?” I asked.
The temperature in the room dropped.
Anchor’s jaw hardened. “Bernice was killed. Bob was supposed to be watching her cabin.”
Oh.
Oh, no.
“He was attacked too,” Pearl said softly. “Throat cut. He survived, but barely.”
My stomach twisted violently. “And you think the same person did it.”
“We know,” Prime said.
My fingers curled against the table. This wasn’t just mystery anymore.
This was personal for all of them.
I looked down at the scratched tabletop and tried to breathe through the sudden heaviness in my chest. A missing sister had brought me here, but now I was sitting in the middle of a war I didn’t understand yet.
One with old ghosts, dead bodies, and a killer who seemed to know exactly where to cut to make the club bleed.
I lifted my gaze back to Anchor. “And Erin?” I asked. “Where does my sister fit into all of this?”
No one answered.
Not because they didn’t want to, but because they didn’t know.
And somehow that silence terrified me more than any answer could have.