Chapter Seven
Push
The haunted house sounded different from the clubhouse at night.
Even with the windows shut and the distance between the two buildings, I could still hear the faint pulse of bass from the midway speakers and the occasional muffled scream drifting through the trees whenever the wind shifted right.
The clubhouse felt too quiet without the rest of the guys there.
Anchor, Pull, Piney, Cross, Post, Vin, Lost, and Wannabe were all out handling the haunted house crowd while Prime and I stayed back with Shay and McKayla. Anchor had given McKayla the go-ahead to look through the footage from the nights the bodies had been found.
He trusted her enough to go through the footage, but I wasn’t sure what else he was going to trust her with. That was probably the smarter call anyway because McKayla had already shown she’d walk directly into danger if left unattended for more than five minutes.
The woman had literally stumbled into a corpse.
I leaned against the wall near the hallway entrance with a beer in one hand and stared toward the open doorway to McKayla’s room.
She’d been in there for almost two hours.
No TV.
No music.
Just surveillance footage and muttered commentary every once in a while when she forgot we could hear her. Apparently she narrated to herself when thinking.
I’d learned that thirty minutes ago when she’d whispered, “Okay, murder island, what else do you have for me?”
Prime looked over from the couch where Shay was curled against his side reading one of Pearl’s paperback thrillers. “You gonna stand there all night looking constipated?”
I glanced at him. “I don’t look constipated.”
Shay looked up from her book. “You kinda do.”
Traitors.
Prime grinned and pointed his beer bottle at me. “You’re hovering.”
“I’m not hovering.”
“You’re one step away from wearing a path in the floor.”
I took the last drink from my beer. “I’m making sure she’s okay.”
Prime barked out a laugh. “That sounded real convincing.”
“It’s true.”
“Mm-hmm.”
Shay tucked her legs beneath herself and smiled over the top of her book. “You know you could just go in there.”
“I’m not crowding her.”
Prime stared at me for a second before slowly nodding. “Oh, this is bad.”
I frowned. “What’s bad?”
“You’re considering her feelings.”
“Shut the hell up.”
Shay laughed softly.
Prime pushed himself off the couch and headed toward the bar. “You’re on edge.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’ve checked that hallway every thirty seconds since she started looking through footage.”
“That’s because I’m hoping she finds something we didn’t.”
Prime grabbed two beers from the fridge behind the bar and tossed one toward me. I caught it automatically.
“Relax,” he said. “And be glad you’re not out on haunted house duty with the rest of them. Chick duty is easy.”
Shay slowly lowered her book.
Prime realized his mistake immediately.
“I meant—”
“Did you just call me chick duty?” she asked.
“No.”
“You absolutely did.”
“I meant you’re safe here.”
“That somehow got worse.”
Prime moved around the bar toward her with the careful look of a man approaching a live grenade.
I took another drink and watched the train wreck unfold.
Shay crossed her arms. “Interesting. Tell me more about how inconvenient it is keeping me alive.”
Prime dropped down onto the couch beside her. “Baby, that’s not what I said.”
“Oh, now I’m baby.”
“You’re always baby.”
Shay tried to stay annoyed for another three seconds before he kissed her. That was apparently the end of the argument.
I shook my head, cracked open the new beer, and took a long drink.
Those two were disgustingly happy considering they’d met in the middle of a murder investigation and near kidnapping.
Then again, Anchor and Pearl had basically fallen in love while dead bodies floated around the island too, so maybe Skull Island just had weird timing.
The laptop keys clacked faintly down the hallway.
McKayla muttered something too low for me to hear. I glanced toward the hallway again.
Prime noticed. “You are absolutely hovering.”
I ignored him mostly because he wasn’t wrong.
Something about McKayla being tucked away down there alone made my skin itch.
Not because I thought she’d do something stupid.
Okay, maybe a little because of that, because every time I stopped paying attention to where she was, I pictured her finding me standing over that dead body again.
I downed half my beer and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. That image needed to get the hell out of my head.
Then a shout exploded down the hallway. “Holy shit!”
All three of us moved instantly.
Prime was off the couch before Shay even dropped her book. I was already halfway down the hallway by the time they caught up.
We burst into McKayla’s room ready for a problem.
Instead, we found her sitting cross-legged in the middle of the bed with the laptop in front of her and both arms thrown triumphantly into the air. A huge grin stretched across her face.
“What is it?” I asked immediately.
“I found him.”
Prime frowned. “Found who?”
“The same guy.” She pointed wildly at the laptop screen. “I’ve seen the same person every single time a body was found if the haunted house was open.”
Everything in me sharpened instantly.
“What do you mean?” Prime asked.
McKayla practically bounced where she sat. “The footage. Every time. Within thirty minutes before each body was discovered, this same guy shows up somewhere near the area.”
Shay blinked. “Really?”
“How the hell did you manage to figure that out?” Prime asked.
McKayla pushed hair out of her face excitedly. “I remember faces. It’s just something I’ve always been able to do.”
It explained a lot. She noticed everything from little details, patterns, and movements.
“Show us,” I said.
We crowded around the bed while she shifted the laptop between us.
I ended up standing directly behind her with Prime on one side and Shay kneeling near the foot of the bed.
The room suddenly felt too small.
McKayla clicked through folders quickly.
“This was the first body,” she explained, pulling up grainy footage from the midway entrance. “The quality sucks, but watch near the popcorn stand.”
The video rolled.
Crowds moved through the midway beneath colored lights while actors dressed like zombies stumbled through tourists.
Then McKayla paused it sharply. “There.”
Prime leaned closer. “Guy in the gray hoodie?”
“Yep.”
She zoomed in slightly.
Tall.
Broad shoulders.
Ball cap low over his face.
Nothing super distinctive.
Exactly the kind of person most people would overlook in a crowd.
“He leaves frame right before the body’s discovered,” McKayla said.
Prime folded his arms. “Could be coincidence.”
“That’s what I thought too.” She clicked another video. “Second body. Different night.”
The footage switched to a path near the lower dock. Again the same guy appeared in the same hoodie and same build.
Shay sat up straighter. “Holy shit.”
McKayla nodded rapidly. “That’s what I said.”
Prime looked closer now.
Not skeptical anymore, just interested.
McKayla pulled up a third clip.
Then a fourth.
Every time: same build, same posture, and same purposeful movement.
Not wandering or hanging around attractions. He moved with intent.
I leaned closer unconsciously. “He knows the blind spots,” I muttered.
McKayla tilted her head slightly toward me. “Exactly.”
Prime studied me. “How the hell did we miss this?”
“Because we were looking at bodies,” I answered. And because whoever this asshole was had been careful enough not to stand out.
Until McKayla noticed a pattern.
She clicked pause again and pointed toward the screen. “Look how he moves.”
Prime frowned. “What about it?”
“He’s not reacting to the haunted house.”
Shay looked confused. “Meaning?”
McKayla turned slightly toward us, excitement making her eyes brighter than I’d seen them since she got to the island.
“People react,” she explained. “They stop. They laugh. They jump. They look around. They get distracted. This guy never does. He walks through like he already knows everything around him.”
That sent a cold feeling crawling down my spine, because she was right.
Every clip showed the same thing.
Purpose.
Focus.
No hesitation.
Like Skull Island wasn’t entertainment to him.
Like it belonged to him.
Prime swore under his breath.
I pulled my radio from my cut immediately.
“Push to Anchor.”
Static crackled.
Then: “Anchor.”
“We found something.”
Silence for half a second.
Then his voice sharpened instantly. “What kind of something?”
I glanced at McKayla. She looked back at me with that same excited grin still lingering. “The kind you need to see.”
Ten minutes later the clubhouse door slammed open hard enough to shake the wall. Anchor came in first with Pearl right behind him. Cross and Vin followed close behind after hearing there’d been a break.
“You better not be fucking with me,” Anchor said as he headed straight for the hallway.
“We’re not,” Prime answered.
We all crowded back into McKayla’s room again, which officially made it the busiest room in the clubhouse.
McKayla sat back against the headboard now with the laptop balanced in front of her while everyone packed into the doorway or leaned against walls trying to see.
Anchor moved closest. “Show me.”
McKayla replayed the clips one after another.
The room got quieter each time. By the fourth video, Anchor looked pissed.
“How the hell did we miss this?” he muttered.
Vin swore softly from the doorway. “Jesus Christ.”
McKayla looked up from the laptop. “It was hard to spot.”
Anchor dragged a hand over his beard.
“It wasn’t obvious,” she continued. “You guys were focused on timestamps, body placement, crowds, exits. This wasn’t something you’d notice unless you were specifically tracking faces.”
Pearl leaned closer over Anchor’s shoulder. “He’s definitely the same guy.”
“Yeah,” McKayla said. “Same height. Same build. Same walk.”
Cross frowned. “Can we get a better shot of his face?”
McKayla clicked through more footage. “Not yet. He keeps his head angled down near cameras.”
“Which means he knows where they are,” Vin muttered.
Anchor’s expression darkened further because that meant one thing. Inside knowledge.
Pearl looked around the room slowly. “Okay… now what?”
Nobody answered for a beat. Then Anchor answered. “We figure out who the fuck this guy is.”
Everyone nodded.
Even Prime looked energized again for the first time in days.
McKayla looked down at the screen thoughtfully. “I can figure out who he is.”
Every head turned toward her.
Anchor crossed his arms. “How?”
She looked up slowly, confidence replacing the earlier excitement.
“People don’t realize how much information they leave behind when they move through the world repeatedly.” She pointed at the paused image. “Height, posture, gait, dominant side, movement patterns, routine. Maybe he’s avoiding cameras, but he’s still leaving behavior behind.”
Vin blinked. “That sounded creepy as shit.”
McKayla shrugged slightly. “I’m a private investigator. Creepy observation is kind of the job description.”
One corner of Pearl’s mouth lifted.
Anchor studied McKayla hard for a second, then nodded once. “What do you need?”
Her eyes flicked toward the laptop again. “Time.”