Chapter Eight
McKayla
The buzz wore off slowly.
For a while, finding the guy in the footage had felt like cracking open a door I’d been throwing my shoulder against for weeks.
My blood had been up, my brain had been moving faster than my headache appreciated, and for the first time since Erin vanished, I’d felt like I had something solid in my hands.
Not an answer.
Not even close, but a thread.
And sometimes, in an investigation, a thread was enough.
The problem was, after everyone cleared out of my room and the excitement settled, I still had no idea who the hell the guy was.
I replayed the same footage for what had to be the hundredth time and leaned closer to the laptop, squinting at the grainy image of a man in a gray hoodie and ball cap moving through the haunted house crowd like he belonged there.
He didn’t stop.
Didn’t flinch.
Didn’t look around like everyone else.
He moved like a man on a mission.
I paused the clip again and stared at the screen until my eyes burned. Nothing new.
I let out a long breath and closed the laptop. The room went dimmer instantly without the glow of the screen, and I stretched both arms above my head, groaning when every muscle in my shoulders protested.
“Your concussion like that?” Push asked.
I looked over at him.
He was still in my doorway, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed over his chest like he’d been carved there.
Everyone else had left after Anchor told me to keep working the footage but not overdo it.
Pearl had hugged me, Shay had told me to holler if I needed anything, Prime had dragged Shay away before she could mother me any harder, and Anchor had ordered Push to stay close.
As if Push had needed the order.
He’d been close all night. Like a wall with tattoos and judgmental eyebrows.
“My concussion and I are not currently speaking,” I told him.
“Probably for the best.”
“I think it’s mad I used my brain too much.”
“You did stare at a screen for hours after cracking your head open last night.”
I pointed toward the laptop. “That screen helped me find your mystery man.”
“It did.”
“You’re welcome.”
His mouth twitched. “I said thank you.”
“No, you said, ‘Good catch.’ That is not the same as thank you.”
“It was implied.”
“I’m a woman. I need words.”
His eyebrows lifted slightly.
Oh, wow. Bad wording. Very bad wording. I closed my eyes for half a second. “Ignore that.”
“Nope.”
“Push.”
“That one’s staying.”
I grabbed the pillow beside me and tossed it at him. He caught it one-handed because of course he did.
“Show-off,” I muttered.
He walked into the room and tossed the pillow back onto the bed beside me. “You tired?”
“Yes.” I rubbed at my eyes carefully. “But I’m also frustrated, which is apparently stronger than tired.”
“Figured.”
I opened my eyes and found him closer than he’d been a second ago.
Not too close, but closer.
He stood beside the bed, looking down at the closed laptop like it had personally offended him.
“You think he’s someone who worked here?” I asked.
Push’s jaw shifted. “Could be.”
“Could be isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the only one I’ve got.”
I sighed and leaned back against the headboard. “I hate that.”
“Yeah, welcome to the club.”
I studied him for a moment.
He looked tired too. Not in an obvious way. Push didn’t seem like the kind of man who would ever announce he was exhausted. He’d probably get stabbed and call it inconvenient. But there was tension around his eyes and something heavy in the way he stood.
The murders weren’t just a case to him.
They were his home.
His brothers.
His people.
I understood that better now than I had when I woke up underground convinced I’d been dragged into a biker murder dungeon. Which, in my defense, had not been a completely unreasonable assumption.
“Can I ask you something?” I said.
His eyes came back to mine. “You’re gonna anyway.”
“True. Glad we’re learning each other.”
He didn’t respond, but the corner of his mouth did that almost-smile thing again.
I pulled my knees up slowly and wrapped my arms around them, careful not to move fast enough to anger the tiny construction crew with jackhammers working in my skull. “The bodies,” I said.
Push’s expression changed instantly. Not much, but enough. The almost-smile disappeared. “What about them?”
“Do you know who they all are?”
He leaned one hip against the edge of the dresser. “Some. Not all.”
“Were any of them women?”
His gaze held mine for a second.
“The one we just found was.”
My breath caught, even though I already knew it wasn’t Erin. I’d seen enough of that body last night to know it wasn’t my sister, but hearing it still made my chest go tight in a way I hated.
“She wasn’t Erin,” I said quietly.
“No.”
I nodded once and stared down at my hands. “I know. I mean, I knew that. I saw enough to know.”
Push stayed quiet.
I appreciated that.
Some people tried to fill silence because it made them uncomfortable. Push didn’t seem uncomfortable with silence.
“What about the others?” I asked. “Any other women?”
“One.”
I looked up sharply. “One?”
He nodded once.
“Could she have been Erin?”
“No.”
The answer came immediately.
No hesitation.
No softening.
Just no.
I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or crushed that he’d answered so fast.
“How do you know?”
“She was identified. Girlfriend of another victim. Mick.”
The name hit something in my memory. “Mick,” I repeated, sitting up a little straighter. “I remember that.”
Push watched me.
“The news covered it,” I said slowly, trying to pull the pieces from the fog of the last few weeks. “Missing guy. Local. There was a woman on TV talking about him. His girlfriend, I guess. She said something bad had happened to him.”
Push nodded. “Yeah.”
“And then?”
His eyes darkened. “Then she was dead two days later. Pearl found her washed up on shore.”
“Jesus,” I whispered.
That image punched through me harder than I expected.
A woman on the news begging for answers and then two days later, dead. Washed up like she meant nothing.
I pressed my fingers to my temple and closed my eyes. “So she wasn’t Erin,” I said.
“No.”
Relief moved through me first.
Sharp and immediate. Then guilt followed right behind it, because being relieved another dead woman wasn’t my sister was a terrible kind of math. I opened my eyes and stared at the end of the bed. “I guess at least I know Erin isn’t one of the bodies your club found.”
Push didn’t answer right away.
I looked over at him.
His expression had gone careful, like he was choosing words and hated every option. “I’m not gonna tell you that means she’s okay,” he said.
“I know.”
“But it means you don’t know she isn’t.”
My throat tightened. There it was. The small piece of hope I’d been trying not to hold too tightly.
Because hope could keep you alive, but hope could also gut you.
“That’s kind of the problem,” I said quietly. “Not knowing means she could be anywhere.”
“Yeah.”
“She could be alive.”
“Yeah.”
“She could be hurt.”
His jaw tightened. “Yeah.”
“She could be trapped somewhere waiting for me to find her.”
Push pushed away from the dresser and moved closer to the bed. He didn’t sit. Didn’t touch me. Just came close enough that his presence filled the space in a way that somehow made the room feel steadier. “Then we find her.”
I looked up at him.
We.
Not you.
Not the club.
We.
The word shouldn’t have hit me as hard as it did.
It shouldn’t have made my throat close. It definitely shouldn’t have made me want to cry, because I wasn’t a crier.
Not usually. I was a compartmentalizer. A problem solver.
A person who shoved feelings into a mental junk drawer and promised to deal with them later, then never opened the drawer again.
But there was something about the way Push said it.
Simple and certain. Like finding Erin was already part of his job now because it mattered to me.
I swallowed hard. “You don’t even know her.”
“No.”
“You barely know me.”
His eyes stayed on mine. “Know enough.”
I looked away first and cleared my throat. “That was dangerously close to emotionally useful.”
“Don’t tell anyone.”
“My lips are sealed.”
“Good.”
“Unless I suffer concussion-related oversharing.”
“Then I’ll deny it.”
I laughed softly, and some of the pressure in my chest loosened.
I leaned back against the headboard again and looked toward the laptop. “So one female victim was Mick’s girlfriend, and the woman from last night definitely wasn’t Erin. The rest were men?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s a pattern.”
Push nodded. “Anchor thought so too.”
“Men are displayed. Women are different.”
His gaze sharpened. “Different how?”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek, thinking it through.
“This person wants the men found. Maybe as warnings. Maybe as punishment. Maybe as messages to the club.” I tapped my fingers lightly against my knee.
“But the women seem… targeted differently. Mick’s girlfriend was connected to Mick.
Bernice was connected to Pearl and Shay and the island’s past. Shay was threatened but not killed. ”
“And the one from last night? And maybe even Erin?”
I took a slow breath.
“I don’t know.”
That was the answer I hated most.
Push studied me.
I kept going because stopping meant feeling too much. “If Erin is connected, I need to figure out how. She wasn’t part of your club. She wasn’t from here as far as I know. She didn’t know these people. At least, I don’t think she did.”
“You close?”
The question was simple, but it hit deep.
“With Erin?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
I stared at my hands again. “Yes and no.”
Push stayed quiet, waiting.