Unknown
Chapter Twelve
Push
“What the hell do you mean Erin’s picture is on a wanted poster?” Anchor’s voice crackled through the radio clipped to my cut while I kept my eyes locked on McKayla.
She hadn’t moved. Hadn’t blinked. She just stood there staring at the poster nailed to the oak tree like the ground beneath her feet had shifted.
Maybe it had.
“Exactly what I said,” I answered. “Get over here.”
A beat of silence crackled over the radio before Anchor answered. “Piney, get your ass back with the boat and come pick me up. I’m not taking one of those big, haunted clown barges.”
“They’re ghost boats,” Piney muttered.
“I’m not bringing the clown barge.”
“Copy that,” Piney said into the radio before looking at us. “Guess I’m the ferry service now.” He took off toward the dock at a jog while McKayla stayed frozen beside the tree.
I stepped closer to her carefully. “You okay?” I asked. Stupid question. Obviously she wasn’t okay.
Her eyes stayed fixed on the poster. “That’s Erin.”
“I know.”
“How the hell is that Erin?”
“I don’t know yet.”
She laughed once, sharp and humorless. “That feels like the slogan of this island.”
I looked at the poster again. The fake wanted sign looked just like the rest nailed around the ghost town. Same aged paper. Same fake weathering. Same bold black lettering.
Except this one had McKayla’s sister on it.
McKayla stepped closer to the tree and touched the edge of the paper again. “There are so many of these things.”
“Yeah.”
“There have to be at least forty in this area alone.”
“Probably.”
“Then how did he know I’d find this one?”
I didn’t answer because I’d already been thinking the same thing. Whoever put it there wanted it found. Wanted McKayla to find it specifically, which meant somebody was watching her closer than I liked.
A lot closer.
She folded her arms tightly across herself and stared at the picture. “What if this is some sick joke?”
“It’s not a joke.”
“You know what I mean.” Her voice thinned slightly before she cleared her throat and steadied it again. “What if he’s making fun of me for looking for her? Or trying to tell me he has her and I can’t find her?” The last part came out quieter.
I stepped closer until my shoulder brushed hers lightly. “Hey.”
She looked up at me, finally. Her eyes were shiny. McKayla looked like the kind of woman who fought tears like they personally insulted her, but they were there anyway.
“You don’t know that,” I said.
“No?”
“No.”
“Then what do I know?”
“That your sister is still alive.”
She swallowed hard. “That’s not enough.”
“No,” I admitted. “But it’s something.”
Her laugh came out weak this time. “God, my standards have really dropped.”
I almost smiled. Instead, I looked back at the poster. “This changes things.”
“How?”
“Before this, we thought Erin might’ve come to the island. Now we know somebody connected her to this place enough to put her face here.”
McKayla rubbed both hands over her face. “That somehow made me feel better and worse at the same time.”
“Welcome to Skull Island.”
She huffed a small laugh at that.
Good.
I liked hearing her laugh more than I should.
The wind shifted through the ghost town around us, rattling loose shutters and moving dust across the fake street. During the day, the place looked almost harmless. But standing there beside McKayla with her sister’s face staring back at us from a wanted poster?
Yeah, creepy as hell again.
McKayla leaned slightly into my side before she seemed to realize she’d done it. She immediately straightened, and I pretended not to notice. Mostly because if I acknowledged it, I’d probably do something stupid like pull her closer.
And I was already in deep enough with her.
“You really think she’s alive?” she asked quietly.
I looked down at her. “I do.”
“You’re just saying that.”
“No.” I shook my head. “If this guy wanted you to think Erin was dead, he would’ve shown you a body.” The words sounded rougher out loud than they had in my head, but McKayla nodded slowly because she knew I was right.
The killer liked messages.
Bodies were messages.
This poster was something else.
Another game, maybe. Or a warning? I hated both options.
“You’re really calm right now,” I said.
Her mouth twisted slightly. “I’m trying.”
“Most people would be freaking the hell out.”
“That’s because most people haven’t spent years dealing with cheating spouses, stalkers, missing persons, and meth heads screaming in motel parking lots.” She blew out a breath. “You learn pretty fast that panicking doesn’t help.”
“Still.”
Her eyes came back to mine. “Trust me. My brain is currently screaming.”
Something tight pulled in my chest. I didn’t like how badly I wanted to make this easier for her.
The sound of a boat engine broke through the moment before it got too heavy.
McKayla stepped back slightly just as Anchor docked the small boat hard enough to make Piney complain loudly.
“Jesus Christ,” Piney muttered. “You drive like you hate water.”
“I do hate water,” Anchor grunted.
“Then why the hell do we live on an island?” Piney laughed.
Post climbed out first, followed by Pull.
Anchor stepped onto the dock looking exactly like he always looked lately, tired, pissed off, and one inconvenience away from committing felony arson.
“What now?” he asked while walking toward us. “Because I swear to Christ if this island starts summoning ghosts next, I’m selling the whole damn place.”
McKayla pointed silently toward the tree. Anchor stopped beside us and followed her line of sight. His expression flattened immediately. “What the fuck.”
“Yeah,” Pull muttered behind him.
Post stepped closer. “That her?”
McKayla nodded once.
Anchor walked right up to the poster and stared at it hard for several seconds before looking back at us. “What were you two doing out here?”
“Walking the area like McKayla said she wanted to,” I answered.
Anchor grunted.
“She spotted it,” I added.
McKayla crossed her arms tighter. “Hard not to when it’s my sister’s face.”
Anchor reached up and ripped the poster off the tree in one hard pull. Something caught his attention immediately. He flipped the paper over.
“What?” I asked.
Anchor stared at the back of the poster. “There’s a date.”
Everyone crowded closer. Written in black marker across the back was a date. Seventeen days from now. Silence settled over all of us.
Post frowned. “What the hell does that mean?”
I took the poster from Anchor and looked it over carefully.
The paper felt newer than the others. Cleaner, less worn, and then it clicked. “This is fresh.”
Anchor glanced at me. “What?”
I turned the poster over in my hands. “It rained two nights ago. Hard.” I ran my thumb along the paper. “This thing doesn’t look like it got wet at all.”
McKayla immediately nodded. “He’s right. The others are warped from weather. This one isn’t.”
“So somebody just put it here,” Pull said.
“Yeah,” I muttered.
Piney rubbed a hand down his beard. “Okay, but what the hell does the date mean?”
“Maybe that’s when something’s gonna happen,” Post suggested.
“Or when he’s gonna take her,” Piney said quietly.
McKayla went pale instantly.
Anchor shot Piney a look. “Helpful.”
“What? We’re all thinking it.” Unfortunately, he was probably right.
I looked at the date again. Seventeen days. Too specific to mean nothing.
McKayla started pacing suddenly, hands moving while she talked faster. “Okay. Okay. So either this guy is planning something for that date, or something already happened on that date before.” She pointed at the poster. “But it has to do with Erin, right?”
“Breathe,” I interrupted gently.
She stopped pacing immediately and dragged in a breath. Then another.
Anchor studied at the poster again. “Could be a countdown.”
“To what?” Pull asked.
Nobody answered, because nobody had a damn clue.
McKayla looked up suddenly. “I need to go through the footage from the last two days.”
All eyes turned to her.
“If this was put up after the rain,” she continued, “then maybe whoever did it is on camera somewhere.”
“She’s right,” Post said.
Anchor nodded once slowly. “Yeah.”
Hope flickered across McKayla’s face for the first time since finding the poster. Not much, but enough.
“I need the footage from this side too,” she said quickly. “Dock cameras. Ghost town cameras. Anything pointed this direction.”
“You’ll get it,” Anchor told her.
McKayla nodded and finally seemed to realize all of us were still standing there staring at the damn poster like it might suddenly explain itself. We headed back toward the dock with anchor getting into the boat first.
“I want to walk back,” she said suddenly.
Piney looked offended. “Why?”
“Because I want to think.”
“I don’t want to walk,” Piney grumbled.
“Nobody asked you to,” McKayla drawled.
Piney threw his hands in the air. “I’m emotionally exhausted from all this mystery.”
Pull snorted.
Anchor pinched the bridge of his nose.
I glanced at McKayla. “I’ll walk with you.”
Anchor’s eyes came to me immediately.
“We’ll be fine,” I said.
He stared another second before finally nodding. “Ten minutes. If you aren’t back by then, I’m burning down the whole island.”
“That feels dramatic,” McKayla muttered.
“You haven’t met him long enough,” Pull said. “That’s actually reasonable for him.”
Anchor flipped him off.
Piney climbed back into the boat grumbling about unnecessary cardio while Post and Pull followed.
McKayla and I stayed on the dock watching them pull away.
The second the boat disappeared around the bend, the quiet settled heavily between us again.
We started down the path back toward the haunted house. McKayla stayed unusually silent beside me. No jokes. No sarcasm. Just thinking. I watched her from the corner of my eye while we walked.
Her brows were pulled together slightly, and every few seconds she absently rubbed her thumb against the side of her hand like she was trying to work through a puzzle physically.
“You okay?” I asked finally.
She huffed softly. “Depends on your definition of okay.” Her gaze moved ahead again.
“It doesn’t feel like Erin is dead.” The conviction in her voice surprised me.
“Maybe she’s fine,” McKayla continued quietly.
“Maybe she’s off somewhere doing whatever Erin does and has no idea I’m tearing apart a haunted island looking for her. ”
“Maybe,” I said carefully. “But it’d still be nice if she called you.”
That got a small laugh out of her. “Yeah,” she admitted. “That’d be nice.”
We rounded a bend in the trail, and there was a rustle in the bushes. McKayla startled hard beside me just as something exploded from the bushes.
She tripped backward with a yelp, and a squirrel shot across the trail between us. I caught her automatically before she hit the ground, and then neither of us moved.
My hands locked around her waist, and her palms flattened against my chest. The squirrel disappeared into the trees while the entire damn world seemed to narrow to just us standing there breathing too close together.
Her eyes lifted slowly to mine.
“You okay?” I asked roughly.
“A squirrel almost took me out,” she whispered.
I didn’t laugh, not with the way she was looking at me. Not with the way her body fit against mine.
She cleared her throat slightly and tried to step back. I tightened my hold before I could stop myself.
Her breath caught. “Push…”
“Do you always crack jokes when things get serious?”
Her eyes searched mine. “Usually.”
“Why?”
“Because if I stop joking, then I have to actually deal with things.” The honesty in that hit hard.
We stood there staring at each other while the woods moved softly around us.
No haunted house sounds. No club. Just us.
“You scared me yesterday,” I admitted quietly.
“I know.”
“And today.”
Her expression softened slightly. “I’m still here.”
“Yeah.”
Something shifted between us then.
Not playful anymore or teasing, just real.
I looked at her mouth, then back at her eyes. “I’m gonna kiss you,” I said.
Her breath hitched slightly, but she nodded.
That was all it took. I kissed her slowly at first. Tentative. Testing.
McKayla made the softest sound against my mouth, and it wrecked every bit of control I had left.
My hand slid up into her hair while I deepened the kiss carefully but firmly, taking the lead immediately because she tasted like nervousness and stubbornness and every damn thing that had been getting under my skin for days.
She kissed me back hard enough to surprise me.
Not shy. Not hesitant. Her fingers curled tighter against my chest while I pulled her closer, and for a second I forgot entirely about dead bodies, missing sisters, haunted islands, and countdown dates.
There was just her.
Then she pulled back suddenly, breathing harder. Her cheeks were flushed pink, and her eyes were wide. “Well,” she said breathlessly. “That happened.”
I stared down at her.
She cleared her throat and stepped back carefully this time. “We should probably get back before Anchor sends Piney and Lost out to find us.”
I finally managed a small grin. “Might be a good idea.”
Her eyes flicked to my mouth again before she looked away fast. Cute.
“We’re revisiting this later,” I told her.
McKayla opened her mouth and then closed it again, flustered. Actually flustered.
I’d never seen her lose her footing conversationally before, and knowing I’d managed to throw her off her game with one kiss did something dangerous to my ego.
She turned quickly and started walking down the path again.
I followed beside her trying not to grin like an idiot.
We didn’t talk the rest of the way back toward the haunted house because all it had taken was one kiss to finally get McKayla to stop talking.