Chapter Fifteen
McKayla
“Fourteen-year-old Pearl would have thought it was pretty cool to be living on Skull Island,” Pearl laughed.
She was rocked back in one of the old wooden chairs on the clubhouse porch, one bare foot tucked beneath her while the other pushed lightly against the floorboards.
The chair creaked in a slow rhythm that should have been annoying, but somehow it fit the night.
Everything on Skull Island had a sound.
The lake lapping against the shore somewhere beyond the trees. The wind moving through the branches. The distant roar of chainsaws from the haunted house. Tourists screaming, then laughing, then screaming again when something else jumped out at them.
I sat between Pearl and Shay in another rocking chair with my legs curled beneath me, trying to let the night air clear my head. It wasn’t working.
Not really.
My brain had been moving too fast since the second I saw Erin’s face on that second poster. Actually, it had been moving too fast since I stepped onto Skull Island, but now it felt like all the pieces were spinning around without landing anywhere useful.
“Yeah,” Shay said from my other side. “Until you tell her there’s a murderer on the island.”
Pearl sighed. “Yeah. That kind of puts a damper on things.”
“A tiny one,” Shay added.
Pearl lifted her hand, pinching her fingers close together. “Barely noticeable.”
I snorted softly and let my head fall back against the chair.
They kept talking after that, but I only caught pieces of it.
Something about the first haunted house Pearl had ever gone to as a teenager.
Shay saying she hated chainsaws in haunted attractions because they were lazy scares.
Pearl arguing that lazy scares were still effective if you were the one being chased.
Shay insisting she would simply trip and die because cardio was not part of her personal brand.
I should’ve laughed more.
I probably did once or twice, but mostly, I stared out into the dark, watching the glow of the haunted house lights pulse through the trees.
This guy was playing a game with us. That was the part I couldn’t get around.
The club had already been in his game. Anchor, Pearl, Shay, Prime, Bob, Bernice, all of them had been pulled into it long before I showed up. But Erin’s picture changed things.
The wanted poster at the ghost town and the photo stuck to the clubhouse front door.
Phase Two. A date seventeen days in the future.
The man in the hoodie is showing up just enough to be seen.
None of it felt random. It felt staged and planned.
People always thought lies were just words, but lies were often scenes. Props. Angles. Timing. The right face at the right moment. The right information left in the right place.
That was what this felt like.
A scene. Something he wanted us to see and something he wanted me to think.
I closed my eyes. Erin’s first photo formed immediately in my mind.
The wanted poster from the ghost town. Her face altered to look old-timey, grainy, and black-and-white, fitting the theme of the attraction.
Then the second one.
Erin lying down with her eyes closed and her head turned slightly.
Sleeping. Maybe?
God, I hated that maybe.
I tried to breathe through the tightness in my chest and focused harder.
Her face wasn’t what mattered. Not right now.
That was hard because every instinct in me wanted to stare at her face and search for pain, fear, bruises, life, death, anything. But the investigator part of me knew the face was the trap.
The face was emotion.
The background was information.
What had been behind her?
What had she been wearing?
What angle had the photo been taken from?
How much light?
What kind of fabric?
What kind of wall?
I sat up so fast the rocking chair slammed forward.
“I need to see the photos again.”
Pearl stopped mid-sentence. “What?”
I was already out of the chair.
Shay sat up straighter. “What photos?”
“The posters.” I moved toward the door. “I need to see them again.”
Pearl and Shay scrambled up behind me without asking another question, which said a lot about how fast they’d gotten used to island murder nonsense.
The clubhouse door opened into warm light and the smell of coffee, beer, and old leather. The common room was occupied but quieter than normal. Prime stood near the bar with Push, both of them talking low. Push’s eyes came to me instantly.
Of course they did. My stomach gave one stupid, inconvenient flutter. Not now.
“What happened?” Piney said from behind us.
I yelped and spun around.
Piney stood just outside the front door like he’d materialized from the damn porch shadows.
“Where the hell did you come from?” Pearl demanded, hand pressed to her chest.
Piney snorted and nodded toward the yard. “I was keeping an eye on you guys. I was over by the third oak tree.”
All three of us leaned out the doorway and looked toward the oak tree.
Absolutely no obvious hiding spot.
I slowly looked back at him. “I’m impressed. I didn’t even notice you there.”
Piney buffed his nails against his leather cut. “Thank you.”
Shay squinted at him. “How long were you out there?”
“Long enough to know you hate chainsaws.”
“I stand by that.”
“They’re classic,” Piney argued.
“They’re loud,” Shay countered.
“That’s the point.”
Push’s voice cut through before Shay could continue. “What are you three doing?”
I turned back toward him.
He hadn’t moved from beside the bar, but his posture had changed. Alert now. Focused. The same way he’d looked every time something went sideways around me.
Which, admittedly, was often.
“McKayla says she needs to see the photos again,” Pearl answered. Then she shifted her attention to me and whispered, “What photos?”
I laughed despite the urgency buzzing under my skin. “The two wanted posters.”
Prime nodded toward the bar. “They should be in that stack of papers.”
Push moved before I did, already reaching for the pile beside the open laptop.
I crossed the room quickly, the girls right behind me, Piney wandering in after us like a bodyguard pretending he wasn’t curious.
The stack of papers sat near the laptop, and the two posters were right on top. Push handed them to me without a word.
Our fingers brushed.
One stupid touch.
My brain immediately remembered his hands on my waist. His mouth. The way he’d stopped last night even when I knew he didn’t want to.
Focus, McKayla.
Missing sister.
Murder island.
Possibly psychotic game-playing stalker.
Not tattooed biker mouth.
I spread the posters side by side on the bar and leaned over them.
The room quieted around me.
Pearl and Shay stood to my left. Push stood close on my right. Prime moved in beside Shay, while Piney leaned against the end of the bar. Lost appeared from somewhere behind the counter like he had been summoned by the possibility of drama.
“What are you looking for?” Push asked.
“I don’t know yet.”
“Helpful,” Piney muttered.
I ignored him.
At first, all I saw was Erin.
Again.
Her face.
Her hair.
The slight curve of her mouth.
The sister I had fought with, protected, chased after, and worried about my entire life. The sister who once stole my last clean hoodie and then acted offended when I took it back. The sister who knew how to disappear emotionally but always came back physically.
Until now.
I forced myself to look away from her face.
Background.
The first photo was harder because of the wanted poster effect.
Whoever made it had filtered the image to match the ghost town theme, but not enough to completely hide the original setting.
Behind Erin’s shoulder, there was a dark rectangle.
Maybe a headboard. Maybe a shadow. There was also a sliver of something patterned near the edge.
The second photo was clearer.
She was lying on something.
A pillow.
A bed.
There was a wall behind her, pale but not smooth. The light came from above and slightly left.
I leaned closer.
My pulse picked up.
There.
A framed print in the background. Only part of it showed, cut off by the edge of the image, but I knew that ugly faded landscape.
I had stared at it for four nights.
My breath caught. No.
I grabbed the first poster again and dragged it closer, searching the background harder. The dark rectangle behind her wasn’t a headboard. It was the same cheap motel nightstand.
The patterned sliver was the edge of those hideous curtains.
My heart slammed against my ribs.
“Oh my God,” I whispered.
Push straightened beside me. “What is it?”
I couldn’t answer right away. My eyes moved between the two posters.
The ugly curtains. The cheap wall art. The lighting. The bedspread.
I knew those details because I had lived inside them while losing my mind looking for Erin.
I had slept in that room.
Packed my bag in that room.
The room tilted slightly.
Not from tequila this time, but from realization. Push’s hand landed at the small of my back. Solid. Immediate. “What?” he asked again, lower now.
I looked up at him. Then at Pearl. Then Shay. Then Prime.
The words came out barely above a whisper. “I know where these photos were taken.”
Every face around me changed.
Push’s jaw tightened. “Where?”
I looked back down at Erin’s sleeping face on the poster. My stomach twisted hard. “My motel room.”