Page 23 of Property of Anchor

A chorus of quiet “nope” and head shakes followed.

“Then why the fuck were our club initials carved into his chest?”Piney asked, stepping closer.“None of this makes fucking sense.”

He was right.None of it did.

“It has to be a message,” Push said, arms crossed over his chest.

“But what message?”I asked.“Why now?Why him?”

“Not a fucking good one,” Cross said from the corner.He leaned his pool stick against the wall and joined the growing circle around the bar.

“Should we let the cops know we found him?”Wannabe piped up from behind the bar.

Every single head turned toward him like he’d just grown a second one.

“Are you fucking stupid?”Vin asked, deadpan.

“You want us to go to the police,” Cross echoed, “and tell them we just happened to stumble across the guy who’s been missing for four days,with our goddamn club name carved into his chest?”

“You think that’s gonna end well?”Post added, his voice low.

Wannabe shrank back, rubbing the back of his head.“We didn’t do anything wrong…”

“Oh,” I said, raising my voice.“We didn’t do anything wrong?That’s great.I’m sure the cops will just give us a pass, right?Shake our hands, thank us for reporting the corpse withour club initials carved into him like a fucking brand.”

He looked like he wanted to disappear.

There was a damn good reason Wannabe and Lost were still prospects.

Bob walked past the bar, muttering, “Shut your mouth, kid,” and gave Wannabe a hard smack to the back of the head.

Wannabe winced and nodded.“Yes, sir.”

Pull finally unpaused the TV.The segment rolled on, now showing the missing guy’s girlfriend sitting on a worn couch, holding a picture of them together.Her mascara was smudged, and she looked wrecked, but something about her seemed off.

“She doesn’t even look fucking familiar,” Piney said.

He was right.I studied her face, searching for any spark of recognition.Nothing.No connection to the island.No connection to us.

But there had to be one.

This wasn’t random.Whoever dumped Mick Barber near our docks had done iton purpose.They’d known what the initials meant.They wanted us to see it.

And they wanted us to know we were next.

The news segment wrapped up.Pull turned off the TV, and silence fell like a curtain.

Nobody made a move.Nobody spoke.

I leaned forward, elbows on the bar, staring down at the wood grain like it might give me answers.

I was the President of the Michigan chapter of the Kings of Anarchy.Skull Island was under my control.My protection.

And some son of a bitch was trying to send me a message in blood.

It was my job to figure out what that message meant and what we were going to do about it.

Chapter Eleven