Page 12

Anchor

I leaned back in the chair, one boot propped on the desk in front of me as I watched the flickering screens in the surveillance room. The grainy black-and-white feed gave me a look at the heartbeat of the island, cameras trained on the haunted house, the docks, the gift shop, the food court, and most of the paths that twisted between the trees. Nothing ever slipped past us for long.

Most nights, I watched out of habit. Force of routine. I’d been Prez for ten years, and Skull Island was our domain. Every flicker of movement, every guest getting handsy behind the funnel cake stand, every actor slacking off—I caught it.

But tonight, I was watching for one reason.

Pearl.

I didn’t know what it was about her that kept pulling my eyes back to that particular screen. The one pointed at the two cabins tucked near the tree line. Maybe it was the way she moved. The quiet confidence. Or maybe it was the way she looked at everything around here with this spark in her eyes like it was magic.

At first, I thought she might just be a pretty face tagging along with the crew, but she was the damn heart of it. Every brush stroke on those walls, every idea for the murals, the lighting, and the staging was all her.

And now she was stepping out of her cabin again, wrapped in that same worn blanket, moving across the small porch without sitting down like she had the last few nights. She hesitated for a second, then turned toward the path that led down to the lake.

I leaned forward, lips pressed tight.

She was headed out of camera range.

There weren’t any feeds by the lake, it was too far off the main walkways. No reason for guests to be out there. Nothing to watch… unless you were me.

I should’ve left it alone. Should’ve gone back to watching the dock or the boat tour or the haunted house entrance. But something about seeing her disappear into the dark made my gut twist.

I stood and grabbed my jacket from the hook. Maybe I was restless. Or maybe I just wasn’t ready to stop watching her.

Outside, the air was cool and damp, the lake’s scent carried on the breeze. Fog curled low to the ground, and somewhere behind me, the haunted house let out a fresh round of screams.

I made sure to crunch a few twigs underfoot as I came up behind her. Last thing I wanted was to spook her enough that she’d scream and punch me.

She turned her head slowly when she heard me, and that thick curtain of dark hair shifted over her shoulder.

“Are you watching me?”

she asked in a cautious tone.

I strolled up beside her and looked out over the still water.

“We keep an eye on everything going on around the island,”

I said. No point in lying.

“Even inside my cabin?”

I shook my head.

“Nah, doll. You’re safe from the cameras in there.”

She nodded slowly, then glanced back toward the lake. The moon was bright tonight, spilling silver across the surface of the water and turning the fog into something ghostly.

“It’s so peaceful here,”

she said.

“even with the noise from the haunted house.”

I smiled a little.

“You get used to it after a while. The screams kind of blend in.”

She laughed softly, and it struck me how much I liked the sound.

“The club’s been running that place for over thirty years,”

I added.

“I’ve been here fifteen of those. Took over ten years ago.”

She turned her head slightly.

“What happened before that?”

“Old Prez, Razor, got into it with one of our members. Big blow-up. Fucked the whole thing sideways. Half the club split. Razor left for California. The other guy, Venom, disappeared. We get whispers now and then that he’s doing dumb shit somewhere in Alabama or Georgia, but nothing concrete. Club was fractured. I stepped up.”

“And pulled it all back together?”

she asked, a note of admiration in her voice.

I shrugged.

“Mostly. Took time. Lost some, kept others. Piney’s one of the newer guys, eight years in. The rest? Lifers.”

She looked like she was going to say something else, but then her attention drifted. She leaned forward a little, squinting down the shoreline.

“You good, doll?” I asked.

She stepped forward.

“What is that?”

My stomach knotted.

“Probably just some weeds,”

I offered, keeping my voice even.

She looked back at me and pulled something from her pocket.

“I found this on the way here tonight. Doesn’t look like much, but... I don’t know.”

She handed it over. A small scrap of cloth. Torn. Dried, dark red streaks across it.

My chest tightened. It wasn’t prop blood. I’d seen enough of that to know it. This was real.

“Where?”

I asked, my voice sharper than I meant.

She nodded back the way I’d come.

“About a quarter of the way back to the haunted house. In the grass near the path.”

I rubbed the fabric between my fingers, and my skin crawled.

Pearl had already turned back toward the water.

“There’s something floating,”

she said, walking slowly along the narrow shore.

“Pearl—”

She ignored me and moved closer.

I followed, and my heart started to hammer. The fog was thick here, curling low around our legs. She stopped about three feet from the water’s edge and stared down at a lump half-submerged in the reeds.

“What is it?”

she asked.

I stepped forward, hand already going to the knife at my side.

My boots hit the edge of the water.

A shape. Pale. Bloated.

Dead.

Pearl moved closer, curiosity tugging her forward.

And then she saw it.

The face. The slack, swollen jaw. The eyes half-open and clouded.

She opened her mouth to scream.

I was already moving.

I wrapped my arm around her from behind and pressed my hand gently over her mouth, pulling her back against me. She froze, body trembling, and every muscle taut with fear.

“Don’t scream,”

I whispered into her ear.

Pearl

“I’m not going to hurt you, doll,”

Anchor whispered, his breath hot against the shell of my ear.

But his hand over my mouth and the way he gripped me tight against his chest told a different story.

My heart was beating so fast it felt like it was trying to crack through my ribs. My body locked in fear, but it wasn’t just fear. I didn’t think Anchor was going to hurt me. Not really. That instinct you have, the one you don’t learn but are born with, it wasn’t screaming at me to run. It was just… pulsing with adrenaline and a low, simmering panic.

He waited a beat.

“I’m going to move my hand,” he said.

I nodded once.

He peeled his hand away but kept his arms wrapped tightly around my waist. I didn’t try to move. Didn’t speak. Just stood there with my back to his chest, staring at the lifeless body floating in the shallow water.

“That’s a dead body, Anchor,”

I whispered hoarsely.

“A real dead body.”

Not like the actors in the haunted house with their pale makeup and fake blood. Not like the rubber corpses staged along the boat ride.

This woman was real. And dead.

Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth, which was sewn shut. Her shirt was ripped open. There was something carved into her stomach.

Panic rose fast and thick in my throat.

“My God,”

I breathed.

Anchor must have felt it coming. The wave of hysteria. The way I was starting to tremble. He turned me in his arms, pulled me hard to his chest, and tucked my head under his chin.

I didn’t even fight it. I just let him hold me.

I felt him shift and pull something from his back pocket. A radio.

“Skull, Prime, and Piney,”

he said, his voice firm, controlled.

“Come to the shore by the cabins. Now.”

A voice crackled back.

“Everything good, boss?”

Anchor hesitated.

“We’ve got another one. Have Lost get Doc and meet us in the tunnel.”

Another one?

My brain stuttered over those words. Another body?

This wasn’t the first.

I stiffened in his arms, but Anchor didn’t let me go. He held on like he expected me to bolt.

Within a minute, Skull, Prime, and Piney emerged from the trees like ghosts, grim, silent, their boots crunching through the underbrush. They didn’t ask questions. Just moved in like they’d done this before.

Anchor finally let me go, but not far. He moved me a few steps away from the water, one hand still gripping my arm like I might sprint off into the woods. Skull and Prime rolled the woman into a blanket with practiced ease. Piney stepped in to help hoist her between them.

They turned away from the shoreline and headed into the woods.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

The road off the island was in the other direction. We should have been calling the police, not trekking through the trees like fugitives.

Anchor nudged me forward.

“Stay close.”

I stopped moving.

“We need to call—”

He didn’t give me a chance to finish. He bent down, swept me off my feet like I weighed nothing, and started walking.

“Anchor!”

I shouted, struggling in his hold.

“Put me down!”

“Quiet, Pearl.”

“I’m not going to be quiet,”

I snapped and wriggled in his arms.

Skull looked back, raising an eyebrow at Anchor.

“Keep going,”

Anchor barked.

Skull turned back without another word.

“Put me down,”

I hissed, lower this time.

“I will… when we get there.”

“There?”

I stared at him.

“You’re not even going to tell me where we’re going? Am I going to be the next one rolled up in a blanket?”

“No,”

he said calmly.

“But you need to stop talking right now.”

Pretty sure finding a dead body gives me the right to ask questions, I thought bitterly.

“Are you at least going to call the police?”

“Doll,”

Anchor growled.

“I will answer your questions when we’re under cover. Not out here.”

My breath came fast, shallow.

“The police?”

I persisted.

He met my gaze.

“We are not calling the police.”

There was something in his eyes. Something sharp and final.

I stopped arguing.

I let him carry me deeper into the woods.

I wasn’t sure if that made me smart… or stupid.

“My dad,”

I gasped suddenly.

“Can I at least say goodbye to him?”

Anchor frowned.

“Why the hell would you need to say goodbye? You’ll see him in the morning.”

I blinked.

“I mean, aren’t you—”

I hesitated.

“I can talk?”

“Yeah. But hold that for five more minutes.”

I swallowed hard.

“Are you going to kill me?”

Piney barked a laugh up ahead.

“Only if you don’t shut your mouth,”

Skull muttered.

Anchor didn’t laugh. He looked down at me, serious as hell.

“I have no plans to hurt you, Pearl. But I need you to be quiet because I don’t know who might be listening.”

That landed differently.

They were scared, too.

Not just of me. Not just of being caught. They were scared of whoever was doing this.

“Where are we going?”

I asked again, softer this time.

“I’ll show you.”

Eventually, we reached a small shed tucked into a clearing. Skull moved a stack of crates against the wall, revealing a metal door I definitely hadn’t seen earlier.

A chill ran through me.

The guys moved smoothly, like this wasn’t the first time. The door opened with a groan, and a concrete tunnel stretched beyond it.

I looked at Anchor.

“What’s down there?”

He didn’t even flinch and put me down.

“I guess it’s the morgue now.”

I shivered and he took my hand.

“I’m scared,”

I admitted.

Anchor’s hand tightened around mine.

“You’re safe,”

he said.

“I swear it, doll. Me and the club… we didn’t do this. We’ve got nothing to do with her.”

“Then why aren’t you calling the police?”

His face went cold.

“Because we don’t know who we can trust.”

The tunnel descended deep beneath the clubhouse. The air turned cool and musty. And then the smell hit me, something faint, something sour and metallic.

When they laid the woman next to another body, I froze.

There was already someone else here.

I gasped.

“You really think bringing her down here was a good idea?”

Piney asked, nodding to me.

“She’s the one who found the body,”

Anchor said simply.

“Fucking hell,”

Skull muttered.

I didn’t say anything. I just grabbed Anchor’s hand again like it was the only thing tethering me to reality.

Prime leaned over the body, inspecting it.

“Doc on the way?”

Anchor asked.

“Lost went to get him,”

Prime answered.

“He was at the bar.”

“Typical,”

Skull mumbled.

“Well, this is interesting,”

Prime said after a minute.

“What?”

Piney asked.

Prime stood straight, looking at Anchor.

“It’s the girlfriend. The one from the news. His girlfriend.”

“Fucking hell,”

Anchor muttered.

Prime peeled back the torn fabric of her shirt. “Yup.”

Anchor tensed beside me. “KOAMC?”

Prime nodded grimly.

The carved letters on her stomach.

Kings of Anarchy Motorcycle Club.

“Wait,”

I said, everything clicking into place.

“That missing guy, the one from the news. Is that him?”

I looked at Anchor, pointing to the first body.

He nodded once.

“And that’s… her?”

I whispered.

“The girlfriend?”

“Yep,”

Prime confirmed.

“You have to let the police know,”

I said.

“People are looking for them.”

“Yeah, they are,”

Skull said.

“But we’re not going to let them find them with our name carved into their skin.”

“But you said—”

“We don’t know why they’re dead, why they washed up here, or why the hell they’ve got KOAMC carved into them,”

Anchor cut in.

“We’re trying to figure it out. Now you’ve joined the party.”

I couldn’t breathe.

Anchor looked at me.

“Let us handle this, Pearl.”

“You want me to just not worry about the two dead bodies ten feet away?”

Anchor nodded. “Yeah.”

“You do realize how insane that sounds?”

“I do.”

Movement echoed in the tunnel.

A man I assumed was Doc stumbled in, followed by Lost.

Doc blinked at me.

“You’re new.”

Anchor stepped forward.

“Don’t worry about her, Doc. Focus on her,”

he nodded to the body.

Doc grunted, moved to the body, and dropped a bag to the floor. He rummaged around in it and then snapped on gloves.

I should have looked away.

But I didn’t.

Doc poked, prodded, and muttered to himself.

“Ligature marks on the wrists… signs of struggle. Shirt was ripped, but no sign of sexual assault. No blood loss from the stomach wound, likely post-mortem. Time of death maybe six hours ago.”

He pushed her head gently to the side.

“Same stitching as the other guy. Same carving. This wasn’t random.”

Another set of footsteps. Bob appeared with a crate in his arms.

“Whiskey?”

Doc asked hopefully.

Bob nodded.

Doc grinned and wiped his hands on his pants.

“Whoever killed the guy, killed her too. No question.”

Bob looked at me.

“She’s part of this now?”

Anchor nodded.

“As much as I wish she wasn’t.”

I wanted to scream. Cry. Run.

I wanted to rewind thirty minutes and stay on my porch.

“The police,”

I started again.

Anchor turned and gave me a look that could freeze blood.

“The police are not getting involved. Not until we can prove this isn’t on us.”

“You sure she can keep her mouth shut?”

Piney asked. His tone made my skin crawl.

Anchor didn’t hesitate.

“She’s not saying a word. Right?”

he asked, turning to me.

I looked between him, Piney, and the bodies on the table.

I wasn’t an idiot.

“I won’t say anything,”

I whispered.

“I promise.”

I looked back at the bodies.

I didn’t want to end up like them.