Page 26

Anchor

I laid Pearl down gently in her bed and brushed a loose strand of hair off her face. She stirred a little, mumbled something incoherent, but didn’t wake. Her cheek nuzzled into the pillow like it had every right to be there, like this was her space now, and maybe it was. The morning light was starting to push against the curtain edges, not bright yet, but enough to remind me that another damn day had started and I hadn’t slept.

I stepped out onto her porch, pulled the screen door shut behind me with a soft click, and lit a cigarette. The chair creaked beneath me as I sat and leaned back. I crossed my legs, one boot resting on the opposite knee. Smoke curled up into the sky, and I stared into the trees like they owed me something.

My phone buzzed in my cut’s inside pocket. I pulled it out and stepped down the porch steps.

Come to the surveillance room. Now.

That couldn’t be good.

I didn’t even respond. I just pulled out my phone and hit Lost’s number.

He answered on the second ring with his voice thick with sleep. “Yeah?”

“Get your ass to Pearl’s cabin. Now. Sit inside and don’t take your eyes off her until I come back.”

“On my way,”

he said instantly.

I ended the call. Flicked the cigarette into the gravel and crushed the ember beneath my boot.

Five minutes later, Lost came jogging down the path. His cut was thrown over a hoodie, and his jeans looked like they’d been pulled on in a rush. Hair flattened on one side and boots untied.

“You look like shit,”

I muttered.

He yawned.

“I feel like it. You heading out?”

“Surveillance room. Skull found something.”

I pointed toward the door.

“Get inside. Don’t take your eyes off her.”

He nodded and opened the screen door without another word. I didn’t wait to see him go in. I was already walking.

It was a decent haul across the island to the surveillance room.

When I got there, Skull was already hunched over the main console. Rows of screens filled the wall, each showing different parts of the island. Cliffs, dock, boat launch, trails, gift shop, cabins… all of it under constant watch.

“Couldn’t sleep,”

Skull said without looking at me.

“Decided to scan footage from last night again, especially around the time we found the body.”

“What’d you find?”

He clicked a few keys, scrubbing the footage to a specific timestamp, two hours before the body turned up.

“This camera.”

He pointed at one near the cliffs.

“It glitched for about six seconds. Not much. Barely noticed it the first time.”

He slowed the footage, frame by frame.

“Right there,” he said.

On the screen, a shape flickered across the frame. Not a full image. Not clear. But just enough. A figure in a hoodie, dark fabric, barely visible.

“Go back,” I said.

He did.

“Freeze. Zoom.”

Skull enhanced it. The screen sharpened just enough to see what I was hoping wasn’t there.

The faded outline of a Kings of Anarchy patch on the back of the hoodie.

“No name,”

Skull said.

“No rank. Just the crest.”

“Timestamp?”

He nodded grimly.

“Nine fifteen p.m. You found the body at eleven nine p.m.”

I stared at the screen with my jaw clenched.

“So they’re using the blind spots.”

We had tried to find all of the blind spots, but it was fucking impossible. We had severely upgraded the surveillance, but there were still places to hide.

“Yeah,”

Skull said.

“Whoever it is, they know the system. And they knew we’d eventually catch them, just not fast enough.”

I ran a hand over my face, trying to piece it together.

“Venom?” I asked.

“Maybe,”

Skull said.

“But you said Razor said he might be dead. That fucker was into some sick shit back when everything went down, and I really doubt he’s on the straight and narrow now.”

“Razor also said Venom had a thing for making people disappear,”

I pondered.

“Wouldn’t be a stretch for him to do this,”

Skull admitted.

“But it could be someone else.”

I hated that. Hated not having a face to put to this.

“Replay the walk down from the cliffs,”

I said.

“See if we catch that hoodie again.”

Skull tapped away, but there was nothing. The figure had vanished like smoke in the dark.

“They’re moving in the gaps,”

I muttered.

“Every fucking blind spot we’ve got.”

Skull nodded once, his eyes never leaving the screens.

“We’ve got to plug them. Every one of them.”

I let out a slow breath and dropped into the chair beside him, the old metal creaking beneath me. My elbow rested on the table, and my fingers dragged over my jaw. I watched the replay for the tenth time. The hoodie figure blurred into the trees, the old KOAMC patch barely visible. The fucker could’ve been anyone. Or no one. A ghost in our system.

“There’s only one left, Skull,”

I said quietly.

He paused the footage and turned his head toward me.

“I know, brother.”

We didn’t need to say more. That last photo on the USB, Pearl. Standing on the porch of her cabin. A timestamp from just days ago.

Four dead. Four fucking dead.

And we still had no goddamn clue who was behind it.

I raked a hand through my hair, and the tension in my shoulders wound so tight it made my neck ache. We were used to death in this club. It came with the patch. But not like this. Not with this kind of slow burn. Not this kind of stalking, twisted message-painting serial bullshit.

“We’ve got time, Anchor,”

Skull said, voice low and steady.

“There’ve been a couple of days between each murder. We’re not going to let anything happen to her.”

He leaned forward and clicked the spacebar again, letting the footage loop. The blurry fucker moved the same way each time. Like he knew where the camera ended. Where to step. Where not to look up.

“We’ve got a leg up having her here with us,”

Skull went on.

“These four bodies? We didn’t know ‘em. Didn’t know where they were, didn’t know to even be looking. But Pearl? She’s here. Right here. Under our protection. We can keep her safe.”

He said it like it was fact. Like saying it out loud made it true.

I wanted to believe it.

But that same voice that kept me up every night, that gut-level itch that’d saved my life more than once, was screaming louder now.

What if that’s exactly what the bastard wanted?

Our killer was right there on the screen. Over and over. Frame by fucking frame.

Still, we had no idea who the hell it was.

A club member?

Venom, wearing his old patch like some deranged calling card?

Or someone we hadn’t even clocked yet. Someone just smart enough to slink through the gaps like smoke, using our own island against us?

Skull cursed under his breath and zoomed in again, trying to catch any kind of facial detail or any glint of identity. But there was nothing. Just a shadow draped in denim and black, like the devil had found himself a uniform and learned how to use our cameras.

“I’ve got Wannabe going out at first light,”

Skull said.

“Him and Cross are going to start rewiring the cliffs. We’re gonna put eyes where the sun don’t even reach.”

“Good,”

I grunted.

“Tell Lost to swap with Push around eight. I want fresh eyes on Pearl. His ass looked tired as hell when he came to watch her.”

Skull glanced at me.

“You gonna tell her?”

I stared at the screen. Pearl’s face flashed in my mind. The way she smiled at me like I was someone good. Like she didn’t realize the weight I was carrying every time I walked through her door.

“About this? I don’t know,”

I said.

“She already knows too much.”

In the past, no outsider knew any information about the club. Now Pearl knew it all, and it didn’t terrify me as much as I thought it would. I knew I could trust her. And also, she was right in the middle of it.

Silence stretched between us, thick as tar.

“She’s tough,”

Skull offered.

“Girl like that, she doesn’t fold easy.”

“She shouldn’t have to be tough,”

I snapped, more to myself than to him.

“She came here to paint a fucking haunted house, not get wrapped up in club shit.”

“And yet here we are,”

Skull said dryly, leaning back and rubbing his eyes.

“We protect our own, Anchor. You made her yours. That means she’s one of us now. And that means this club goes to war if someone tries to take her from us.”

My jaw clenched. He was right. I’d claimed her, maybe not with words, maybe not with some ceremony, but in every way that mattered, she was mine. And I’d burn this island to ash before I let some ghost get within reach of her.

“I want twenty-four-hour surveillance until we find this motherfucker,”

I said.

“Add trail cams. Motion sensors. I don’t care what it takes.”

Skull nodded and stood, cracking his back.

“Already on it. You need to get some rest, Prez.”

I stood with him and dragged my fingers down my face.

“I’ll rest when this son of a bitch is dead.”

He didn’t argue.

We both knew that was the only kind of peace I’d get.