Pearl finally snapped the scrapbook shut.“I hate this.”
Prime stopped pacing.“Welcome to the club.”
“I’m serious,” she said sharply as her eyes darted toward the door.“Every time someone shows up with bad news, we just get hit again.Dead bodies.Skeletons.Notes.Creepy tapping on the window.Now a PI with a missing sister?It’s too much.”
“It’s not too much,” Prime said.“It’s just… shit stacking up.”
“That is the definition of ‘too much.’”She jabbed her finger into the air.“And you know it.”
Prime opened his mouth to argue.
Anchor walked in before he could.
He didn’t slam the door.Anchor never slammed anything unless he wanted to make a point.But the way he pushed it shut—controlled, tight, and tense—made all of us sit up straighter.
He didn’t look at anyone as he took the chair across from us and sat down heavily.
The club wasn’t used to being blindsided.
And today, they’d been hit again.
Anchor rubbed his palms over his thighs and finally lifted his eyes.
“We need to talk.”
Pearl muttered, “I’d rather not.”
“Pearl,” Anchor said warningly.Anchor leaned forward, elbows on his knees.“This just got worse.”
The room went dead still.
Prime straightened.Lost moved his hand closer to the gun at his hip.Pearl’s fingers clenched around the scrapbook.
My stomach dropped.
Anchor looked at each of us with his jaw tight.“Vin found something.And you’re not gonna like it.”
The room didn’t breathe.
He exhaled once, slow and heavy.“Her sister was on this island.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Shay
I didn’t know when I fell asleep.
Prime’s room always felt safer than it should, warm and quiet with his scent in the sheets, and his arm draped heavy and protective over my waist.His breathing was slow against the back of my neck, steady enough that my body finally unclenched.
But the second sleep pulled me under; it dragged me somewhere else.
Somewhere I had been trying to return to.
I wasn’t in the clubhouse anymore.
I was standing on the shoreline.
The wind was cold.
