“You’re alive.”
“Barely.”
“You’re dramatic.”
She looked offended.“I saw a dead body and woke up underground with bikers.”
“Fair point.”
That earned me another tiny twitch of her mouth.Jesus Christ.Why did that feel like a victory?
We finally reached the end of the tunnel and climbed the concrete stairs leading upward.The heavy steel door creaked as Prime shoved it open.
Cold night air rushed in instantly.
The island had gone quiet.The lake still moved against the shore in the distance, and somewhere farther off a generator hummed low beneath the trees, but the chaos from earlier was gone.
No chainsaws.No screaming tourists.No music echoing through the haunted house.
The lights that usually glowed through the woods had been shut down for the night, leaving only dim security lighting scattered along the trails.
Fog drifted low across the ground beneath the trees.Peaceful and eerie as hell.
McKayla looked around slowly as I carried her out into the night.
“This place is creepy.”
Piney grinned.“That’s the business model.”
Prime shut the heavy door behind us.“You should see it during tourist season.”
“I think I’ve seen enough already.”
I started down the narrow gravel trail leading deeper into the woods.
Ahead of us, the clubhouse sat tucked back beneath the trees.Long, dark, and built more like a compound than a home.
McKayla stared at it as we got closer.“This is where you all live?”
“Yeah.”
Her eyes tracked across the building.The massive front porch, lit windows, and the motorcycles lined up outside.
I nodded toward the cabins farther off near the lake.“We all stay here, but Pearl and Bernice stayed in the cabins before…” I cut myself off.
Before Bernice died.Before bodies started surfacing every damn week.
McKayla noticed.I could tell by the way her expression shifted slightly, but she didn’t push.
Not yet.
“You do know if you make me stay here,” she said after a minute, “I’m going to want to know exactly what’s going on.”
I looked down at her.“Bold of you to assume we even know what’s going on.”
That wiped the sarcasm off her face for a second, because that was the truth.We didn’t know who was dumping bodies on the island.
Didn’t know who killed Bernice.Didn’t know why Shay was connected to all of it.And now McKayla’s missing sister might somehow be tied into the whole mess too.
