Especially when they already looked like men who trusted absolutely no one.
My sister had been missing for over a month.Over a month of silence, unanswered texts, and dead ends.
That wasn’t normal for Erin.She wasn’t the type to disappear.
Even when we were fighting, she answered eventually.
Always eventually.
My chest tightened painfully.I should’ve protected her better.
The thought came hard and familiar.I’d been thinking it nonstop since she vanished.
As the older sister, I was supposed to be the one who knew how to handle bad situations.That was literally my job.I’d spent years as a private investigator digging into cheating spouses, fraud cases, missing persons, and some genuinely dangerous people.
I knew predators.Could spot a lie from a mile away and knew what evil looked like.
And somehow, I still hadn’t protected Erin.
I’d finally decided I couldn’t spend another night sitting in that crappy hotel room doing nothing.I needed answers.
So I’d showered, thrown on jeans and a hoodie, and headed back to Skull Island.Alone.Which, in hindsight, maybe wasn’t the smartest thing I’d ever done, but grief and exhaustion had started eating away at my judgment days ago.
I remembered gripping the steering wheel too tightly while driving across the bridge toward the island.The water below had looked black beneath the moonlight.The haunted house lights glowed through the trees in the distance, eerie and flickering against the dark.
Tourists had still been wandering around when I got there.People laughing, screaming, and chainsaws revving somewhere deeper in the attraction.
It had almost pissed me off.
How could people be laughing while my sister might’ve been dead somewhere on that island?
I remembered parking farther away this time.Remembered telling myself to stay calm, ask questions instead of making accusations, and to actually think before opening my mouth.
That plan lasted maybe ten minutes.
I’d headed toward the area behind the haunted house where I figured the club lived.
And then I saw him.
Push.
Even in the dark, I recognized him immediately.
Big.Broad shoulders.Solid as a damn wall.The same guy who’d hauled me over his shoulder earlier like I weighed nothing while I screamed at him the whole way off the island.
My stomach twisted as the memory sharpened.He’d been standing near the lower dock and he hadn’t been alone.
A body.
God, the body.
The image slammed back into me so vividly my breath caught.
Push had been standing over the body like dead bodies were normal.
I remembered freezing.
Every instinct I had as a PI immediately kicking into overdrive.
