Changing clothes with stitches in the back of my head was not graceful.I managed to swap into an oversized T-shirt and soft shorts from my duffle without falling over, which felt like a win worthy of applause.Unfortunately, no one was there to clap, which was probably for the best because I didn’t need that level of humiliation in my life.
I brushed my teeth, washed my face again, and stared at myself in the bathroom mirror.
Still rough.
Less dumpster chic.Maybe motel-adjacent chaos.
When I walked back into the bedroom, the hallway light spilled softly through the open door.I reached for the knob to close it, then stopped.For a long moment, I stood there with my fingers curled around the edge of the door, listening to the muted sounds of the clubhouse.
Voices somewhere far off.Boots moving.
And next door, quiet.
Push.
I should close the door.Privacy was good.Boundaries were healthy.
I was an independent woman with a missing sister, a concussion, and an active murder investigation to think about.I had plenty going on without examining why leaving a door cracked open made me feel safer.
Still, I didn’t close it.I pulled it until only a few inches remained open enough that if I needed Push, he’d hear me.Enough that I could tell myself it was practical.
I turned off the lamp and climbed back into bed, pulling the blanket up to my chest as I stared at the narrow strip of hallway light cutting across the floor.
I wasn’t going to think too hard about what it meant.
I had enough to worry about with murdered bodies, a missing sister, and a mystery man in a gray hoodie.
Push being right next door didn’t mean anything.
Probably.
Chapter Nine
Push
Four days of surveillance footage was enough to make a man consider setting every computer on Skull Island on fire and calling it problem solved.
Unfortunately, Vin probably would’ve cried, Anchor would’ve kicked my ass, and McKayla would’ve just found another screen somewhere and kept going.
The woman was relentless.
For four damn days, she’d gone through footage from every camera we had, then backed up and gone through it again.Haunted house entrances, midway paths, dock cameras, employee-only routes, parking areas, the bridge, the cabins, and every grainy angle Vin could pull from the system.She watched hours of people screaming, laughing, eating funnel cakes, dropping phones, stumbling out of the haunted house, making out behind booths, and generally acting like dumbasses.
But the guy in the gray hoodie didn’t show again.Not even close.
That was the part that bothered me.
He’d been careful enough to avoid us for weeks, but somehow he’d let himself be seen within thirty minutes of everybody discovery.That wasn’t an accident.McKayla said it the second day, after pausing a clip so many times I thought the spacebar might give up and die.“He wanted to be seen those times.”
She was right.That made the whole thing worse.
A man who made mistakes was one thing.A man who let you think he made mistakes was another.
By the fourth morning, I was about ready to drag McKayla out of that damn chair and throw the laptop into the lake.She had circles under her eyes, her hair was twisted up on top of her head with a pencil shoved through it, and she’d started muttering to the footage like the people on-screen might answer if she insulted them enough.
They didn’t.
I knew because I’d been beside her through most of it.
