Anchor nodded once slowly.“Yeah.”
Hope flickered across McKayla’s face for the first time since finding the poster.Not much, but enough.
“I need the footage from this side too,” she said quickly.“Dock cameras.Ghost town cameras.Anything pointed this direction.”
“You’ll get it,” Anchor told her.
McKayla nodded and finally seemed to realize all of us were still standing there staring at the damn poster like it might suddenly explain itself.We headed back toward the dock with anchor getting into the boat first.
“I want to walk back,” she said suddenly.
Piney looked offended.“Why?”
“Because I want to think.”
“I don’t want to walk,” Piney grumbled.
“Nobody asked you to,” McKayla drawled.
Piney threw his hands in the air.“I’m emotionally exhausted from all this mystery.”
Pull snorted.
Anchor pinched the bridge of his nose.
I glanced at McKayla.“I’ll walk with you.”
Anchor’s eyes came to me immediately.
“We’ll be fine,” I said.
He stared another second before finally nodding.“Ten minutes.If you aren’t back by then, I’m burning down the whole island.”
“That feels dramatic,” McKayla muttered.
“You haven’t met him long enough,” Pull said.“That’s actually reasonable for him.”
Anchor flipped him off.
Piney climbed back into the boat grumbling about unnecessary cardio while Post and Pull followed.
McKayla and I stayed on the dock watching them pull away.
The second the boat disappeared around the bend, the quiet settled heavily between us again.
We started down the path back toward the haunted house.McKayla stayed unusually silent beside me.No jokes.No sarcasm.Just thinking.I watched her from the corner of my eye while we walked.
Her brows were pulled together slightly, and every few seconds she absently rubbed her thumb against the side of her hand like she was trying to work through a puzzle physically.
“You okay?”I asked finally.
She huffed softly.“Depends on your definition of okay.”Her gaze moved ahead again.“It doesn’t feel like Erin is dead.”The conviction in her voice surprised me.“Maybe she’s fine,” McKayla continued quietly.“Maybe she’s off somewhere doing whatever Erin does and has no idea I’m tearing apart a haunted island looking for her.”
“Maybe,” I said carefully.“But it’d still be nice if she called you.”
That got a small laugh out of her.“Yeah,” she admitted.“That’d be nice.”
We rounded a bend in the trail, and there was a rustle in the bushes.McKayla startled hard beside me just as something exploded from the bushes.
