Page 13 of Property of Bob

Stubborn. Pissed. Refusing to stay where somebody told him to. I pressed my lips together. “He really did that?”

Prime nodded. “Made Skull wheel him down to another floor because he wanted to know what was going on.”

Wheel him.

My smile disappeared. “He’s in a wheelchair?”

Nobody answered fast enough.

My stomach dropped. “Is he paralyzed?”

“No,” Anchor said immediately.

The breath rushed out of me.

“No. He’s weak. Still recovering. He lost a lot of blood.”

I nodded slowly, trying to put everything together without actually knowing enough to put anything together.

“When can I see him tomorrow?”

Anchor glanced toward the clock. “I’ll take you.”

“What time?”

“Morning.”

“That isn’t a time.”

“After he’s awake.”

“How will you know?”

“Because we’ve been spending enough time at that damn hospital to know his schedule.” Something in his voice shifted. Tired. Angry. Worried.

These men cared about Ashland. That shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did.

The man I remembered had been eighteen with no idea what he wanted beyond getting out and finding something that felt like his. Apparently, he’d found it.

I looked around the clubhouse again.

The men. The women. The motorcycles outside. The weird, haunted island. His life. And I knew almost none of it.

“Okay,” I finally said.

Prime blinked. “That easy?”

“No. I’m just too tired to fight all of you tonight.” This was not at all what I thought would happen once I got to Skull Island, and I needed a second to wrap my head around it all.

“Smart.”

I pointed at him. “Don’t push it.”

Anchor nodded toward the hallway. “Pearl and Shay can show you where you can sleep.”

A curvy, pretty woman rose from the couch, and the woman with bright red hair at the bar jumped off her stool. “Come on,” she called.

“Shay’s my ol’ lady,” Prime pointed to the redhead.