Page 158 of Property of Bob

He didn’t answer. I moved toward him with Ramona, and the girls following.

Skull lifted one hand. “Stop.”

Everybody stopped.

I looked where he was looking. At first, I didn’t see anything. Just plywood, one of the mannequins, and a stack of old boxes.

Then Skull moved closer to the wall. His eyes narrowed. “What is it?” I asked.

He pointed toward the narrow space between the last shelf and the wall.

Something was there.

I couldn’t tell what.

Skull didn’t touch it.

He just stared.

“Skull?”

His jaw tightened. “That wasn’t there before.”

Chapter Fifteen

Ramona

I had no idea what Skull was looking at. That didn’t stop the hair on the back of my neck from standing up.

One second, Bob had been beside me, looking through a shelf full of old masks and fake rats, and the next, Skull’s voice had changed. It wasn’t loud. He hadn’t yelled or even sounded scared. If anything, he’d gotten quieter.

That was worse.

I leaned slightly to the side, trying to see around Bob. “What is it?”

Still nothing.

The fun we’d been having five minutes ago disappeared so fast it was almost like someone had flipped a switch. Shay wasn’t making jokes about scary boxes anymore. Pearl had moved closer to her, and McKayla was staring past Bob with the same focused expression I’d seen on her face whenever the conversation turned to her sister or everything that had happened on the island.

I looked at Skull again.

He was staring at the narrow space between the end of one of the shelves and the wall.

“Skull?” Bob rasped.

Skull pointed. “That wasn’t there before.”

My eyes followed his finger.

At first, I still didn’t see anything.

There was a shelf. A wall. Some boxes stacked on the floor. Nothing that looked particularly interesting, let alone something that had made three bikers suddenly go quiet.

Then I saw it. Something black was wedged into the narrow gap. “What is that?” I asked.

Bob’s hand shot out and caught my arm when I started to move closer. “Stay here.”

“I was only trying to see,” I huffed.