Page 75 of Property of Prime
We waited until we heard his car start and roll off the island.
Push blew out a breath.“A nosy PI sniffing around while we’ve got a psycho killing people digging up skeletons.Perfect.”
Vin shook his head.“A missing sister?”
“Maybe her sister is one of the four bodies we got buried,” Push finished.
“Maybe,” I said quietly.“Or maybe her missing sister doesn’t have anything to do with us.”
Anchor scrubbed a hand over his jaw.“We don’t know shit yet.What wedoknow is this: if a PI starts poking around the island, we need to control it.Redirect her.Don’t let her wander.”
Vin nodded.“We can handle her.”
Push cracked his knuckles.“Hell, I prefer a PI over a cop.At least she won’t show up with backup.”
I stared down the path Banks had taken.Something about the timing scraped wrong.PI shows up right after the skeleton, after the notes, after the killer ramped up his game.
“We keep our guard up,” Anchor said.“That’s all we can do.”
Vin scoffed.“Been what we’re doing, but shit still keeps happening.”
We stayed there another minute and let the information settle into the cracks of everything we were already juggling.
Bodies.
Skeletons.An unsolved drowning twenty-three years ago.Family secrets that involve Shay and Bernice.Now a PI with a missing sister.
Jesus Christ.
Could shit just calm down for a few days?
Anchor finally exhaled and stepped toward the door.“We’ll get this shit figured out.”
I followed him in, my chest tight with the weight of what the sheriff had left behind.
A private investigator was one thing.
But a private investigator looking for someone who vanished after visitingourhaunted house?
Yeah.
This wasn’t just a coincidence.
And whatever came next, we needed to be ready.
Chapter Twenty
Shay
I didn’t sleep well.
You’d think after a night of drinking Sex on the Beaches—not Sexes on the Beach, as Pearl insisted was the plural—and watching Ghostbusters until Pearl passed out with nacho crumbs on her shirt, I would’ve crashed like a rock.
But no.
My brain had decided now was the perfect time to replay every memory I had ever tried to bury.Faces I only half-remembered.A faint voice.The scream by the water.My mother’s hand pulling me away.Bernice’s eyes soft, warm, familiar even though I didn’t reallyrememberthem beyond the photos.
And the skeleton.
