Page 68 of Property of Anchor
It was a decent haul across the island to the surveillance room.
When I got there, Skull was already hunched over the main console.Rows of screens filled the wall, each showing different parts of the island.Cliffs, dock, boat launch, trails, gift shop, cabins… all of it under constant watch.
“Couldn’t sleep,” Skull said without looking at me.“Decided to scan footage from last night again, especially around the time we found the body.”
“What’d you find?”
He clicked a few keys, scrubbing the footage to a specific timestamp, two hours before the body turned up.
“This camera.”He pointed at one near the cliffs.“It glitched for about six seconds.Not much.Barely noticed it the first time.”
He slowed the footage, frame by frame.
“Right there,” he said.
On the screen, a shape flickered across the frame.Not a full image.Not clear.But just enough.A figure in a hoodie, dark fabric, barely visible.
“Go back,” I said.
He did.
“Freeze.Zoom.”
Skull enhanced it.The screen sharpened just enough to see what I was hoping wasn’t there.
The faded outline of aKings of Anarchypatch on the back of the hoodie.
“No name,” Skull said.“No rank.Just the crest.”
“Timestamp?”
He nodded grimly.“Nine fifteen p.m.You found the body at eleven nine p.m.”
I stared at the screen with my jaw clenched.“So they’re using the blind spots.”We had tried to find all of the blind spots, but it was fucking impossible.We had severely upgraded the surveillance, but there were still places to hide.
“Yeah,” Skull said.“Whoever it is, they know the system.And they knew we’d eventually catch them, just not fast enough.”
I ran a hand over my face, trying to piece it together.“Venom?”I asked.
“Maybe,” Skull said.“But you said Razor said he might be dead.That fucker was into some sick shit back when everything went down, and I really doubt he’s on the straight and narrow now.”
“Razor also said Venom had a thing for making people disappear,” I pondered.
“Wouldn’t be a stretch for him to do this,” Skull admitted.“But it could be someone else.”
I hated that.Hated not having a face to put to this.
“Replay the walk down from the cliffs,” I said.“See if we catch that hoodie again.”
Skull tapped away, but there was nothing.The figure had vanished like smoke in the dark.
“They’re moving in the gaps,” I muttered.“Every fucking blind spot we’ve got.”
Skull nodded once, his eyes never leaving the screens.“We’ve got to plug them.Every one of them.”
I let out a slow breath and dropped into the chair beside him, the old metal creaking beneath me.My elbow rested on the table, and my fingers dragged over my jaw.I watched the replay for the tenth time.The hoodie figure blurred into the trees, the old KOAMC patch barely visible.The fucker could’ve been anyone.Or no one.A ghost in our system.
“There’s only one left, Skull,” I said quietly.
