Page 160 of Property of Bob

“No shit,” Bob muttered. “Old as shit, though.”

Skull’s eyes moved over the patches. “Old colors.”

“How old?” I asked.

Nobody answered right away.

Pearl stepped up beside me. “It has to be before them.”

I looked at her. She nodded toward Bob, Skull, and Prime. “Before the current club.”

That got my attention.

I’d heard enough since arriving on Skull Island to know there had been Kings here before the men standing in this room. The original club. The men who had been here before Anchor and the others took over the island.

The men nobody seemed to know enough about. Or maybe nobody wanted to talk about them.

Bob moved closer to Skull. “Turn it around.”

Skull did.

The back of the cut faced us.

The Kings of Anarchy patch covered most of it, faded but still clear enough to recognize. The leather around it was scratched and worn, and one corner of the patch looked like it had been repaired at some point.

Bob stared at it. “You ever seen this before?”

“No,” Prime muttered.

“Me either.”

Skull shook his head.

I looked between them. “You don’t know who it belonged to?”

“No,” Bob answered.

“Why isn’t there a name on it?” Pearl asked.

Bob pointed toward the front of the cut where it was ripped and tattered. “Should be.”

Skull sighed. “Something was there.”

“Had to have been the road name,” Bob replied. “But it’s not like the patch fell off. It was fucking ripped off.”

The leather around the stitch marks had been sliced. Small cuts ran through some of the old thread, and there were tiny pieces still caught in the holes.

Skull turned the cut slightly toward the overhead light.

“Yeah.”

Prime swore under his breath.

A chill moved across my skin. The missing name bothered me more than I thought it should.

If somebody had left a random old Kings cut back here, that would’ve been creepy enough. But they hadn’t.

They’d hidden it behind a shelf.