King of Forgotten Clubs Read online

I reached blindly under the next trash can I passed. My fingers hit a square of paper. I pulled it out.

  It was a rectangle of stationery with three words written on it: Let her go.

  No.

  I flipped channels. “Birdie?”

  “The number you are trying to reach has been disconnected,” a mechanical voice answered.

  But that had to be wrong. Entire lines didn’t just disappear. I pulled at the earpiece and fumbled with it, trying to find a button I could press to make everything go right.

  I had to keep calm. If I panicked, it was all over.

  I made a sharp left and took off down a side street. I needed to make it to the emergency meet-up point. The rest of the team would be waiting there. We’d figure out how to handle this. It could still turn out fine.

  No one was at the meeting point. I slowed until I came to a stop in front of the swing set. No one was there, and I had no idea how to make it right again. What if they had Birdie? Or Madison? Or Annabelle? What if my rash plan had gotten my best friend killed?

  Mulch crunched behind me. I swung around.

  Birdie stood there, panting as she caught her breath. “What happened?”

  I took a step toward her, then another. Birdie. Birdie was okay. I broke into a run and crashed into her, engulfing her in a hug. I half-expected her to push me away, but she hugged me back instead.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “We’ll figure this out. We’re infallible, remember?”

  “Sure, until we screw up.” I gestured vaguely as if to encompass our history of poorly devised plans, getting caught, and failing to talk our way out of the mess.

  We laughed and fell away from each other.

  “Where’s everyone else?” I asked.

  “Annabelle’s still trying to get a lock on them. I came here after my phone went dead and you ran off. It was weird. One minute it was working, then nothing.”

  I handed her the note I’d found. “They knew.”

  She took in the words, eyes wide. “We have to warn Annabelle. And get Madison. We might need some firepower, after all.”

  “Birdie”—I took the paper back—“I can’t ask you to fight an entire illegal operation for me. This is the point where you can back out.”

  “Hey.” She grinned. “You went against Skittle for me. You went against me for me, and if that isn’t more terrifying than an entire gang of heavily armed cokeheads, I don’t know what is.”

  “You’re right. I fear for every heavily armed one of them.” I wasn’t sure I believed it, but it felt good to smile. Being around Birdie was always like that. Nostalgia threatened to sucker-punch me. For the first time since she’d left me, I sidestepped it. I’d never get back what I’d lost. But maybe there was something greater waiting to be found. Ugh, if I didn’t get away from all this sappiness, I’d have to revoke my membership to the pessimist club.

  Birdie slung a bag over her shoulder. “Let’s get Madison then find Annabelle. Those junkies won’t know what hit them.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  How to Fall

  Exhibit K: I try to do the right thing. See for yourself how that works out.

  Madison was waiting in a café near the drop site. “What happened?” she asked when we got there.

  “Long story,” I said. “The short version is, we’re going after the bastards that have Kali.”

  Her face lit up. “And you need to blow something up to get there?”

  “Probably.” I was pretty sure I was lying, but I wanted to keep Madison on board, just in case.

  “I’ve only got low grades in my purse. We’ll have to go to my car for the good stuff.”

  On second thought, I needed to get as far away from Madison as possible.

  “You’re carrying it on you?” Birdie’s voice was half horror, half awe.

  Madison tilted her head. “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “What do you do if someone searches your purse? Wait, is it hidden in a compact? Do you have a lipstick laser?” Birdie reached eagerly for Madison’s purse.

  “I keep it in protective cases, obviously,” Madison said. “I have a permit.”

  “How—”

  I smacked the table. “Never mind that. We need to find Annabelle.”

  “They were going north,” Birdie said, shaking her head.

  “What are the odds that they kept to the same direction?” I asked.

  “Nothing to a million,” Madison said. She dumped some cash on the table for her bill. “They’ll have made plans to lose a tail.”

  I made a mental note to look into whether Madison could be some sort of teenaged Army spy. “Great. Do we have a way to get ahold of Annabelle?”

  “We could call her if her phone’s still working,” Birdie said.

  “What about tracking her phone?” I asked.

  “Only Annabelle could manage something like that,” Madison said.

  “So in other words, Annabelle is the only one who can find Annabelle?” I made a second mental note, this one involving not sending the smartest person in our group out into the field.

  Madison nodded.

  “Let’s hope they didn’t cut off her phone, then.” I fought back the icy dread threatening to form in my stomach. Nothing bad could possibly have happened to Annabelle. She would’ve kept a safe distance, not done anything to give herself away. I was sure she was fine.

  Birdie’s forehead wrinkled. “How did they get my number at all?”

  “Not that important right now.” I pulled Madison’s phone out of my pocket. “Can you call Annabelle on this thing?”

  Madison held down a button and spoke into the phone. “Call Annabelle.”

  “Dialing,” the phone voice chirped.

  “Hello?” Annabelle answered.

  Relief washed over me. “Where are you?”

  “The Heights. You’ll never believe what I’ve seen. There’s this mean-faced guy—”

  “Wait. The Heights?” Birdie interrupted. “The drug dealers are in suburbia?”

  “Yeah, in this cute little picket fence house. Weird place for a drug operation. But that’s not the point.”

  “You’re not near them, are you?” My fingers tapped an uneven rhythm on the table.

  “I’m across the street, they don’t even know I’m here. But what I’ve been trying to say is, the quaint house isn’t even the weirdest part. There’s these muscly thug guys, and they’re all taking orders from this short blond chick.”

  My stomach gave a sickening lurch.

  Annabelle continued, oblivious. “She’s got to be the boss. They’re terrified of her.”

  I opened my mouth then snapped it closed again. There had to be a better explanation. “You learned all that from watching across the street?”

  “Not exactly. They’re not so great about encrypting their network.”

  “Annabelle,” I protested. It seemed strange that the same people who had the skills to take out our phones would fail to protect their own.

  Then again, if they were in possession of the contacts list from my phone, which I hadn’t seen since the club with Kali… it wouldn’t take much skill at all.

  “Relax. They’ll never catch me.”

  “I’ve heard that before,” Birdie said.

  “That’s because you’ve said that before,” Annabelle said. “You’re forgetting that I don’t overlook things like you do.” She paused. “Oops.”

  “What?” I said.

  “Overlooked something,” she said. Muffled shouting came from the background. “Shi—” The line clicked, and she was gone.

  “Annabelle?” I grabbed the earpiece and shook it. “Redial—call Annabelle—do something!”

  “It doesn’t work like that. You’re going to break it.” Madison wrestled the earpiece away from me.

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” Birdie said, but she sounded dubious.

  “She isn’t fine,” I said. In the war of dread versus enforced calm, dread was winning. “I wanted to believ
e Kali because I thought she could make everything better, and now Annabelle—” My voice caught.

  “We’ll go to the Heights and make sure she’s okay,” Birdie said.

  “I’ll get my car,” Madison said. She patted my hand. “Enough explosives makes everything better. You’ll see.”

  I didn’t know whether it was experience, intuition, or the thought of driving around in a car full of explosives, but I didn’t remotely trust this plan.

  “No,” I said. “We’re not charging in and getting Annabelle hurt.”

  “We’re not leaving her there,” Birdie said.

  I shook my head. “That’s not what I’m saying.”

  Madison nodded sagely. “Guided missiles.”

  I took a deep breath. “We’re calling the police.”

  I couldn’t recall a single time I’d ever walked into a police station on purpose. The back of my neck itched. Could they pull my record just from the cameras seeing my face?

  “Pak Higgins.”

  I jumped when the well-dressed woman behind the glass window called my name. Birdie and Madison had chosen to wait outside, neither of them quite understanding why we were getting the police involved in what they saw as a personal dispute. I also hadn’t explained to them my suspicions about Kali yet. I was pretty sure I’d been played, but I wasn’t ready to say it out loud yet.

  One thing was sure, though. I wasn’t letting Annabelle suffer for it.

  The woman buzzed me through a heavy oak door. I froze when I saw the officer on the other side. He clearly wasn’t happy to see me. The feeling was mutual.

  “Why shouldn’t I arrest you right now?” His shaved head gleamed in the fluorescents.

  “You killed my roommates,” I said. I shifted a step back, inching the door farther open. “You tried to kill me.”

  “I didn’t kill anyone, Mr. Higgins. I knocked them out.”

  “There was blood.”

  “They spilled barbeque sauce,” he said, his voice heavy with disgust.

  Actually, that sounded incredibly probable. “You still tried to shoot me.”

  “You were abetting a dangerous criminal, Mr. Higgins. Dancy Armstrong has a quarter of the drug runners in L.A. under her thumb. Her war with her own family has cost the city countless lives. And if I’d been aiming to kill you, you’d be dead.”

  “Her name is Dancy?” I knew it was hardly the most relevant piece of information at the moment, but it was the one I caught on. “That’s a terrible name.”

  “You can discuss it with her in jail.”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I’m not ‘abetting’ Ka—Dancy anymore, and I need your help. I think one of my friends is in trouble.”

  Shaved head crossed his arms.

  I couldn’t afford to get stuck there. “I have information. I know where Dancy is.”

  Officer Keana, as he’d roughly introduced himself, scowled all the way to the Heights. “And all you know is that it’s a house with a picket fence?”

  “And thugs,” Madison volunteered. “She said there were thugs there. With mean faces. So look for that.”

  “She called it quaint,” Birdie said. “So maybe something small?”

  I bounced my foot against the floorboards of the passenger seat and wished I was driving. We weren’t going fast enough. Madison had volunteered her car as an option that blended in better than a police car, and Keane had insisted on driving. None of us had informed him about the payload in the car. It would only have made him lose focus on the much more important crime here, which was the one we weren’t committing.

  “This is it,” I said. The house outside the window was white with yellow trim and, yes, a white picket fence. It was absolutely Annabelle’s definition of “cute.”

  “You can’t be sure,” Keane said.

  “I’m sure,” I said.

  “Annabelle said she was across the street,” Birdie said. The house across the street was set much farther back from the road and bordered by a hedgerow. “Do you think she’s still hiding there?”

  “No,” I said. I pressed the dial button on Madison’s phone. “Call Annabelle.”

  “You’ve reached Annabelle,” her voice said before the phone went straight to voicemail.

  “She probably just turned it off so the ringing wouldn’t give her away,” Birdie said.

  “Yeah.” Or she could’ve lost it in a scuffle. Or it could have been taken from her. “We need to get in there.”

  “I’ll go in,” Keane said. “The rest of you, get out of here and wait at the station.”

  “We’re not leaving,” I said. “This is Annabelle.”

  “We know what we’re doing,” Birdie said. “We’re professionals. Sort of.”

  Madison nodded. “I was promised explosions.”

  Keane shook his head. “You can’t be serious. You’re teenagers.”

  “Maybe you haven’t heard of us,” Birdie said. “We’re the Stone Throwers. We’re kind of incredible.”

  Keane clenched his jaw. “This is my job.”

  “It’s our friend,” I said. “And we brought you into this. Without our intel, you wouldn’t have anything.”

  “You don’t know that,” Keane said.

  “You’re here, aren’t you?” I said. “Now I’m going in to talk to Ka— Dancy. Cover me or hide in the back or whatever you want to do. I don’t have time for this.” I shoved open the car door and got out.

  “We don’t know what the setup is,” Birdie argued.

  “They have a front door, don’t they?” I forced my hand to stop shaking. Couldn’t have anyone thinking I was nervous or something.

  “Wait, take this.” Madison rolled down her window and held out a square box. I shoved it in my pocket and walked to the house.

  “Pak, get back here! We need a plan!” Birdie yelled after me.

  Keane was storming around the car. I ignored him and quickened my pace. The driveway alone felt like it took ten minutes to walk. I considered trying to kick in the door before I decided to ring the doorbell. Say good-bye to Mr. Subtlety. I was being direct.

  No answer. I rang again.

  “Vince,” someone yelled loud enough to vibrate the windows. “Would you get that?”

  Vince. The name tugged at my memory.

  My contact’s name is Vince.

  Could they have got to him?

  Yes.

  Vince opened the door. He was a burly man in tight bike shorts and a purple tank top. The only thing he had more of than hair was muscle. It took me a moment to recognize him in the bright sunlight of the street, but I put it together. He was the one who’d snatched Kali from the club.

  “It’s some kid,” he called over his shoulder. He turned back to me. “What do you want, kid?”

  I decided to run with what I suspected. “I’m looking for my friend. Blond girl. Long legs. Pierced nose. Can’t miss her.”

  Vince’s eyes widened before he snapped back into a cold expression. “She can’t come out to play today. She has a cold.”

  Maybe the guy was in a competition for a most stereotypical thug award. Except for the strange outfit. Thugs should never be seen in revealing workout clothes. Ever. “Is she okay? I haven’t seen her in a while.”

  “She’s on her deathbed. It’s time for you to go.”

  “Oh. In that case, could you tell my girlfriend I was here? She’s the brunette you’ve got tied up in your basement.” My wild guess must have been close enough because Vince paused.

  I pulled the box Madison had given me out of my pocket, hoping for something useful to deal with Muscle Vince. I yanked open the lid. A sandwich and some potato chips innocently nestled in the bottom. I flipped it over. Maybe there was a secret compartment somewhere. The food hit the ground. The box remained simple Tupperware. I was doomed.

  “Vince,” someone called from the top of the stairs, “what’s going on?”

  I knew that voice.

  “Nothing, Dancy,” Vince answered. “Just some
kid causing trouble.”

  “Get rid of him. We have work to do.” Dancy came to the bottom of the stairs. She saw me. Her hand covered her mouth. Too late.

  “Fake police,” I said. I couldn’t keep the anger out of my voice.

  “I…” She looked away.

  “Save it. Where’s Annabelle?” Everything else could wait.

  “Who?” Dancy checked out the door behind me as if someone was about to spring out of hiding. In her defense, I wasn’t actually sure what anyone I’d brought with me was up to at that moment.

  “We’ve got a girl in the kitchen,” Vince said. He flexed his muscles. “Caught her snooping around in the bushes.”

  “Give her back.” I did my own imitation of muscle flexing. It wasn’t quite as impressive. “Or I signal for the SWAT team behind me to attack.”

  She checked past me again. “You haven’t got any backup.”

  “Not that you can see. Oh, and I’ll take the money you took from me while I’m at it. And my cell phone.”

  Finally, she looked straight at me. Dancy pulled my phone out of her pocket and pressed it into my hand. “Leave, Pak. I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Not until I have Annabelle.” I widened my stance to take up the whole doorway.

  Her shoulders slumped. “I could kill you.”

  Despite all the lies she’d told me, I believed she didn’t want to hurt me. “You won’t.”

  She bit her lip and looked away.

  “Dancy?” Vince said.

  “Go get her,” Dancy said.

  “So,” I said once Vince walked away, “the mob is after you because of your father’s testimony.”

  “He is testifying.” Dancy wrapped her arms around herself. “Against me. The police have been trying to drag me into court.”

  “Aiding and abetting. Check.”

  “What?”

  “Just a game I’m playing.”

  Annabelle strolled into the front hall in signature Annabelle I own the world fashion. She took in the situation with a glance. “Blond hair, awkward tension. Oh, I get it now. You must be Kali.”

  Dancy nodded. “Where’s Vince?”

  Annabelle waved vaguely. “Around.”