King of Forgotten Clubs (5 page)

“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 believe 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.”

“Let’s go.” I reached for Annabelle’s hand.
 

We headed back out onto the street. I didn’t turn back to watch Dancy slam the door behind us.

Annabelle squinted up at the sky. “Not quite damsel-ish, is she?”

“No.” I held back a hysterical laugh.

“But, hey, you got to save me.”

“You were already loose when I got there. Did you knock out Vince?”

“Only a little bit. Anyway, when it comes to presents and rescue attempts, it’s really the thought that counts. So”—Annabelle tilted her head toward me—“where’s my money?”

“About that.” Behind us, I could hear breaking glass followed by shouting. I walked faster. Annabelle followed suit. “It’s about to be checked into evidence. I’m pretty sure you’ll get it back. I know people.”