Lost Girls(61)

“She wasn’t moving and she wasn’t breathing.”

It was like knowing the end of the story, but not the beginning. I knew that everything must have worked out because I had seen Janie alive since then. “What happened?” I asked.

“The announcer lifted your hand and proclaimed you the winner, but you pulled away from him. You got down on your hands and knees and started doing CPR on Cyclone. Not exactly what you’re supposed to do—”

I stared at him with glassy eyes. I still couldn’t remember what had happened, but if what he said was true, then I had broken one of the cardinal Phase Two rules. Never touch your opponent after the fight’s been called. I’d risked everything to try and save her.

“Thankfully, Cyclone came to,” he continued. “But the cheering stopped and a deadly silence filled the room. The cameras stopped panning the crowd and the rest of the fights that night were cancelled. Meanwhile, you and your patron got into a huge argument. When you were finally ready to leave, you were majorly pissed off and said you never wanted to come back. You even quit your team and told all your girls they were on their own. Zoe and I tried to talk you out of it, and then that turned into another fight—”

Flickers of our argument came back to me. I remembered screaming at him, telling him that he had to drop out of the club, too, or I never wanted to see him again.

“It didn’t matter what I said.” He stared at the floor, his jaw clenched shut.

Everything he said was true, yet it had a hollow ring to it, like there was more to this story. I kept getting flashes of those cars that I’d seen lined up at the rave Saturday night, and a horrible shiver ran over my skin, along with a sick feeling in my gut.

The two of us were running away from a stolen car, being chased by a cop—

I gasped and took a step away from him.

“We were stealing cars!”

He shook his head. “I was stealing cars, you only came with me once. You wanted me to quit, but I couldn’t—”

“Why not?”

He lifted his shoulders, looking defeated. “The club’s a different place for guys. They only give us Blue Thunder until we get hooked.” For the first time I noticed a slight tremor in his hands. He must have been struggling with side effects, just like I was. “Once we’re addicted, our patrons won’t give us more, not unless we do what they say. For a long time, I just had to get new recruits for Phase Two. But once I had the Ravens put together, the rules changed. Stealing became a requirement—we had to bring them a car every week or two.”

“Why didn’t you just go to the cops?”

He laughed. “That’s what you said before. Who would believe me, Rach? I don’t even know who these people are. I tried to quit taking Blue Thunder on my own, more than once, but—it just didn’t work.”

I waited, wondering what else had happened.

“So, we broke up,” he said, looking like he had ended up on the mat at the end of a long fight. “And then a couple of days later, you went missing.” He was staring into my eyes now, a deep, soulful look like he hoped I would believe him and that he wouldn’t lose me again. “I never told you how much I cared about you. Not before you went missing. And when you were gone, I couldn’t live with myself. It felt like everything was my fault—”

I believed what he said—that we had broken up because he wouldn’t leave the club—but there was still some other detail he wasn’t telling me. I could hear it in his voice and see it in his eyes, almost like when he’d asked me out a few days ago and then wasn’t sure if I’d say yes.

“But something else happened, didn’t it?” I asked. “You’re not telling me everything.”

“You asked why we broke up and that’s it. There isn’t anything else.”

“Yeah.” I nodded my head. “There is.”

But I could tell he was done talking. I frowned, disappointed, wondering why there was such a guilty look in his eyes. “I gotta get to class now,” I said. “See ya later.”

He tried to grab my hand, but I pulled away and headed down the hall. Alone.





Chapter Thirty-Three


I walked away from Dylan more confused than ever. There was a heaviness in my soul now, like I’d been kicked in the chest and knocked backward. The fact that he and the Ravens had gotten involved in stealing cars was worse than I’d expected. Had the Skulls and the Orcs and the other boys’ teams been forced to participate in criminal activity, too, and if so, what? The more I found out about this underground fight club, the worse it got. Still, I wasn’t going to give up, I couldn’t. I had to find out what had happened to Nicole and this was only Round One.

That’s what I kept telling myself as I shoved my way down the hall, from one class to another. I kept feeling like I’d missed something, like something was coming and I needed to be ready for it, like somewhere along the line I was going to get another clue. Then, when I walked into history, I saw that none of the Dragon Girls were in class today.

Had Sammy/Komodo been injured that badly during our fight?

Guilt mixed with the bewilderment I was already feeling.

Throughout history class, I kept getting brief memory flashes from the night Dylan and I had stolen a car together, how it had been exciting at first, but had turned terrifying when we almost got caught. Panic rushed over me when I realized he could end up in prison if he stayed in Phase Two. There had to be something we could do, some way to get him out.