Danger at the Iron Dragon Read online

  Seeing the doubt in my eyes, Carly shook her head. “I thought so.” She sighed. “I can’t believe that Lucy would be behind something like this. Brock, maybe, but it just seems so awful. They must really hate me. Anyway, if I drop out now, maybe they’ll leave us alone—”

  “No,” George piped up. “You can’t give up. Coach Ethan doesn’t want you to, and I’m willing to bet the rest of the team doesn’t want you to either. You guys are all fighters—are you really going to let someone intimidate you like this?”

  Carly sank onto a bench and dropped her head into her hands. “I don’t know. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Just, please—give me a little more time,” I told her.

  After a few tense moments, Carly nodded. “All right, I trust you, Nancy. Just don’t make me regret it. If I have to drop out at the last minute, I will.”

  “I won’t let you down,” I said.

  She got up and left the locker room, and George and I started putting on our own gis. A sick feeling filled my stomach as I tied my white belt. She trusts me, but I’m not so sure I trust myself.

  Once we were dressed, George and I walked to the training room to bow in. With the big tournament only two days away, all the competitors were putting in one last big push to get ready. Everyone was panting and dripping with sweat after the grueling warm-up—I must have guzzled half my water bottle by the time we were done.

  “Ugh, why is there sand on the mat?” George muttered, brushing off her feet.

  Jamie was standing next to us, and she bent her knee to inspect the bottoms of her own feet. “Huh,” she said, and brushed hers off too. “Someone must have tracked it in from outside. Probably all those firefighters and policemen who were in here.”

  I wiped the sweat from my brow and peered at the thermostat on the wall. Despite the fact that it was warm outside, for some reason, Coach Ethan had turned up the heat to eighty degrees.

  “Why does it have to be so hot in here?” I groaned.

  Jamie shrugged. “Competing is really stressful,” she whispered back. “On the mind and on the body. If you get used to it being hard here in the room, it makes the competition a little bit easier. There’s a quote Coach always tells us: ‘Under pressure, you don’t rise to the occasion, you sink to the level of your training. That’s why we train hard.’ You know what I mean?”

  I thought about that idea, then nodded. It was true that during those times when I was in real danger, my mind went on autopilot. If I didn’t have all that experience dealing with sticky situations, I probably would lose control and panic. You can’t expect to survive a fire if you aren’t used to taking the heat.

  After our water break, all the students sat in a circle around Coach Ethan and Nate, a purple belt who he’d called out to help demonstrate the evening’s technique. “In many ways,” Coach Ethan said as the lesson began, “Jiu-Jitsu is like human chess. For every move you make”—he reached out to grab the lapel of Nate’s gi—“there’s a move your opponent can make to defend against it.” In response, Nate grabbed Coach Ethan’s outstretched arm and dragged it forward so that he could swing around to the head coach’s back. From there, he grabbed Coach Ethan around the waist and drove him down to the mat.

  “You see?” Coach Ethan said, rising to a kneeling position once Nate had released his grip. “I made my move, Nate made his. And like I always say, what’s the first rule of Jiu-Jitsu? If you can do it…”

  “Attack the back!” the class finished.

  “That’s right,” Coach Ethan said. “So, if every move has a countermove, you need a strategy, just like a chess player. You need to know all the different ways that your opponent could react, so you’re always two steps ahead.” He and Nate got back up and reset their position. “Sometimes you can take advantage of what your opponent thinks you’re going to do and trick them into putting themselves in a bad spot.” This time, when Coach Ethan reached out his hand and Nate leaned forward to grab it, the coach instantly dropped to his knee and shot forward, grabbing Nate by both legs and knocking him to the mat. “You can throw your opponent off-balance by faking one move to cover up what you’re really planning,” Coach Ethan said, getting to his feet once more and facing the class. “But remember, your opponent can do the same thing. Underestimating them could cost you the whole match. Jiu-Jitsu may look like it’s only a contest of strength and agility, but it’s just as much a battle of wits. If you can outsmart your opponent, you’re that much closer to winning the game.”

  After Nate and Coach Ethan finished teaching us how to do the double leg takedown he’d shown, the class split up into pairs to drill the technique. Somehow I ended up being partnered with Jeremy. George, who was drilling with Jamie across the room, grinned wickedly my way and gave me two thumbs-up.

  Jeremy must have seen the concern on my face. “Don’t worry,” he said, taking off his glasses and setting them aside. “Part of being good at wrecking people is also knowing how not to wreck people.” True to his word, working on the takedowns together turned out to be a breeze. Despite being a giant, Jeremy was very light on his feet. We soon got into a regular rhythm of knocking each other over.

  After a few minutes, my mind began to wander. I couldn’t stop thinking about the case. How was it that all the clues pointed to Carly’s past at Lockdown, yet I couldn’t find any solid evidence to nail down a suspect? Why couldn’t I shake the feeling that something about this mystery was very, very wrong?

  With all these thoughts filling my head, I wasn’t ready when Jeremy came in for the next takedown. His shoulders hit me in the belly, knocking me back to my senses—but not fast enough. An instant later, my body hit the ground like a sack of bricks.

  Wham!

  I lay gasping on the mat. Well, I thought, that’s what you get for not paying attention.

  “Hey, are you okay?” Jeremy asked. “You didn’t break your fall.”

  “Yeah,” I said, sitting up with a grimace. “It was my fault. I was distracted.”

  “Something on your mind?”

  “You could say that.”

  “School stuff? Home stuff?”

  “Mystery-solving stuff, actually.”

  “Ohhh,” Jeremy said, his eyes lighting up. “So do you know who marked up our academy and set it on fire?”

  “Not yet,” I admitted. “But something that Coach Ethan said earlier stuck with me. The whole part about faking one move to cover up the real plan…”

  Jeremy studied me with interest. “Is someone trying to throw you off-balance, Nancy?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m going to find out.”

  * * *

  A couple of hours later, George and I were sitting at my kitchen table at home, scarfing down take-out cartons of lo mein that we’d picked up on the way home. Despite all our worrying, we’d both had a really good time in class, and even though I was starving and exhausted, for the first time since this case started, I felt like I was thinking clearly.

  “Anything left for me?” Bess asked, coming in the back door and dropping her gym bag on the floor.

  George, her mouth crammed with noodles, pushed the carton of lo mein across the table to her cousin.

  “You guys are the best,” said Bess. She opened the carton and blissfully inhaled the cloud of Chinese food smells that wafted out before tucking in with her chopsticks.

  “Anything to report?” I asked her.

  Bess shook her head. “Unfortunately, no. Master Brock obviously has a chip on his shoulder about the Carly thing—I overheard him and Lucy Hayes talking about the tournament and strategizing about how to beat her. But no suspicious whispering about threats or mischief at Iron Dragon. And nothing that points to them having hired help to terrorize the competition. Maybe the evidence is there, but I couldn’t find it. Sorry, Nancy.”

  “Don’t apologize. Sometimes not finding any evidence is evidence in itself. If anything, it makes me think that my new theory might be right after all.”

  “
What new theory?” Bess asked.

  “That I’ve been barking up the wrong tree.”

  George popped a shrimp into her mouth. “What do you mean?”

  “From the very beginning of this case, I assumed that Carly was the target. I mean, why wouldn’t I? It made sense, and there was no reason for me to doubt it. But what if someone was putting those clues there to throw me off? What if, by following all those fake clues, I ended up ignoring the real ones?”

  “You’re thinking about Penny, aren’t you?” George asked.

  I nodded. “Something about the way she acted at the construction site, and tonight, was weird. She seemed nervous, awkward—like she’s hiding something. The only question is: What?”

  George set down her chopsticks. “Where’s your laptop?” she asked.

  “It’s in my bag by the door,” I answered. “Why?”

  She got up to grab it. “Because,” she said, setting up the computer on the table and cracking her knuckles, “whatever Penny might be hiding, the magic of the Internet shall reveal.”

  George opened up a search window and typed in Penny’s name. While Bess and I finished our late-night meal, George clicked away, her brows furrowed in concentration as she stared at the screen. I was polishing off the last bite of an egg roll when she sat back in her chair with a “Huh.”

  “What is it?” I asked. “What did you find?”

  “Nothing,” George said. “Well, almost nothing. That’s the weird thing. Penny said she lived in New York before moving to River Heights, but there’s no record of her anywhere in the state. Nothing on public record or on social media that matches her description. It’s almost like Penny Forrester didn’t exist before six months ago, when she moved to town.”

  “Maybe she didn’t,” I said, rubbing my chin. “What if Penny Forrester is a false identity? Maybe she didn’t move to River Heights for a job. Could she have come here to get away from something?”

  “Or someone,” Bess added.

  “Right,” I said, getting up and pacing the room. “That would explain why she was being so evasive when we started asking questions. If she’s the target of the threats, she might be more interested in protecting her true identity than helping us stop whoever is after her.” This new information filled me with a burst of fresh energy. Finally my gut was telling me we were on the right track. “So, let’s say our hunch is correct. Without knowing anything about Penny’s past, we’re still looking at a whole lot of nothing. Who’s coming after her, and why?”

  The question hung in the air. I needed to do something with my hands, so I started to gather up all the empty cartons and other bits of trash from the table. I grabbed a packet of soy sauce, not realizing it was open, and it squirted a pool of brown liquid all over some of Dad’s documents that we’d shoved off to the side before we started chowing down. “Shoot!” I exclaimed, and quickly grabbed some napkins to mop it up. As I was wiping the papers, something on one of the reports caught my eye—the words Crazy Eights.

  My breath caught in my throat. I picked up the document and quickly read through it, my pulse quickening. Once I was done, I picked up my gym bag and started rummaging through it, throwing my sweaty gi and workout clothes onto the floor.

  “I can’t believe it!” I muttered under my breath. “It was right in front of my face all this time!”

  “Nancy…,” Bess said slowly, the way you’d talk to a spooked animal. “What are you doing? What was on that paper?”

  Finally I found my phone and pulled up the photo I’d snapped of the matchbox. “When I was chasing that person through the alley, this fell out of their pocket,” I said, turning the screen so Bess and George could see. “I couldn’t see how it had anything to do with the case at the time, but look at this report from my dad’s case files. He was gathering documents about a series of bank robberies from a few years ago. The last one was in Rosedale—the robbery of Viana Bank. The robbers were caught; Dad prosecuted the case that sent them to prison. This report says that as part of the investigation, they interviewed people from both Viana Bank and from the pub next door: Crazy Eights. Apparently, someone who was working at Crazy Eights was involved in the robbery.”

  “Okay, so our arsonist got their matches from a pub in Rosedale,” George said, puzzled. “Why is that important?”

  “It’s important because of what’s next door to Iron Dragon MMA,” I explained.

  Bess’s jaw dropped. “A bank.”

  “Wait. If the robberies happened a few years ago, and the criminals are in jail, why’s your dad digging up the case again?”

  “Good question,” I said in a low voice. “Because the robbers escaped.”

  “When?” George asked, but I think she already knew the answer.

  “About a week ago.”

  Bess, George, and I exchanged glances as the pieces began to fall into place. “Maybe this case isn’t about Jiu-Jitsu at all,” I said. “Maybe it’s actually about the same thing as most other crimes: money. So we’ve got Penny, who seems to be the victim of these threats, and a connection to two escaped bank robbers. But how do they fit together?” I picked up some other papers from the table, studying each one in turn. “It looks like Dad must have already taken most of the documents to the police. Nothing here has any information that seems useful.”

  A moment later, as if he knew I was thinking about him, Dad shuffled into the kitchen. He tied the rope of his bathrobe around his waist and yawned. “Don’t you girls ever sleep?” he asked.

  “Dad,” I said excitedly, “I think there’s a connection between your old case and my new one.”

  Dad’s eyes brightened as I quickly caught him up on what we’d discovered. “Fascinating,” he said, plopping down on one of the kitchen chairs. “It’s a long shot, but there might be something there.”

  “Is there anything else you remember about the case? Any more details?” I asked.

  Dad rubbed his chin, thinking. “Hmm, it’s been a few years and a few hundred cases since I worked on this one, honey,” he admitted. “And I didn’t look at the files when I pulled them. I just put them in a box and delivered what I thought was pertinent to the case. I’m sorry, Nance.”

  I blew out the air from my cheeks. “It’s okay. We’ll find another way.”

  Suddenly Dad snapped his fingers. “Wait a minute,” he said. “There was a reporter from the Bugle who was covering the case back then. It was a big story at the time, and she wrote a lot of detailed coverage about the robberies. I bet if you got your hands on those old articles, they’d give you all the information you need.”

  I grinned. Now we’re getting somewhere! I ran over to give him a big hug. “Thanks, Dad! You’re the best.”

  “I’m even better after a full night’s sleep,” he grumbled, but I could feel him smiling against my shoulder. “Now,” he said, rubbing his eyes, “will you girls please leave the rest of the mystery solving for tomorrow?”

  We all agreed, and Dad bid us good night and clomped back upstairs to bed.

  As George rose from her chair, I grabbed her wrist. “Before you go, can you do a quick check for those articles online?”

  “No problem,” she replied, and quickly went to work finding the River Heights Bugle website and searching their digital archives. After a few minutes, she sighed and shook her head in frustration. “No luck. It looks like the public archives only cover a twenty-four-month timespan—and those robberies happened three years ago.”

  “Ugh, how annoying,” Bess said.

  “Wait a minute.” A new idea had popped into my head. “It’s the Bugle.…”

  George nodded. “Yeah, why?”

  I grinned. “Because a big fan of mine just happens to work there.” I pulled out my phone and sent a quick text.

  Ever since this case started, I hadn’t been able to shake that feeling that I was being manipulated, fighting a losing game. Well, it was time for that to change. Tomorrow I was going to pay a visit to the Bugle offices to see
my new friend Z. And I was finally going to get some answers.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Getting the Hooks In

  THE NEXT DAY DAWNED WITH mountains of clouds rolling in over River Heights, bringing wind and the promise of rain. Z couldn’t see me until he was done with work, so I spent the day running errands around town. Since Hannah was still away, I thought it would be nice to take care of some things so she wouldn’t have as much to do when she got back. After taking a couple of packages to the post office, picking up the dry cleaning and some groceries, and grabbing a bite to eat at the deli down the street, I finally got back home, weighed down with grocery bags and questions. Despite keeping myself busy throughout the day, I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about the case. The end was closing in—I could feel it as strongly as the oncoming storm.

  After putting all the stuff away, I checked the time on my phone and realized I was supposed to meet Z in fifteen minutes! Man, I thought, I almost killed too much time!

  I jumped back into the car, drove downtown for the second time that day, and parked in front of the Bugle offices. They were in an old building with arched windows, and its weathered redbrick and stone facade looked like it had seen better days. It was five o’clock, so workers were streaming out of the doors, making me feel like a salmon swimming upstream as I tried to get inside. When I finally reached the front office, the administrative assistant was putting on her coat to leave.

  “Zhuang?” she repeated when I explained to her who I was there to see. “Oh right. He said he was expecting someone. He’s back in the archive room—down the hall, fifth door on the left.”

  I thanked her and walked past a newsroom, the art department, and editors’ offices until I reached a door marked HERALD ARCHIVES. Inside, boxes were crammed onto shelves and piled up on the floor. At least a dozen ancient computers added to the clutter, their yellowed keyboards sticking haphazardly out of a wide box like some kind of bizarre flower bouquet.

  The air was alive with dust motes, and the moment I stepped inside, I started to cough. My lungs still hadn’t quite recovered from all the smoke. “Z, are you in here?” I croaked. “It’s Nancy.”