The Girls at the Kingfisher Club by Genevieve Valentine Page A

one.”
    He didn’t argue. “Where are we going?”
    â€œEighty-Second and Fifth,” she said. She’d slip through to her place somehow.
    There was a little silence.
    He drove the car effortlessly, which didn’t surprise her. Once he’d told her how he’d had to shake some cops downtown, driving through streets that weren’t meant to handle cars. He’d grinned as he told it, eyes gleaming, and she’d thought he was magic.
    She’d been young.
    â€œYou still bootlegging?”
    The question was sharp, but he only grinned. “Nah. That’s a dangerous business for a guy my age. I have a dance hall of my own, these days. Just traded for it with the old owner—he gets my place in Chicago.”
    She wondered what had driven him from Chicago to New York. Probably a warrant.
    â€œHow long were you there?”
    â€œLong enough to start missing things in New York.”
    She knew better than to take the bait and look over.
    â€œThis is Eighty-Second,” he said a few minutes later, taking a corner onto a row of stately, silent houses whose windows gaped black. “Which house is yours?”
    â€œThe stone one, thanks,” she said, swinging the door open before the engine was even off.
    He sprinted around the front of the car to help her out of the seat and made it just in time to take her hand once she was already on the sidewalk.
    This close, his eyes were startling, and his hand was warm. She fought against tightness in her chest.
    â€œI missed you,” he said, so low her heartbeat in her ears almost drowned it out. “I’ve wondered a lot about you, since we met last. How have you been?”
    â€œStock market and hemlines both went up,” she said, pulling her hand back and turning down the street. “Thanks again for the ride,” she said over her shoulder.
    â€œDo you always go dancing at the Kingfisher?”
    She should say yes, and never go there again. She should say no, never to look for her. She should say she hardly remembered him, that this was getting him nowhere.
    â€œSometimes,” she said.
    She ignored the smile that spread over his face, and turned on her heel and rounded the corner before he could get it in his head to follow her.
    He was dangerous, and she was off guard. No good could come of it.
    She slid into the alley between two houses and, suddenly panicked by her proximity to home, ran fear-blind to Eighty-Fourth, where the loose gate latch on their neighbor’s fence led to the narrow scrap of common yard, and then the welcoming alley, where the new milk bottles were still waiting to be taken inside, and then (finally, finally) the back door of the house.
    Inside, she took her shoes off with shaking hands and scaled the stairs in stocking feet, forcing herself not to run, listening at the second floor for any sound.
    The house was silent.
    What if they had all gotten picked up?
    Oh God, what if no one else was home at all?
    There was nothing on the third floor either. She took the last flight slowly, her breath short, feet heavy with dread.
    Finally, with shaking hands, she opened the door to her room.
    Eleven girls were inside, baggy-eyed and too wrung out to even greet her when she stepped inside. They just grinned nervously and slumped back against the walls.
    Jo sympathized.
    Lou, who’d been pacing the room with a look of having done it all night straight through, nodded.
    â€œI was giving you until dawn before I started looking for you in jail cells,” she said.
    Jo didn’t question it. Lou had resources when she set her mind to something, and she was wearing a face not even Jo would argue with.
    â€œWho got back first?” Jo asked.
    Sophie raised her hand. “Mr. Walton put me into a cab and paid the fare. I was home in twenty minutes.”
    Araminta, Lily, and Violet raised their hands next.
    Jo looked over. “Lou?”
    â€œIt took some doing,” said