Free Remember the Future by Bryant Delafosse Page A

Maddy.  She shook her head once sternly.
    “He’s right,” Grant told her.  “It’s probably best that you get as far away from me as you can.  When we find his car, you can have mine.”  He turned back to the window and murmured under his breath, “I won’t need it where I’m going.”
    Maddy clenched her jaw in anger and turned her back to him.
    Rudy studied them both in his mirror.  “Any of this look familiar?”
    Scanning the dark streets around them, Grant pointed ahead.  “I believe that’s the intersection you wrote down.”
    Rudy slowed the Toyota, cranked his window down, and cruised slowly into a large dark parking lot lit with stark ice blue arc lights.  About a hundred yards distant, a dark car sat in the distance on the opposite end of the parking lot.
    Grant leaned forward over the front seat.  “Is that it?”
    When the Toyota closed to about twenty yards, they could clearly see that it was the same Mercedes.  There were no lights or movement within the cab.
    Rudy braked to an abrupt stop.  “Settle back,” he grumbled.  “I don’t know the story here.”
    Grant sat back as Maddy leaned forward.
    “Blink your lights at him once,” Maddy suggested.
    “You’ve been watching too much Law and Order, lady.”
    The Mercedes flashed its lights once.
    Maddy exchanged an amused look with Grant.
    Rudy sighed and blinked his own lights on and off once.
    The driver’s side door of the Mercedes opened and a single figure arose.
    “Don’t either of you move,” Rudy hissed around clenched teeth.  He removed a knife from his pocket and opening it, slipped it up into his right sleeve. Snapping off the interior cab light, Rudy opened the door.  “Keep your head down.”
    “If this goes south, should I give Torres a message for you?” Grant asked.
    “Yeah, Frederickson, tell him that I’m starting to understand why he wants you dead,” Rudy snapped, rising slowly and shutting the door securely behind him.
    The person who had emerged from the cab stood beside the door of the Mercedes.  When Rudy started toward the car, the other reached in through the open driver’s window and turned the headlights on.
    Rudy threw a hand up before his eyes.  “Hey!”
    “Who the fuck are you?” a young man’s voice called out.
    “I’m here for the car,” he responded angrily.  “Turn your goddamn lights off.”
    After a moment, the lights went dead.
    Rudy squinted out at the person standing beside the Mercedes, a teenage boy that looked no older than seventeen with a shaved head.  He wore a button up shirt with a white t-shirt beneath.  His thumbs were hooked strategically upon his belt.
    “What the fuck do you want?” the kid demanded.
    “I want my car,” Rudy responded.
    The teenager looked him up and down.  “You mean my car, bitch.”
    Smirking at the other’s audacity, Rudy looked around for other cars.  “What?  Is this your initiation?”
    The kid stiffened.  “You wait long enough, maybe you'll find out.”
    “Fine.  Which gang?”
    “The Seventh Street Gangsters.”
    “Never heard of them,” Rudy replied.  “What’s your name?”
    “V-Man.”
    “Okay… V-Man .  Do you know what will happen to you and your brothers if Arturo Torres finds out you stole one of his cars?”
    V-Man glanced at the car behind Rudy.  “I don't know any Torres, bitch.”
    “I bet your brothers do? Do you want to bring that kind of heat down on them?”
    The kid shifted his weight. He clenched his belt tighter.
    Rudy angled his body toward the Toyota.  “Look if you need to save face with your buddies, you can have the Toyota.”
    V-Man snorted derisively.
    “It's like this, V-Man. You keep the Mercedes and bring shit down on your gang, or you can have the Toyota. Then at least you won't meet them empty-handed.”
    The teenager fixed his eyes on Rudy.
    “Yeah, okay, maybe,” V-Man decided, dropping his hands in a less aggressive posture.  “Let's go take a look at it.
    Rudy