Chapter 6: Parking Lot

Saturday night my roommate and I walked back across the engineering lot with two large pizzas.

He had talked me into it.

"You own a company," he said. "You can't live on dining hall pasta."

"I own sixty-one percent of a company I can't vote for ninety days."

"Then buy a pizza with the other thirty-nine."

I laughed, and then I heard the engine.

It was an idling V8, far back in the dark between two light poles, and it had been running a while.

I stopped walking.

"What?" my roommate said.

"A car is waiting on us."

"Where?"

"Behind the library annex. Black. Five heartbeats."

He looked at me. "You can hear their hearts?"

"Wait here."

I didn't get to finish.

Headlights snapped on across the lot, and a black SUV rolled forward and stopped ten feet away.

Five doors opened at once.

Brock got out first, in his lacrosse jacket, a metal bat resting on his shoulder.

The lineman came out of the back with his arm in a brace, and a skinny guy with a phone in his hand.

Two more I didn't know spread out on either side of us.

"Dishwasher," Brock said.

"I don't work there anymore."

"Heard you got rich."

"I heard you still need four friends to do it."

Someone in the dark snickered.

Brock took the bat off his shoulder and let it hang by his knee.

"My dad says a guy like you doesn't belong at the table," he said. "He says some people need to learn it the hard way."

"Is that what he said?"

"He said you needed a lesson."

My roommate had gone very still.

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