Broken Promise (50 page)

No need for him to be the designated driver any—

Bang.

No, it was more than that it. So much more than just a bang. In the trunk, it sounded to Derek like a sonic boom. The whole car seemed to shake.

It couldn’t have been something on the screen. One of the Transformer robots blowing up, say. You had to be in the car, have the radio tuned to the right frequency, to hear the movie.

And even if this had been a regular movie, in a theater, the bang was too loud.

It sounded very close.

George.

Could he really have been that dumb? Had he gotten out of the car with the gun? Had he started waving it at the manager? Had he pulled the trigger?

That stupid, stupid, stupid son of a bitch. Surely to God he didn’t think getting caught over something like this was cause to shoot a guy.

There were screams. Lots of screams. But they sounded off in the distance.

“Jesus!” someone shouted. Derek was pretty sure that was Canton.

Then: “Oh my God!” That sounded a lot like George.

Derek frantically padded the back wall of the trunk, looking for the emergency release. His heart was pounding. He’d broken out in an instant sweat. He found the lever, grabbed hold, yanked.

The trunk lid swung open.

Canton was there, and George was there, so was a third man. A black man Derek figured was Lionel Grayson, the manager. Not one of them was looking into the trunk. In fact, all three had their backs to Derek, their collective attention focused elsewhere.

Derek sat up so quickly, he banged his head on the edge of the opening. He instinctively put his hand on the injury, but he was too spellbound to feel any pain.

He could scarcely believe what he was seeing.

The Constellation Drive-in Theater’s four-story screen was coming down.

Dark smoke billowed from the width of its base as it slowly pitched forward, in the direction of the parking lot, as though being blown over by a mighty wind.

Except there was no wind.

The immense wall came down with a great whomping crash that shook the ground beneath them. Clouds of smoke and dust billowed skyward from beyond the fence.

There was a moment of stunned silence. Barely a second. Then, a strangled symphony of car alarms, whooping and screeching in a discordant chorus of panic.

And more screams. Many, many more screams.