Driven: The Sequel to Drive Read Online Free PDF Page A

all the others. “Looks like the desert and a long moonlight ride’s gonna be whispering in your ear ’bout any day now.”
“Definitely on the list of things that could happen.”
“When it does, you have yourself a good ride, every minute of it.”
“I’ll do that.”
“Best times of your life, just you and the road, leaving all the rest of this shit behind.”
“I hear you.”
The man nodded a half inch or so and walked away.
Were they the best times? In many ways, absolutely. Out there loose and free and moving fast, away from everything that works so hard to hold you in place. Once you had that feeling, once it soaked into your bones, you never got over it, and nothing else ever came close.
But sooner or later, as Manny always reminded him, you had to pull over and get out of the car.
He’d barely got back under when a second set of shoes, pink hightops well-smeared with grease this time, hove into view and didn’t go away. He rolled out. She worked at the far end, by the vertical door that stayed propped open on fifty-gallon drums. Everyone called her Billie or just B. Strictly business, from what he’d seen. Hispanic, but second, third generation.
“Yes ma’am?”
First she looked startled. Then she laughed.
“Sweet ride, but how’ll it fit in, there in Scottsdale?”
“Any luck at all, she’ll never have to find out.”
“ She , huh?”
He waited what actors would call two beats and said, “Yes, ma’am.”
She laughed again and waved toward the hood. When he told her to be his guest, she popped it. Came up for air shaking her head.
“That’s some serious head room.”
“Never know what you might need.”
“Right, and when you think you do, it usually turns out to be the wrong thing.” Her fingers had left a smudge on the hood. Noticing, she bent to wipe it with her shirt tail. A man’s denim shirt, well faded, sleeves rolled to her biceps. Loose khaki-colored cargo pants. “I wouldn’t mind taking that for a ride.”
His turn to laugh.
“Guess you heard that one before,” she said.
“Once or twice. Not in this context.”
She looked around. “Some context we got here. This the part where the music comes up, you know, strings and shit?”
“Probably not.”
“Yeah, probably not.”
***
     
In addition to oleanders, crickets and cracks, the new place had a TV, and as he sat there that night finishing up his carry-out Bento Box from Tokyo Express with hot air blowing from window to window and the swamp cooler heaving, local news gave way to a movie and suddenly he was looking into Shannon’s face.
Part of his face, actually—seen in a rearview mirror. But it was him. Shannon was the best stunt driver who ever lived, a legend really, and the one who’d given Driver a leg up, got him into the business. Bought him meals, even let him sleep on his couch. Ten months after Driver’s first solid job, on a routine stunt like hundreds he’d done before, Shannon’s car went off a cliff, somersaulted twice, and sat rocking on its back like a beetle, cameras rolling the whole time.
This movie was titled Stranger , about the self-appointed guardian of a small community. You never saw him, just his car, a Mercury, pulling up at an overlook or turning in behind a suspicious vehicle, and once in a while his arm in the window, a shadowy profile or a slice of face in the mirror, or his back and neck as he sat watching. You never found out what the man’s motivations were. The movie had been made on the cheap, so instead of an actor they’d just used Shannon for those bits. There was kick ass driving all through. Not much of a script, when you got right down to it. But the movie had that sheen that cheap films often have when the makers are shooting something they believe in, working with next to no money, time, or resources, reaching hard for effect.
Had to be an old movie, since Shannon, the parts of Shannon he could see anyway, looked young. Probably made by youngsters with little more than a