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Once, a few dozen jobs ago, someone told Driver that there was a rule associated with this sort of thing. The idea, the guy had explained from the backseat, was that anything that could go wrong with a crime would go wrong. It was best to assume that 'potentials' would become 'actuals', and somehow you'd always end up fucking the dog (his words). If you prepared for the worst to happen, you were never caught off-guard when it did.
He'd bled all over Driver's seats but survived, so there had to be some truth to it.
After LA, Driver made sure to prepare for the worst. Everything was more difficult in San Francisco—few connections, few resources, little trust anyone was willing to place in him—but he'd managed to get a few jobs here and there (driving, like he always did. That part was easy, at least). But he'd gotten lucky, found the right fixers, worked the right nights with the right people. As untrustworthy as they might have found Driver, he hadn't received a knife in the back yet. It was really the best he could hope for at this stage.
Tonight, though, that luck ended.
It was an easy enough job. Standard breaking-and-entering kind of thing, a drop-off in the most anonymous parking lot possible, a cut to the tune of ten thousand dollars if all went well. Two strong-looking men in the backseat of the car, one of them clearly more nervous than the other, his eyes lingering on Driver's in the rearview mirror. The fixer was a bald fifty-something who drank too much and had questioned Driver in the most irritating way possible, but he'd given him the job. And that was all that mattered.
Things went fine. In under five minutes there were two warm bodies in Driver's car and a couple of pillowcases stuffed under the seats. Someone had called it in after the alarm went off, but Driver had gone through the route and its alternatives enough that he could recite them from memory. He drove carefully, kept the car under fifty miles per hour, took turns when he needed to and sometimes even when he didn't. Necessity had forced him to become less reckless with his driving, the way it had forced him to abandon almost everything else about himself. All of it was in service of the greater goal of staying alive.
About seven minutes had elapsed between leaving the scene of the crime and arriving at the drop-off point, which Driver judged to be acceptable. The more nervous man fled from the car, pillowcases clutched to his chest, as soon as they rolled to a stop; the other strayed to a nearby parking spot and lit a cigarette, sneakers scuffing rhythmically against the asphalt.
The nonchalance of San Francisco's criminal underground had been unnerving at first, but Driver had settled into it a bit once he realized they could absolutely afford it. The police here were different from the ones he had been used to in LA. For starters, there just weren't as many of them. When they did show up at a crime scene, they tended to linger, didn't seem inclined to partake in any car chases.
So Driver allowed himself a little bit of extra time in the parking lot. He got out of the car, locked the doors, and then wrapped his fingers around the handle for a few moments. The metal was cool under his glove. He almost wanted to tug it off, feel the shell of the car directly on his hand, but he knew better than to leave fingerprints.
It was one of the most anonymous cars you could ask for anywhere in the state of California. A little white Toyota, fresh but not factory-new, with just enough imperfections on the interior to give it a kind of lived-in charm. She looked authentic, which was exactly what Driver needed. Unassuming, fast, and with the appearance that it was owned by a real person. It wasn't the same as the Malibu. But its wheels moved, so Driver didn't mind it.
Once you'd been through something with a car, though, once its seats had been stained with your blood—you formed a sort of attachment to it. Leaving the Malibu behind had been difficult. Another one of the many sacrifices he'd made at the altar of second chances. But every expert in a field had their superstitions, and Driver was no exception. So he was trying, really trying, to feel safe in this car, to feel the beat of the engine like it was his heart's, to maneuver the wheels as though they were part of his body. A little bit of time spent understanding how it worked went a long way—sometimes, knowing the correct pitch of the motors' whine was the difference between whether or not you'd still have a vehicle by the end of the night.
His hand lingered on the car, squeezed the handle in a quiet promise that he'd come to understand it as he had every previous car. After a few more seconds of wait, Driver pulled his hand back, patted the keys in his pocket, and turned to go.
Right behind him stood the loiterer, cigarette in one hand. His face was shrouded, the streetlamp behind him reducing him to a silhouette, but Driver could make out the flicker of his eyes moving in the dim light. He was looking for something on Driver.
He paused, and the two men stared at each other for some time. But Driver's silence was unyielding as always, and the other man finally relented, punctuating his sentence with a drag of his cigarette: "You're a good wheelman."
Driver nodded his thanks and let his eyes drift over the other man's shoulder. His apartment was a walkable distance from here. He'd leave the car overnight and come back for it in the morning, when the coast and the check had both cleared.
The man followed his gaze. "Ah, sorry, you got somewhere to be?" He gave Driver a toothy smile, then stepped out of his way. "I'm headed that way too. I'll walk with you."
No, you won't, Driver thought. He brushed lightly past the man and headed toward the edge of the parking lot. When footsteps followed behind him, he nearly smiled to himself.
He wasn't stupid and could no longer afford to make mistakes. From the moment they'd entered his car, Driver knew something was off—he could sense it on them, particularly on the nervous-looking man with his wandering eyes and fidgety hands. The one tailing him now had no trace of apprehension, but was almost more obvious. He looked at Driver in the way that killers do. Contemptuous and patient.
As the two of them walked, the rule floated idly back through Driver's head. Potentials were frightening because of their propensity to become actuals. New clients were frightening because they were not one potential, but a bundle of motivations and outlets that might decide to direct themselves at Driver. He'd dealt with it before, sure, but it was worse in this city where nobody would believe his story for a second.
The two of them passed under the corner streetlamp, and Driver knew it was coming—here between the chain-link fence of the parking lot and the brick of a butcher's there was a small, inviting alleyway which had likely paid host to hundreds of similar assaults. The man had moved to Driver's left, just a step or two behind him. He didn't have a gun. Driver felt the hand on his shoulder before it even settled there.
The hand shoved him roughly into the alleyway, but Driver was already turning, and digging his heels into the gravel to keep from tumbling onto his back. His assailant's eyebrows went up, his mouth opening to say something, and that was all the time Driver needed.
He'd aimed for the stomach but must have hit the diaphragm; the man wheeled backward onto the street, struggling to draw breath. He stumbled back into the streetlamp's jurisdiction and Driver glimpsed his expression, the features contorted in pain, eyes wide and lips twisted.
Then he went down, landing with a deep groan on the concrete sidewalk. Not completely down—he was still sitting upright, and Driver found that he couldn't abide that. He closed the gap between them and sent his knee flying into the man's face with an audible crack.
There. He was done. The man was supine on the ground, one hand coming up to hold his nose, the other still gingerly clutching his torso where he'd been hit. Driver guessed that that was enough to send the message, if the other man could be smart about it, and if he wasn't horribly, suicidally desperate for Driver's cut of the earnings. They could both agree to move on from this, and that would be the end of it.
But Driver knew it wasn't going to be that easy. He had picked up on the ways his body was reacting: heart beating faster, limbs shaking, eyes and ears blocking out every part of the rest of the world so that he could focus on just the attacker in front of him. The adrenaline coursing through him made him feel the slightest bit dizzy, making him waver on the threshold of the alley, and he reached out a hand to steady himself on the brick.
On the pavement, the man stirred, moaning quietly as he hauled his upper body into a sitting position. His eyes drifted up and looked into Driver's, where he found nothing. Two black pools, glinting just a little in the light. He backed away from Driver a bit, scooting towards the road on his ass, opening his mouth and babbling an apology.
Driver's body moved without his permission. He barely registered the movement; just the reaction, the blood that splattered his glove and the feeling of his fist connecting with something solid. His victim was laid flat on the ground again, head lolling backwards and the whites of his eyes showing.
A small, rational part of Driver's brain resurfaced here, told him that this was good, he could leave it there. Almost instantly it was silenced by the sweet nothings of adrenaline. Adrenaline, and the lingering rage he'd been trying to ignore since crossing the Los Angeles city limits. He'd been itching for an outlet, and here was his opportunity.
He moved to stand next to the man's head, dragging one shoe across the sidewalk until it lined up neatly by the left ear. In his mind the briefest of scenes flashed: a dim and sickly yellow elevator, brain matter covering his shoes, the cool air leaching the warmth out of his body. The aftermath had been awful, for sure, but for a moment, he'd felt the sharp contact of sole against skull, and then of something collapsing under him in a controlled manner, heel-first. The release of watching blood spatter the walls. There was something within him that couldn't relax until someone was dead, and in this moment it finally settled.
Driver pulled one leg back and kicked as hard as he could. Someone screamed.
His thrill interrupted, Driver turned sharply towards the sound, scanning the horizon for the source. He found it almost immediately, because it was staring right at him and clad in a bright yellow rain jacket.
A man stood directly across the road from Driver, watching. He hadn't seen him until now—had been far too busy with the assault that his mind was now screaming for him to return to—but he couldn't have been there long. He wasn't so much standing as he was pausing, one leg serving as a kickstand for the bike he was perched on top of. One of his hands lingered on the handlebars, and the other had come up to his mouth in a belated attempt to stifle his scream. Bright blue eyes fixed on Driver's face, lips moving like he was trying to come up with an excuse for being out past curfew.
Driver kept still. He assessed the situation as quickly as possible, glancing down once at the man on the ground before checking to make sure his witness was still there. Okay. This guy was clearly a civilian, someone that the news would say was "in the wrong place at the wrong time." If Driver concentrated, he could see that the man's free hand was shaking where it remained suspended in the air before his face.
The beaten man on the ground had surely gotten the message. He wouldn't be working with Driver again, and if they ever crossed paths he had better pray he remembered Driver's face. Really, it had only been Driver's own selfish desires that had compelled him any further—and now it looked like those desires would have a new target to lock onto. They already had, almost the second they were made aware of his existence.
Blue-eyes across the street was an innocent. What he was doing biking through this part of town this late at night, Driver couldn't know, but the look on his face made it clear that he had never been party to this kind of violence before. Not so close, anyway, not within screaming distance. He was scrawny, taller than Driver but easily subduable. And he was trembling.
In other words, he wasn't the kind of man that deserved what was coming to him. Most likely he deserved the opposite.
Driver felt a strange pain shoot through him at the thought of what this man had been planning to do with his evening—head home, maybe kiss a wife or a kid on the forehead, read a book and fall asleep. Safe in the anonymizing cocoon of an apartment building, wrapped in thousands of windows and concrete block and made meaningless to everyone but those who loved him. The idea of shattering that safety wounded Driver. But the idea of letting a witness go to the police and ruining this second chance wounded him more.
Driver turned slowly, his shoes crunching against the pavement underfoot. He took a few careful steps into the road.
In a flash of yellow vinyl the witness drew his leg up, wobbled a bit on his bike, and took off down the street. He wasn't slow, but he wasn't exactly fast, either—it was clear that his fear had gotten to him and was now sending him careening left and right as he pedaled down the sidewalk. Given that, and the fact that he didn't seem like an endurance biker of any kind, Driver estimated that he stood a good chance of catching up to him. He crossed the rest of the road and, once on the sidewalk, took off running after the bike.
Wheels in general were always a nice benefit in a chase. Fleeing on foot was mostly a thing of the past, which was what made Driver's job so essential. When it came down to it, having good wheels, having better wheels than your pursuer, would always be a determining factor in whether you ended your night in your bed or in a cot.
So it wasn't lost on Driver that the witness had the upper hand here. He had wheels, and all Driver had were his legs. The bike would outpace him easily if its rider proved cleverer than him—but he wouldn't. As he ran, Driver could see the man's head jerking to the side every few seconds, noticed the flash of terrified sclera as he passed under streetlamps. The bike would help him, sure, but his fear would end up dashing every advantage he had to pieces.
The gap between them was a couple hundred feet wide to begin with, but it wasn't so difficult for Driver to catch up, given the man's constant distraction and unstable riding. It took a minute or so of relentless pursuit, but Driver closed in on him. His lungs were starting to burn, and pains were shooting up through his underutilized legs, but those sensations were distant, as if another person was feeling them for him.
Here he was, fifty feet from the rear of the bike, thirty, twenty. His strides lengthened. He measured his breathing. His eyes locked onto the neon yellow of the rainjacket and refused to look anywhere else.
With another glance over his shoulder, the cyclist yelped once, a high-pitched and frenzied sound, and turned hard onto another street. Driver barely registered it. He skidded just a little, shoes slipping on the pavement as he turned, but caught himself and kept moving forward before he could fall onto his front.
Ahead, his quarry noticed. Driver was close enough to hear the strangled cry he let loose. "Leave me alone!" he barked into the street, the sound reverberating off of brick. If it alerted anyone in the buildings, they had better have the common sense to stay inside. "I-I won't tell anyone, okay?!"
The street narrowed a bit here. Driver watched intently for any sign that the man would be turning. That would be Driver's best shot at catching him—his turn before had been inefficient, dangerously sharp. When he tried it again, Driver would be ready.
"Come on!" His voice was ragged, lungs probably worse off than Driver's at this point. He might have imagined it, but Driver thought that perhaps his speed had dropped off a bit as well. "I won't tell anyone. I promise."
As if the words themselves had empowered him, the cyclist put on a sudden burst of speed. It was desperation, to be sure, a final attempt to put distance between him and his pursuer, wrung out of the most primal parts of his brain. The troubling thing about it was that it was working. Driver watched the gap between them grow, felt his own strength start to flag, and one incisor edged forward and bit into his lip.
He was losing him. For all the blustering about keeping what he'd seen to himself, Driver knew how that game was played and what outcome it had every time. He'd stay quiet for a bit, turning the encounter over in his head, and then one night he'd let it get to him and pick up the phone to dial the police and tell them everything. He'd seen Driver's face so clearly, might have even seen the car.
Driver had done all of this once. He was done leaving anything up to chance or the whims of others, done being a mere bit player in the grand scheme of things. He had a rare and promising second shot at life, and he would be damned if he'd let it all collapse because he couldn't catch this one bystander.
And then, up ahead, the man turned sharply into an alley, misjudged the speed at which he was traveling, and slammed his bike into a brick wall.
Cyclist and bike went in two different directions. The bike's front had crumpled, but the rest of its metal frame landed solidly on the sidewalk with a loud clang. The rear wheel kept spinning, spokes scraping against the pavement until it lost speed and went still.
The man fell onto the ground in the alley with an oomph and made no attempt to get up.
Driver slowed to a mild jog, quick enough that he could make it to the alley before anything else transpired, but slow enough to catch his breath. He'd call it lucky that the cyclist had crashed, but he knew it had only been a matter of time, with the way he'd been moving on the bike. As he approached, he kept his eyes on the shapeless raincoat-covered form in the alley, watched as it stirred just a bit, then groaned in pain.
"Don't…" he pleaded, hearing the crunch of Driver's shoes on the ground nearby. "I d— I don't have any money on me, or anything." He wheezed for breath between sentences. As Driver had suspected, he likely wasn't used to biking for very long or very quickly.
Coming to a halt, Driver knelt down next to the man and frisked him. He found no weapons, unsurprisingly, except a key that he might have put up a feeble defense with. He did find the man's wallet—true to his word, bereft of cash, not that Driver would have taken his five-dollar bills in the first place.
"See?" The man was turned away from Driver, speaking into the ground. "I-I kinda have nothing. I teach kids. Whatever you want, I—"
Placing a hand on the other man's shoulder, Driver rolled him onto his back, forcing him to look up and into Driver's face. He stilled under Driver's cold gaze for a moment, pinned in place where he laid, before he quickly regained his senses and opened his mouth again. "Wait, wait," he shook his head, cringing away, and for the first time Driver noticed he wore glasses, which had a maybe-very-recent crack in the right lens. "Hold on just a second. I c— we can talk about this! Just…"
The hand on his shoulder came up to rest over his mouth for the briefest of moments, silencing him. He watched in silent terror as Driver folded open the wallet and bared the license to the man's face. "Is this you?"
Resident of California and organ donor Ryland Grace nodded underneath him. With careful hands, Driver returned the wallet to the pocket he'd found it in, patting it once for security.
Driver pulled back and gave him a once-over. "Are you hurt?"
Ryland opened his mouth and closed it, eyes flickering across Driver's face. "Not badly," he whispered, after a long few seconds.
"Can you stand?"
Slowly, hesitantly, Ryland pulled his legs in towards his body and sat up, his eyes never once leaving Driver's face. He winced in pain. "I think so."
"Great." Driver got to his feet.
Ryland didn't move. He just sat there, gaping up at him, helmet askew on his head in a way that revealed the very unkempt hair underneath.
"Sorry, uh," he stammered, gaze bouncing around the alley and around Driver's silhouette. "Am I— am I free to go?"
Driver put his hands in the pockets of his jacket and went quiet for a moment, picking over his words carefully before he spoke. "Don't run."
Perhaps normally, he wouldn't be so lenient with someone who was a potential witness. Driver was never someone to kill anyone for simply seeing something they shouldn't have, but this breed of kindness towards them wasn't exactly his forte either. Being sweet to them would endear you to them for a time, but once you were out of sight they'd think you were no real threat, and their lips would loosen. Besides, he had just chased Ryland down the street for probably half a mile. It was no wonder he was confused about what was happening—Driver, admittedly, was a little confused too.
Maybe it was the fact that Ryland had just crashed head-first into a brick wall, a sensation that Driver was not entirely unfamiliar with. It was sort of ineffective to intimidate someone who might have a head injury.
But no, that wasn't the full story. As he watched Ryland get to his feet, one hand coming up to rest on the side of his stomach he'd landed on, Driver realized what it had to be.
I teach kids, Ryland had said. His outfit (gray blazer, purple tie, slacks) told a different story—Driver probably would have guessed he worked at a law firm, or something. Then, as Ryland planted both feet solidly on the ground beneath them, he tilted his head back a little and Driver caught the smallest glimpse of a dark blue lanyard hiding under his button-up.
He was a teacher. He worked with kids. What a teacher was doing biking through this part of the city late at night, Driver couldn't puzzle out. That didn't matter. What did matter was that the man standing with Driver in this dank, dirty alley spent his days being kind to children.
"Okay," Ryland said, pulling Driver out from his own thoughts. "I'm not running."
He had a sense of humor, too. Driver didn't speak, instead choosing to let his eyes roam over Ryland's body, looking for other small details he might have missed. One of his hands seemed scraped up from where he'd hit the ground. It occurred to Driver that, without the bike, Ryland probably had no way of getting home.
Ryland shifted uncomfortably under his gaze. "Um, listen." He spoke quietly, perhaps to obscure the edge of nervousness in his voice. "I don't— I really don't know what I saw, I mean, I didn't see anything," here his eyes flitted up to meet Driver's, "and, I promise you, I won't tell anyone. I really, really don't want any trouble, okay? I like the amount of excitement my life currently has, which is zero. So…"
Driver kept staring at him for some time. Ryland looked back, tried to hold eye contact, and then faltered, glancing down at his shoes. "I've kind of had a long day," he said by way of explanation of something. "I didn't mean to run into you. And whatever was going on was uh, honestly, none of my business." He carded a hand through his hair, took a deep breath, and pointed with one finger over Driver's shoulder. "So maybe I could head home, and we can both forget about this whole— ah!"
Before Ryland could finish, Driver had taken a series of long, swift strides towards him, herding him into a corner between the brick of the alley and a vertical metal gutter. As his back hit the gutter he yelped, just a little, and Driver quickly had to tamp down the feelings he associated with a cry like that. For a little added security, he brought up one hand and shoved Ryland's shoulder back, pinning him to the brick.
His blue eyes had nowhere else to go, now—they stared right back at Driver's, irises wide. Briefly, Driver imagined seeing those irises disappear as his eyes rolled back in his head. He obliviated the thought almost immediately.
He'd had his fix earlier. He wasn't going to hurt a schoolteacher, even if part of him demanded it.
"I won't hurt you." Maybe saying the words out loud would make them true.
It was plain to see that Ryland didn't believe him. His eyes kept skittering over Driver's face, looking for the smallest tell one way or another that what he could keep his word. Driver wished he could make it a promise.
Ryland’s heart stuttered under Driver’s hand, the fluttering of a small bird against the confines of his chest. The crash had placated Driver a little, but now that he had Ryland this close, this isolated, a familiar and deeply unfriendly feeling kept curling in his gut. It was best not to indulge it, to not even give it the smallest bit of attention. He already had, but perhaps that could be remedied. If he ignored the idea of flesh giving way under his fingers for long enough, it might slink off into the dark, allowing him to ignore for just another day what he really was.
"Listen," Driver muttered, holding Ryland's gaze. "You're right. What you saw was none of your business." You don't want it to be your business, he added silently. "I want you to forget about anything that you saw tonight." Ryland instantly nodded once, just a slight incline of the head. It seemed as if he was too scared to risk any larger movements.
Driver almost left it there. Then he blinked and saw it all over again: a metal door sliding shut, his knees in the surf, a knife in his stomach. The long, open road from there to here. And the many, many glances in the rearview window to check if he was being followed.
He leaned in closer to Ryland's face, so close that Driver could see the little ring of yellow coloration snaking through his blue eyes, still staring back at him, resolute in the face of danger. "If you say a word to anyone," Driver intoned, "I'm going to hurt you. Do you understand?"
There. Driver had enough experience by now that he could pinpoint the exact moment that people realized just what kind of man they were talking to, how seriously he took his job, and how willing he was to follow through on his threats. He watched as Ryland's eyes widened to their limit and his eyebrows drew together, the gears turning in his head. Then he seemed to get it. His lips opened briefly, then shut again. His heartbeat sped up. Driver could feel it in his own chest.
"Yes," he answered, voice a little raw. "Yes, I understand."
Driver held eye contact with him for a bit longer, then pulled back, releasing Ryland but keeping him crowded into the corner. Ryland relaxed a little, though it was possible to see now that his hands were shaking, especially the one that he brought up to touch the shoulder Driver had just been holding. He looked down at his feet, raised his eyebrows as if he was surprised he was still standing.
Watching Ryland for too long invited, again, the thoughts that Driver was working so hard to stave off. So he broke away and turned his gaze to the mouth of the alley, waited a few moments, and remarked, as if noticing it for the first time, "Your bike is broken."
"Huh?" Ryland raised his head and followed Driver's gaze. The bike was still sitting where it had landed, frame smashed, the front wheel tilted up like it was begging passersby for help. "Oh. Yeah. You're right."
Driver glanced over his shoulder at him. "I'll walk you the rest of the way."
He delighted a bit in the way Ryland nearly shuddered when he processed what Driver was implying. He delighted even more in the expression he made when he realized that Driver wouldn't take no for an answer. He tried, anyway: "Oh, no, that's really too kind of you, you certainly don't have to do that."
"It's no problem."
"No, no, really, I don't want to, um, inconvenience you more than I have…" He cracked a wobbly smile at that, as if it were a joke.
Driver responded with one of his own. "Lots of dangerous people out here tonight."
The sound Ryland made sounded more like a gasp than a laugh, and he overcorrected, leaned too hard into it so he really said ha, ha. "You're right, but, um, I can keep to myself now. Really. It's sort of far, anyway."
"I can drive you."
That tipped him over the edge. "No! No, there's— there's no need for that," Ryland insisted, grinning wildly at Driver. The smile didn't reach his eyes. "That's perfectly fine. We can walk. It's, uh, actually not too bad. Just a few blocks from here, actually."
Driver smiled. He stepped back out onto the sidewalk and, after a moment of hesitation, Ryland followed.
"My place is this way," he gestured down the street, in the direction he'd fled in. Driver thought, briefly, that it was a strange choice to escape to your house. Then he remembered that Ryland was not of his world, and had never had to worry about which direction to head in if he was being chased. He couldn't fault him for not knowing.
He kept half a pace behind Ryland as they walked, flashing Ryland the smallest of smiles when he glanced back at Driver, as if the two of them were simply friendly strangers who happened to be on the same street. One block slipped by in silence, then another, with Driver training his eyes on the back of Ryland's head, ready to catch his eyes and smile again. It was a small thing, a social ritual Driver usually might have forgotten to perform, but it suddenly seemed very important to continue. He was so focused that he almost ran into Ryland when he stopped.
He turned a bit to look at Driver, a deep line between his furrowed brows. "Sorry, but, um, we're almost at my place." He went quiet, but that definitely wasn't the end of his thought. Driver waited patiently for him to finish. "You're not planning to, like, ki— ah, I mean," he swallowed, "I'd rather you not see where I live."
It was a bit absurd for Ryland to say that. Driver wanted to crack a smile. Never before had he encountered someone who was willing to make polite I'd-rather-you-not requests after having their life threatened. The naivete, or audacity, was almost charming.
Driver looked up into Ryland's face. "I won't hurt you," he said for the second time that night. This time he was sure he could follow through on the promise.
After a moment's deliberation, Ryland deflated a little and caved. "Okay."
He guided Driver down the block, to the right, and into the doors of an apartment building. In the lobby he turned to Driver with his eyebrows raised, as if to say, seeya, then, but Driver kept his eyes on the elevator. Ryland sighed and pressed the button for the fourth floor.
After a quick elevator ride up, Ryland led the way down the hall and came to a stop at a door marked 408. "Alright. This is my stop." He smiled at Driver. "So, goodnight, I guess."
Driver made no move to leave. Ryland blinked at him in surprise. "Uh. Goodnight," he tried again.
"Your keys."
Ryland's eyes went wide, then dropped to the floor. He forced out a laugh. "Oh, right, how… how silly of me." He fumbled in his pocket, then made a show of looking up at the number printed on the door and pulling a shocked face. "Oh! Jeez … this isn't even the right apartment." Driver almost smiled.
Across the hall at 409, Ryland turned the key in the lock and the door, impressively, opened. Driver caught the briefest glimpse of an open-concept, white-cabineted, tiled kitchen before Ryland pulled it shut again.
"Okay," he said, with a measure of finality, staring down at Driver. "Look. I can promise you I'm not going to tell anyone about what happened tonight, okay? I really, really don't want to get wrapped up in this." He scrutinized Driver's expression for any hint of what he was feeling, but came up empty handed. "You have my word. So…" He paused, eyes flitting up to the ceiling, then back down. "Please don't break into my apartment?"
Driver could have laughed. Ryland, to his credit, was the most interesting person Driver had met in San Francisco. He could really talk, even when it was to his detriment. He was sort of small, and fragile looking, but that hadn't stopped him from holding his own tonight, physically and verbally. And Driver liked how he seemed incapable of making a demand—even his last, most reasonable request had turned into a question that Driver couldn't answer.
He looked at Ryland and allowed the slightest smile to cross his face. Then, ignoring how Ryland's mouth dropped open and he seemed to start scrambling for words, Driver turned and walked back down the corridor, disappearing into the elevator.
On his way home, he detoured, returning to the alley where he'd caught up to Ryland. He stood on the threshold, surveying the place, and then stooped.
It was damaged quite possibly beyond repair. It would certainly need a new front tire, but the frame was the real problem, having been mangled by the force of impact, and maybe saving Ryland's life in the process. Besides that, Driver knew his way around most cars, but he had a lot less experience with bikes. He was probably equally as likely to destroy it as he was to fix it up.
That was alright. It was about time for a new project anyway.