Midnight Driver: Five Stars or Die

Ch 07. Package Delivery

    Ray drove The Phantom along Sepulveda Boulevard, blending into the slow, working-class traffic that moved like blood thickened by clogged arteries.

    

    He was not carrying a passenger. The back seat was empty, yet the weight on his shoulders felt just as heavy. The sedative he had taken at the diner was wearing off, replaced by sharp alertness and a faint, restless edge.

    

    10:15 a.m.

    

    The dedicated phone in the dashboard drawer buzzed. Not the refined chime reserved for VIP passengers, but a short, abrasive buzzer. Twice. Ray glanced at the screen. The Car Gow interface shifted to a cold blue.

    

    COURIER MODE: ACTIVATED.

    

    CARGO TYPE: BIOLOGICAL / TIME-SENSITIVE (CODE BLUE).

    

    PICKUP POINT: Private Ambulance 44, Rear Parking Lot, Dodger Stadium.

    

    DROP-OFF POINT: Noah’s Ark Veterinary Clinic, Burbank.

    

    TIME LIMIT: 18 Minutes.

    

    PAYMENT: $8,000.

    

    Eight thousand dollars for eighteen minutes of work. Ray ran the numbers in his head. That was an obscene rate for courier duty. Prices like that usually meant the cargo was either extremely hot or extremely fragile, like what remained of someone’s life.

    

    Ray tapped ACCEPT.

    

    He jerked the wheel to the right, cutting aggressively across a bus lane. The Charger surged toward the overpass leading to the stadium. In the nearly empty Dodger Stadium parking lot, a white, unmarked ambulance sat behind a concrete pillar. Its engine was running, but the lights were off.

    

    Ray stopped flush with the rear doors. A man in a lab coat stained with dark red patches handed him a bright orange cooler marked with a BIOHAZARD sticker. A digital display on the lid read: 4.2°C.

    

    “Listen, man,” the guy said, his hands shaking. “The cooling battery is shot. The fan died ten minutes ago. If it hits ten degrees, the organ is ruined. And the person who ordered it will skin us alive.”

    

    “What is it?” Ray asked.

    

    “A liver,” the man said quickly. “AB negative. Taken from a forced donor in Tijuana this morning.”

    

    Ray stared at the box for a moment. In his hands lay what remained of one life, ended so another, wealthier one could continue. He carried the cooler to the front seat, buckled it in, then connected an emergency jumper cable from the cigarette lighter socket to the port on the box. Power from The Phantom began to flow.

    

    “Do not let the temperature rise,” the man shouted as Ray slammed the door.

    

    Ray did not answer. He floored the accelerator. The tires screamed, leaving permanent black scars on the asphalt.

    

    Interstate 5 toward Burbank was a daytime nightmare. Four lanes, completely jammed. Ray checked the dashboard timer.

    

    TIME REMAINING: 16 Minutes.

    

    “Sorry, Joe,” Ray muttered.

    

    He yanked the wheel to the right, onto the narrow, gravel-strewn shoulder. The Charger bounced hard as its tires struck the uneven edge of the pavement. Ray pushed the car to sixty miles per hour along the shoulder, slicing past trapped vehicles like a black bolt of lightning.

    

    On the passenger seat, the cooler beeped. The display changed: 5.1°C.

    

    Then, up ahead, a cement truck sat dead on the shoulder, blocking it entirely. No room to the left or right. Ray slammed the brakes, downshifting hard. The engine brake roared. The car stopped just inches from the truck’s bumper.

    

    “Damn it,” Ray hissed.

    

    He spotted a gap between the cement truck and a tour bus crawling in the slow lane. It was impossibly tight. Ray hit the modified air horn Joe had installed. The blast thundered through the lanes, startling the bus driver into jerking the wheel slightly left. The gap widened by ten centimeters.

    

    Ray dumped the clutch. The Phantom lunged forward.

    

    SCREEECH!

    

    Metal shrieked against metal. Ray’s right mirror scraped the truck, while the left side brushed the bus. Sparks flew. Ray did not stop. He forced the car through on raw torque alone. With one final surge, the Charger broke free, leaving a deep silver gouge along the right door. Joe’s expensive paint job was ruined again.

    

    Time Remaining: 8 Minutes. Temperature: 7.2°C.

    

    Burbank. Studio territory. Ray exited the freeway and cut onto arterial roads. Here, his enemy was the traffic light. He approached a major intersection. The light turned red. He did not stop. He flicked on the high beams and laid on the horn.

    

    He executed a Scandinavian flick, throwing the rear of the car right before snapping left through the middle of the crowded intersection. A FedEx truck slammed on its brakes, missing Ray’s door by inches.

    

    The cooler slid across the seat, its jumper cable yanked taut, nearly snapping. The numbers flashed red: 8.9°C.

    

    Ray cranked the air conditioning to maximum, angling every vent at the box. Noah’s Ark Veterinary Clinic came into view at the end of the street. A modest, single-story building. A perfect place to hide sins.

    

    Ray swung into the back alley and slammed the brakes, stopping hard in front of a steel garage door.

    

    Time Remaining: 45 Seconds. Temperature: 9.6°C.

    

    Ray grabbed the cooler, ripped the cable free, and jumped out. He kicked the steel door three times. It rattled up. Dr. Aris stood there in a green surgical apron.

    

    “Nine point six degrees. Still safe,” Ray said, breathing hard.

    

    Aris took the box without a word and ran into the operating room. Ray followed to the threshold. Inside, on an animal surgery table, lay a heavyset elderly man with his chest already open, held apart by surgical retractors.

    

    “Good work,” Aris said coldly, lifting the human liver. “This patient is the head of a human trafficking syndicate. He paid two million dollars for this organ. Ironic, isn’t it? The heart of a poor immigrant saving the life of a monster who may have sold that immigrant’s family.”

    

    Ray said nothing. A chill crawled up his spine. Flesh meeting flesh. Sin meeting sin.

    

    “Where’s my payment?” Ray asked, looking away.

    

    Aris pointed to a thick envelope on the sterilization table. Ray took it and walked out. In the parking lot, he paused to look at his car. The long scratch along the right side looked vicious. One front turn signal was shattered from the squeeze past the bus. On the asphalt, he spotted shards of plastic from the cement truck’s mirror still clinging to his bodywork.

    

    Ray climbed back into the cabin. As he reached for the ignition, something in the rearview mirror caught his eye. A teenage boy across the street was chaining up his bicycle, staring toward the back alley. The kid held a phone, its camera pointed straight at Ray’s dirty but still legible license plate.

    

    The boy lowered the phone when their eyes met through the dark ballistic glass. Ray froze for a beat. He could get out, snatch the phone, threaten him. But distant police sirens began to bleed into the air, probably triggered by his stunt at the intersection.

    

    “Damn it,” Ray muttered. He did not have time for a minor witness.

    

    Ray started the engine and tore away. He tossed the envelope onto the passenger seat. Eight thousand dollars. A fair price for a liver, and another small piece of his integrity.

    

    His phone chimed. The transfer to Agatha’s account was scheduled.

    

    As he passed the front of the clinic, he saw another child in the waiting room, clutching a sick cat to their chest. The sight was so pure it felt like mockery. Ray turned his face away, pressed harder on the gas, and vanished into the noise of Burbank, carrying a scarred car and a secret that might now be stored in the memory of a teenager’s phone.

    

    The world was watching, and Ray had just left his first digital footprint.