Kill the Messenger

1. LA traffic. Rush hour. Rush hour at four hours and counting. Every Angelino busting it to get home before the heavens opened up like a bursting bladder and the rains came in a gush. The city had been pressed down beneath the weight of an anvil sky all day. Endless, ominous twilight in the concrete canyons between the downtown skyscrapers. The air heavy with expectation. Legs pumping. Fingers tight on the handlebars. Fingertips numb. Eyes on the gap between a Jag and a FedEx truck. Quads burning. Calves like rocks. The taste of exhaust. Eyes dry and stinging behind a pair of swim goggles. A bag full of blueprints in cardboard cylinders riding his back. The two-way strapped to his thigh like a six-gun barked out bursts of static and the rock-crusted voice of Eta Fitzgerald, the base dispatcher. He didn't know her real name. They called her Eta because that was what they heard out of her all day, every day: ETA? ETA sixteen? Base to Jace. ETA? What's your twenty, honey? He had three minutes to make it to the developer's office on the seventeenth floor of a building still blocks away. The guard at the front desk was a jerk. He locked the doors at six on the dot and had no sympathy for anyone standing on the street trying to get in. The guy would have turned his back on his own mother, if he had one, which Jace doubted. He looked like something that had sprouted up out of the ground. A human toadstool. Shift his weight to the right. Cut around the Jag. He caught the blast of its horn as he ran on his pedals to put a few inches between his back wheel and the car's front bumper. Just ahead of him the traffic light had turned yellow, but the FedEx truck was running the intersection. Coming up on the right side of the truck, Jace reached out and caught hold above the wheel, letting the truck carry him through the intersection and down the block. He was a master at riding the blind spot. If the person behind the wheel saw him and didn't want him there, a messenger could become a bug on a windshield in a hurry. The FedEx drivers were usually cool. Simpatico. Messenger to messenger. They were both connections between people who didn't give a rat's ass who they were unless they were late with a delivery. The building was in sight. Jace checked over his shoulder, let go of the truck, and dipped right again, cutting across another lane, drawing another blaring horn. He angled to jump the curb in front of a fire hydrant and behind a Cadillac idling in a red zone. The car's passenger door swung open as the bike went airborne. Shit. Jace turned the wheel hard right and twisted his hips left as the bike came down. The old lady getting out of the car screamed and fell back into the Cadillac. The bike's front tire hit the sidewalk clear. Jace held his position as tight as a tick on the back of a dog. He touched the brakes with little more than his imagination. Just enough to break the chaos. Don't panic. Panic kills. Ice water, J.C. Steel. Focus. Calm. He kept his eyes on his target. He could see the security jerk walking toward the front doors, keys in hand. Shit! Panic. Not at threat of injury, but at threat of being locked out. The customer wouldn't care that he had sent the delivery impossibly late or that the messenger had nearly been killed by the door of a Cadillac. If the package didn't make it, there would be hell to pay. He dropped the bike ten feet from the door, sick at the thought it might be gone by the time he got out of the building, but there was no time to lock it. He bolted for the door, tripped himself, fell like a boulder, and tumbled and skidded, arms and legs bouncing like pickup sticks. Cardboard blueprint tubes shot out of his bag and rolledHoag, Tami is the author of 'Kill the Messenger', published 2004 under ISBN 9780375432996 and ISBN 037543299X.