Driver

Driver - Chapter 1

Daniel Archer had a difficult childhood. At the age of twelve, Daniel still had the frail body of an eight year old, an attribute of which his father made full use. The boy could easily fit through small openings such as bathroom windows and pet doors making him an important helpmate in his father's trade which happened to be burglary.

When not targeting the rich and wealthy of the Golden State of California, Danny's father worked as a stunt car driver. And he was good. Danny had learnt everything he knew about cars by watching his father at work. He would watch carefully as his father would take apart the cars provided by a film's production crew and retrofit them to perform the stunts demanded by directors. He would add cast-steel front bumpers to the cars, heavily reinforce the body and frame, modify the engine for maximum horsepower, and replace the tires with ones that used solid sponge rubber. It was here Danny learned the skill of getting under a car's hood and playing around with an engine to get the most out of even average cars.

Under better circumstances Danny's father could have held down a promising job at any auto garage, but his hate for authority never let him work anywhere for more than a few weeks. Hot Rod Heaven was a popular garage frequented by the rich and wealthy for their expensive vehicles. It was while working here that Danny's father got the idea of targeting homes that were unoccupied. He secretly gathered information about customers who were out for an overseas vacation while their cars were being serviced in the garage. Unfortunately, his luck ran out on him and he was caught snooping around customer information searching for his next targets. When investigations found that an auto garage was a common factor in many high profile burglaries, Danny's father was kicked out of his job with allegations of conspiring with the gang responsible for carrying them out. With little evidence to link these crimes to him he got away with a lighter prison sentence than what he would have got had he been proven guilty of the crime. The ability to apply knowledge and skills coupled with a blatant disrespect for authority were two qualities that ran deep in the Archer family and often got them into serious trouble. Little did the prosecutors know that the only members of this gang were the car-loving duo of father and son.

When Danny did get his growth by the age of sixteen he got it all at once. After his growth spurt Danny's father had little use for him. Danny did not mind that at all. He had already found another activity to keep his mind occupied—cars. Any car is only as good as the driver behind its wheels. And Danny, like his father, drove like a son of a bitch.

You put this kid behind a wheel and there is nothing that he can't do.

These were the only words of praise Danny ever heard from his father about him. Danny, always a watcher and a quick study, picked up on a lot of other things while hanging around at the movie sets. Action movies always had experts in weaponry and fighting techniques around to help the actors learn the moves and handle the guns. When not busy helping his father with his cars, Danny would keep asking a bunch of questions to any expert he could get a hold of. He would learn why some handguns were preferred over others, their quirks and shortcomings among other things. He would learn how to handle knives and use them to your advantage in hand to hand combat.

Fights were something that was not unusual for Danny. His parents often had heated arguments that would often end with his father beating the hell out of Danny's mother.  Danny tried to intervene but would end up with the same physical injuries as his mother. So he was not surprised when one night at dinner his mother went after his old man with a butcher and bread knife one in each fist like a ninja wearing checked apron. Before his father could react his mother had chopped of a good part of his left ear and stuck the bread knife in his neck. Danny marveled at his docile, silent mother's violent attack as though her entire life had gathered toward that single deadly bolt of action. It was an open and shut police investigation and his mother was sentenced to life imprisonment. At the young age of sixteen Danny was packed off to foster parents. He would not stay with them for too long. They were good people he figured but his ambitions forced him to leave them and move away to California to make a name for himself. How he would do that he was yet to figure out. He did not have a formal education and the only thing he knew everything about was cars.

Danny had yet to realize how valuable his skills were in the world of daring heists where speed, precision, and timing meant the difference between prison and freedom.