Driving Me Insane

Chapter 2: Back Seat Driver

"Lis we need to go now." Lisa hears desperately called from her crew partner's gritted teeth a few feet away as she works from her position tucked below a cars steering column. There are wires and chips dangling in her face from the plastic dash that maintains the circuit cables for the sleek black Audi she's currently twisted upside down in.

She just wants the car to get started, no biggie right?

Except that this is not her car. And if she's being completely upfront about things, she doesn't really even know whom this car belongs to.

It's just another car that was on the list of cars that Hunter gave her and Bam before they left the garage this morning.

Apparently her pompous half-brother really needs a few key parts from this particular model of car. It is thus that Lisa and Bam find themselves in such a situation.

Boosting the Audi to bring it back to the garage.

After all, that's what they do when they aren't racing cars; they're stealing them. Seems pretty logical considering their knack in the matter. They're car thieves and damn good ones at that. Lisa especially, she's been in the business for essentially ten of her twenty-three years of existence.

This particular situation: The Audi's new Retro Immobilizer system, a run on the whole keyless entry system, is presenting Lisa with a minor problem, in that she's having a hard time disabling the damn thing. Basically it's a chip that exists in the car that can effectively immobilize, hence the name, the entire system if she trips it incorrectly.

It's taking longer than Lisa had hoped it would and Bam can hear the police sirens screaming in the distance, signaling their ever-growing approach.

They've got to get out of there and now if they want to avoid a long term run in the South Korea penitentiary.

"Manoban, times up seriously." Bam shouts as he huffs it back over to the side of the car that Lisa's still working in.

"Just one more twist." Lisa grunts out. She tweaks the body puller tool again to widen the steering column until the key mechanism becomes exposed to her searching eyes. Lisa reaches blindly to the seat where her feet are currently resting and fumbles around a bit before she finds the next tool she needs.

When she gets the screw driver in her hand she brings it back to the separated section of the steering column and slips the pointed edge into the gap, squinting as she tries to place the tip of the screwdriver in the right socket. There's a clinking noise that indicates she's successfully navigated into the starter, now all that's left to be done is haywire the car's immobilizer so that she can start the engine without the chip telling the car it's not okay to do so.

Lisa glances once more at the separate set of wires that dangle close to her face. She grasps her wire fusers and reaches out to pinch the red wire that has a strip of black running down the center. According to her sources, that is her computer guy Jacob, this particular wire-if sectioned off correctly-will allow Lisa to bypass the immobilizer's inabilizing functions and turn the starter when she cranks the screwdriver.

Pinching the wire carefully, Lisa sits up from her position of hanging practically under the dash. She can hear the sirens in the not so distant distance, and she can tell that Bam's starting to sweat like a pig in a pasture. Taking a deep breath and praying to all the car thief gods she knows, Lisa turns the screwdriver.

There's an awful cranking noise at first until the screwdriver locks into place in the starter and turns the ignition over. In a second, the Audi roars to life and Lisa lets out a whoop.

"Ah ha! Damn right. Thank you Jacob for being correct this time!" Lisa exclaims throwing her clenched hand into the air in a solid fist pump. In the next second, Bam rushes to the passenger side door and slides into the car just as Lisa packs up her boosting tools and swings her own driver's side door closed.