Tyler Unruh didn’t really want to die.

But if he did, no one would miss him.

Life was no longer worth living.

Tyler gripped the wheel with hands like claws as the convertible raced through the mountain pass. Tears streamed from his eyes as he tried to hold the straining monster on the road.

The road whipped and curved like a snake, first left, then right. It passed through cuts and coiled around cliffs; to the right was the ocean, four hundred feet below. The scenery was breathtaking…to anyone who took the time to look. Tyler had seen it all his life, and now his life had lost all meaning.

The convertible was less than a year old—sleek, red and yellow, supercharged. Tyler had bought it himself…more correctly, he was paying for it—his dad had spotted him the down payment. It was the perfect car for a young fellow—fast, streamlined, and sexy; a doll magnet. Of course only one doll mattered, and she had chosen someone else. Tyler had dated her for most of a semester, and things had been looking rosy.

Until an hour ago.

The screaming engine, the whining tires, the whipping wind all fed his self-pity. It would serve her right, he thought, if he crashed and died. She would be sorry then, but it would be too late. She could live the rest of her life bearing the guilt. The thought gave him grim satisfaction.

The twisting road stretched fifteen miles from West Beach to Hermit’s Cove, his hometown. He was five miles into it, and the car held the road well in spite of his recklessness. He would make it just fine, because he knew the road, but it still felt good to imagine how she would feel if he killed himself in a fit of despair. He squeezed out fresh tears to keep the feeling alive.

And screamed into the next curve, a tight one to the left. The cliff-edge on his right was six feet away, and only the superior treads on his tires kept him from careening over the side. The wheel vibrated in his hands as he hit the accelerator harder, his blood surging with the terrible excitement of his folly. The road ran straight for a hundred yards, then twisted left again. He screamed into the next curve, blindly, and hit the gas again.

There, immediately in front of him, he saw two men. In the road!

Tyler’s consciousness took a retinal snapshot—two men in camo gear, helmets, carrying rifles—frozen in horror, just yards in front of him.

They had nowhere to go.

Tyler Unruh had no time to think. He released the steering wheel just a fraction, enough to avoid the men…and his car shot straight over the cliff, with nothing beneath him but four hundred feet of empty air.

He was seventeen.

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