CHAPTER ONE
Seven Thirty-Four P.M.
Hot rubber had lost its traction on the blacktop, and the screech that followed was lost in the thick shroud of fog settled over the abandoned roadway. The only proclamation that there had ever been a vehicle present there lay in the solitary skid mark pointed toward the ravine beneath the Wolf Hollow fault line.
At the bottom of that ravine, the underside of a small SUV faced the night sky. There was no moon, and the light of the stars was not enough to penetrate the fog bank and reveal the scene to anyone passing by.
And so the mass of twisted metal lay where it had fallen, hissing as steam plumed from a shattered radiator. A dull, repetitive squeak came from the bent wheel that refused to stop spinning. A still functioning but weakened horn pervaded through the night air.
But the mist overhead was too much for either sound or light to penetrate.
Until it cleared, help would not and could not come.