Prologue
It's late Thursday night, nearly eleven, and Tim is beyond tired, staying later than usual in an attempt to get something accomplished on a cold case. His teammates have been gone for hours. Finally leaving work and thinking he'll get home sooner, he turns onto a back road that takes him away from the highway – one he usually only travels in daylight because the curvy road requires caution and a speed adjustment for safety's sake.
Now some ten minutes later, the pouring rain starting as soon as he made the turn, on top of the pitch blackness of night does little to lessen his growing feeling of impending doom. He can feel it in his gut, but there's no place to turn around on this road and he can't see well enough to do it anyway. Needing to concentrate on his driving, he focuses his attention and his eyes straight ahead.
He struggles to keep his ill-equipped sports car on his side of the road as the winds whip the rain across his windshield in sheets of heavy pelting drops and literally push his car on the road in sideways lurches. The blinding headlights of an oncoming vehicle illuminate the surrounding road and Tim feels his breath stop at the sight that meets him; at that very moment, he's just a few feet from the side of a deadly looking drop into a ravine he doesn't remember seeing before.
Suddenly, the tires on his Porsche Boxter lose their grip with the road as the car is pushed, hard enough that Tim's head bounces, hitting the steering wheel; leaving him seeing nothing but stars as he feels his stomach plummet when his car goes airborne