Chosen To Die (Alvarez & Pescoli)

Tyler McAllister was high.

And it wasn’t even noon yet.

Not that it really mattered, but today, with his mom missing, Jeremy had no time for McAllister’s crap. He sat on his side of the Blazer, tapping his fingers nervously on the window ledge of the door while Tyler lit a cigarette, then with the smoke dangling from his lips, gunned the engine on the empty road, hit the brakes, and sent the SUV skidding sideways. He laughed then, thinking it was hilarious. Jeremy didn’t.

“Cool it!” Jeremy yelled over the bass of some heavy-metal song he didn’t recognize.

“What?” McAllister yelled back as the Blazer straightened and Tyler adjusted the wipers. Snow was falling again. Not big, heavy flakes, but tiny icy crystals that indicated the weather was gonna get worse. The fir trees were already heavy with snow and ice, their branches drooping. Traffic was light, thank God, because McAllister wasn’t driving all that great.

McAllister gunned it up the hill that started the long straightaway to the crest of Horsebrier Ridge. On the other side of the mountain the road twisted, 142

Lisa Jackson

followed the creek, and turned like a sidewinder, but here, on the near side, at a higher elevation, the road cut like a knife through the surrounding hills.

“Check it out!” Tyler, grinning like a goon, hit the gas again and laughed as the Blazer fishtailed and the music blared. The windows were beginning to fog, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Ha!” Another tromp on the accelerator.

It pissed Jeremy off. “Just . . . just . . .” Jeremy snapped off the iPod. The interior of the SUV was suddenly silent.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“I don’t have time for this shit! Just drive to my house, dickhead, and quit fuckin’ around.”

“It looks like somebody got up on the wrong side of bed this morning,” Tyler mocked in a falsetto voice, as if he were someone’s mother.

Which only bugged Jeremy all the more. “Don’t!

Okay? Just . . . don’t! I asked you for a ride home. Nothing else.”

“What the fuck’s got into you?”

“My mom’s missing.”

“Lucky you.” Tyler shrugged. “I’d pay to have my mom disappear. She is such a bitch.”

Jeremy’s fist balled and he nearly slammed it into McAllister’s jaw. “Stop, would ya?”

Tyler pulled a face, like a little kid with an exaggerated frown, his Winston still dangling from his lips. He looked like an idiot. Hell, he was an idiot!

For the briefest of seconds Jeremy wondered if maybe his mother was right, that he should try to find some other friends. But that thought was gone in a flash, disappearing as quickly as it had come.

“Just fuckin’ drive.”

Tyler snorted a stream of smoke and switched on

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his iPod again, cranking it up until the bass was booming and the lead singer screeched at the top of his lungs. Maybe that’s what Jeremy needed: to get lost and forget about all this. A sweet buzz that would dull his anxiety, lift him out of the funk into which he was quickly sinking.

“Hey . . . what’s this?” Tyler said when he saw the detour sign a quarter of a mile from the crest of the ridge. The icy lanes were blocked, cones and a cruiser for the Highway Patrol blocking access. A tall policewoman was pointing to the side road, indicating that they should turn down the secondary road or turn around and go back the way they came. Tyler snorted again. “What the hell do we do now?”

Jeremy’s stomach hit the floor. “Stop.”

“What?”

“No, I mean it. Stop. Stop the car.”