by Adam Penenberg

Excerpt from Chapter One: Blood Highway

Tara Cox and Donna Bailey were driving through central Texas in a blue two-door Ford Explorer. It was late afternoon on March 10, 2000, T-shirt and shorts weather, and the two friends were on their way to Enchanted Rock, a popular climbing and hiking destination north of Austin. There they planned to pitch camp before dusk and spend Saturday and Sunday rock climbing. In the backseat was Kevin McCord, a 25-year-old classmate of Bailey's at Texas A&M, where she studied kinesiology (the study of how the body moves) and he, architecture. Their gear -- tents, backpacks, climbing ropes, petons and cook stove -- was crammed in the back of the cabin. Hanging from the rearview mirror was a stethoscope that Tara, a trained paramedic, never left home without.

A billion years old, Enchanted Rock is one of the oldest exposed rocks in North America and the geologic center of Texas. After a vertiginous climb of several hundred feet, the gargantuan granite dome offers breath-taking views of the surrounding hill country. Donna and Tara had climbed it a dozen times together. This was the best time of year to go, before it got too hot. Although vultures floated above in lazy circles, the only hazard they expected once they got there, besides gravity, was rattlesnakes. These they figured they could handle.

Tara, five feet two inches, a well-knit redhead in her early 30s, and Donna, 10 years older, blond and seven inches taller, had gone on numerous hiking and climbing trips together, as well as canoeing, kayaking and (on girls' night out) dancing. Life was a triathlon. It was as if they couldn't stop moving. Even their conversation was nonstop, usually slipping into their favorite topic, what they liked to call "smut talk" -- an unvarnished discussion of sex.

They were as different as they were similar. Donna was a divorced mother of two living on food stamps who recently moved in with her mother. Despite this she had never been happier. She married young and was now just coming into her own. She went back to school and was working toward her degree. A people-person who spoke her mind, she had little trouble attracting men. She took great pride in her appearance and always brought makeup and a blow dryer on camping trips, playfully boasting she could find an outlet anywhere.

Tara, who was more self-contained, bordering on shy, also had two kids. A former high school athletic star, she lived in jeans and T-shirts and was more comfortable around animals, symbolized by tattoos of a raven on her shoulder, partially obscured by her long red hair, and a horse inked to her ankle. Theirs was a friendship cemented by a love of sports and the outdoors. They both worked at Youth Odyssey, a Corpus Christi nonprofit organization founded by Kim Cox, Tara's husband, that took troubled teens on hiking and climbing trips, to teach them the pressures that defined their lives (money, clothes, status and ethnicity) counted for very little in nature.

Kim Cox had purchased the 1997 Explorer used at the Ford dealership in Corpus Christi. It came equipped with Firestone AT Wilderness tires, which Tara got checked at Jiffy Lube whenever they planned a long trip. The Coxes had put 50,000 miles on the car in the year and a half they owned it. Unlike 89 percent of SUV owners who never venture from pavement, Tara took the Explorer off road on several occasions, often with Donna.

The sun beat down on the Explorer as Corpus Christi suburbs gave way to wide-open Texas desert. The tires hummed against the pavement. Inside Donna, Tara and Kevin traveled in cushy comfort. Tara set the cruise control to 70 mph as they headed north on Route 181, past dusty towns like Paplote, Beeville, Tuleta and Hobson. While Donna and Tara were strapped in the front, Kevin sat in the back without a seatbelt, nudging forward to participate in the conversation, which, punctuated with squeals of laughter, had turned bawdy. The three of them were having so much fun they didn't even bother turning on the radio.

They were on the road about two hours when the trouble started. Although they couldn't have known it the 15-inch right rear Firestone tire had begun to peel apart. A separation developed around the tire's shoulder. Every minute the SUV was in motion the two layers of rubber rubbed together. In some areas the rubber was completely worn through. Twenty miles outside of San Antonio, Donna and her friends had just passed a sign warning of a bridge coming up when the tread snapped away from the tire.

Suddenly an explosion from outside the cabin seemed to rock the Explorer. The car jerked hard to the right. Tara struggled to stay on the road by turning the wheel left and hitting the brakes, but the Explorer had plans of its own. Tires screeching, the back end fishtailed, skidding out of control. Tara spun the wheel the other way and the rear responded by coming around as they continued to skid in a 180-degree turn. But she was still unable to gain control.

The Explorer slid into the left lane and its rear end went off the shoulder and into a ditch. "Hold on!" Tara called out as the car flipped into the air, cartwheeling end over end. The Explorer twisted upside down in midair and 3,000 pounds of SUV pounded down on the ground, crushing in the passenger's side roof. Because of the 10 inches of slack in her safety belt, Donna's head was propped against the top of the car. The force snapped her neck and she was blinded by white light as a sharp pain jolted through her spine. The Explorer spun sideways, rolled over one-and-a-half more times and careened into a chain-link fence ...

The foregoing is excerpted from Tragic Indifference by Adam Penenberg. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced without written permission from HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, NY 10022

Imprint: HarperBusiness; ISBN: 0060090588; On Sale: 11/11/2003; Format: Hardcover; Subformat: ; Length: ; Trimsize: 6 x 9; Pages: 352; $25.95; $39.95(CAN)