Author's Note: This one's been coming for a long time, developing rather slowly and painfully. Thus far I know this much about it: it is long.

Normally I feel it is best not to introduce too much realism into Hazzard County. After all, realism sort of negates a lot of defining characteristics of the show. And heck, characters like Rosco and Boss might disappear all together if said realism doesn't get wielded really carefully.

But I did a ton of research on this one to keep it reasonably accurate. I say "reasonably" because there are, as a means of saving my sanity, liberties taken. (This is why I love fiction vs. my day job, which contains no liberties whatsoever.) And in order to appease the two opposing desires on my part, the realistic events in this story largely happen outside of Hazzard.

You know what I don't own or earn, and you'll see my original characters as they come by. Thanks in advance to all who read and review. I'll keep future author's notes to a minimum, but I think there will be other disclaimers along the way.

Prologue

Black encased in darkness, gliding through gloom, chased by the dim. Two forces hurtling blindly along a path toward refuge or disaster – a reckless heap of high-speed subtleties, at least to the eyes. Fortunately there are other senses, even if most of them are made useless by distance.

"He's still back there," Bo reports from where his head is cocked out the window, hair in his eyes, but his ear clear of any obstructions.

"Come on, Harve," Luke grouses, because he's got a job to do. Simple when it comes down to it, nothing like what some of those poor guys he graduated with back in June got stuck doing. Punching a clock at eight in the morning, assuming they're lucky enough to be on the day shift, then eight hours the same repetitive activity until they get to punch out and take their bored and exhausted selves home.

Whereas the Dukes are lucky enough to have inherited the family business. It might keep them up half the night, but who could sleep anyway when they're being chased through the murky night at speeds approaching a hundred miles per hour?

Nevertheless, it's a job, one that only pays when it's complete, and just because the Duke boys enjoy their work doesn't mean they really want to spend the whole night doing it.

"You could lose him," is Bo's innocuous suggestion. Casual almost, in a way that only someone watching from the passenger seat can be. "Up here on dead man's curve."

There's a reason they call it that. "I ain't got no interest in killing him, cuz," comes Luke's testy answer, because Harvey Essex may be a revenuer, could have his sights on sending two young Dukes up the river for an unspecified amount of time (though with Bo being technically a minor, maybe just a misdemeanor charge against him), but the man's got a wife at home, and kids. Besides, "Jesse would whip our tails," right out of town and into jail himself if he thought they'd done it on purpose, "if we let that happen."

Huff of air, blonde fluff flying everywhere in deference to the wind and the violence of the pout Bo's putting on. "I ain't talking about that," gets griped back at him. "I mean the meadow just after. There's that path," which is nothing more than a gap between two trees, barely car-width. "He wouldn't follow you there."

Of course Harvey wouldn't; the man has some sense. "Ain't no way to spot that sucker at night," Luke informs him. Not going ninety-five miles per hour, even if there is a sliver of moon and spotty starlight to see by. Those are hardly enough for him to keep track of the white line at the right edge of the road, which is just about the only thing that's going to keep them from flying off the edge of dead man's curve in a minute or so, and plunging into the darkness of the valley below.

"Sure you can," comes the confident explanation from his right. "There's that white boulder just before it."

Which ought to speak of the danger right there. It's not so much a white rock as a paint transfer, a scraped surface from where a semi took the turn too fast for the weight of its cargo. Bo might not remember when that happened, having been nothing more than a bubble-gum chewing pre-teen at the time, but Luke can recollect overhearing Sheriff Rosco's tales of picking up pieces of that truck's hide from here to Chickasaw. As to the driver, well, Uncle Jesse had started coughing when the sheriff got to that part. Hacking like he had a two-pack-a-day habit, when everyone knew he'd never smoked in his life. And when the choking fit was done, his uncle had said something about children, which Luke certainly hadn't been at the time, and then taken the conversation off to the far reaches of the farmyard.

"It ain't safe, Bo."

But it's more than ignorance (which might even be willful – seems like all of Hazzard talked about that truck accident for days, and even took up a collection to help the poor driver's widow get back on her feet and there's no way his cousin could have missed all the activity) that makes Bo suggest a crazy stunt like skirting off into that high meadow. It's the fact that the boy can see through the dark better than any Duke ever has, could spot an ant crawling across a piece of coal in the middle of a blacked out night from a hundred paces away.

"You could let me drive," sounds exactly like pride mixed with frustration from the kid stuck in the passenger seat.

Because his cousin could do it, could find that opening and guide them right through it at high speed, leaving Harvey Essex to follow the road and wonder what on earth happened to the car whose bumper he was trailing just seconds ago. And after the revenuer spent an hour searching the roads, he'd finally find his way to that little farmhouse set back from Old Mill Road, hat in hand, head bowed and admitting to one Jesse Duke about how he must have chased those boys of his off the cliff, and he really didn't mean to but… a broken-hearted little confession that would get interrupted by the growl of engine, a squeal of brakes, and two clearly-not-dead boys hollering and laughing as they pulled themselves out of one black Ford Galaxie without even the smallest ding in her perfect black matte skin. But—

"Jesse'd kill me," if he so much as let the baby of the family touch the steering wheel on a moonshine run. An arbitrary rule, or at least an unexplained one. Bo is, after all, supposed to be learning this part of the trade from Luke, but it's not like there's anything left to teach a boy who first got behind the wheel at age thirteen, then pretty much mastered every trick set in front of him before he'd even grown up enough to notice girls. "Just," frustration now, because they're getting close to do-or-die, and also because Luke's not thrilled about this next part. "Call in the dogs."

Giggles of victory from Bo, as if they have any time for those. Then, "Woof, woof," he calls into the CB mic that he just keyed. Followed by, "We're at mile marker thirty-eight."

Things happen fast then – dead man's curve on which Luke speeds and Harvey, in his glowing white Plymouth, slows in deference to some desire to live through the night. The bridge just beyond and the trade off of one white vehicle on their tail for another. Daisy, in the pickup, laying down a fine coat of oil. The bump that signifies the end of the span through the brief moment in which they are airborne, and then there's more light than their dilated eyes can stand to look at in their rearview. Screeching skid, bang and thump, and they can take their time on the rest of this delivery.

"Jesse," Luke calls, taking the CB mic from where it's resting casually in Bo's fingers. "Everyone all right?"

"I reckon," comes back at him. "But when you get a chance," by which he means after the delivery is made, because a job is a job and it's got to be done. "You might want to bring your friend Cooter back this way."

Because even if he is a revenuer, old Harvey Essex has a right to all the assistance they can muster in getting his car back out from the ditch into which it just slid.

"Yee-haw," Bo hollers, even if their escape wasn't half as interesting as it might have been had the youngster been behind the wheel.