UCLA.1955. Blue skies are stirring with the first breezes of a powerful and long overdue storm that's about to sweep the country. Not even this bucolic Southern California university can escape the rising tension, as three new students from sharply different backgrounds soon discover. They form an unlikely but strengthening friendship, and before long this bond becomes their best protection against the unexpected threats that lie ahead. Excerpt from Chapter 15: "Yeah, you stay the hell away from his sister," added Jerrod, in what had to be the biggest fuckup in a long line of fuckups he'd been stringing together all day. James didn't respond, hoping it might somehow slide by unnoticed, but that was unlikely. There was no one to blame but himself, of course, since he knew from the start that Jerrod was unreliable, but he'd been left with no other options. He didn't run in the kind of circles that would offer him choices for a job like this, or that could follow through on threats like the one he'd just made, for that matter. "We're going to leave now, so if you thought we were going to cut you, now is the time to relax. But if there's a next time, it won't be me and it'll get ugly, that's for sure. So you both think about that, for the good of the baby, right?" He felt bad about mentioning the baby at all, but this was his one chance to scare the guy off, and after all, it was his sister's safety he was trying to protect here. Fortunately, Jerrod kept his mouth shut and they both turned and walked toward the still wide-open front door. Aside from that one glaring mistake, James thought it had gone about as well as he could have expected and was looking forward to debriefing his sister at her place later in the day. As he crossed the threshold of the doorway and stepped into the brilliant sunshine, he could never have imagined that this reunion would be years away.