Chapter 35

The beach house is a snap for Grant. No alarm, just a deadbolt. Within 45 seconds we’re inside.

It’s deserted. There is evidence of a family – pictures on the walls of smiling parents with three small children – but the house feels vacant. There is a chill everywhere: the cold, damp staleness of salty air bottled up for weeks on end.

Grant leads me to a laundry room off the kitchen and snaps on the light. “We have to hurry,” he says as dumps the parachute on the linoleum floor. “A shower to warm up, then we need to hit the road.”

“In what? There’s no car.”

“There’s an old Mercedes a quarter mile away that I can definitely hotwire. I’d like to be a couple hundred miles from here when the owner gets up and reports it stolen.”

“What about our clothes? They’re sopping wet.”

He points to the dryer. “Voilà.”

I arch an eyebrow. “You’re going to put your $5,000 suit in a regular dryer?”

“We’re on the run from the police and a serial killer, we just parachuted out of an airplane into the Engl