“You from the IRS? The man's voice was deep and wet, like mud slipping down a drain.”

“Jimmy Lee Baylis was a wise man, and knew better than to talk back to the man who signed his paycheck.”

“From the bow of the canoe she asked, "Do you know a rain dance?""First I need a virgin.”

“The man's a born straggler, Honey thought, another lucky exception to the rules of natural selection. A million years ago he would've been an easy snack for a saber-toothed tiger.”

“From the pancake house I drive directly to the county morgue. The contrast is not especially striking.”

“Mickey Cray had been out of work ever since a dead iguana fell from a palm tree and hit him on the head.”

“From the pocket of her windbreaker he extracted what he falsely believed to be a portable marine radio, which along with two granola bars he'd pilfered from Honey's belongings after she was snatched by the club-handed lunatic. Shreave started pressing buttons on the compact gadget and barking, "Mayday! Mayday!There was no response from the Coast Guard pilot or any other human, and for a good reason. Except for its LED screen, the instrument in Shreave's possession was electronically dissimilar to a radio in all significant respects. Most crucial was the absence of either an audio receiver or a transmitter."SOS! SOS!" he persisted. "Help!"The device was in fact a mobile GPS unit, as technogically impenetrable to Shreave as the Taser gun he'd found beneath Honey's bed.”