Relentless

me.”
    “Someday,” Penny agreed, “but that’s decades from now.”
    “I figure seven years,” Milo said.
    “When you’ve conquered the problem of time travel,” Penny informed him,
“then
I’ll let you date.”
    “I don’t think time travel is possible,” Milo said.
    “Then I won’t need to worry about having a daughter-in-law with two nose rings, a pierced tongue, seven tattoos, jeweled teeth, a shaved head, and attitude.”
    “Never bring home a girl with attitude,” I advised Milo. “Your mother will just have to beat the crap out of her.”
    “I don’t understand why we can’t just go to a hotel,” Penny said. “But if we can’t—then where do we go? Maybe to my folks’ place?”
    “No. Somewhere Waxx is unlikely to look.”
    “What about Marty and Celine’s place?”
    Marty and Celine were good friends who lived only a mile from us. They had flown to Wyoming to take care of Celine’s parents, who had been nearly killed in an avalanche.
    Since Monday, Penny had been checking on their house once a day, taking in mail and newspapers, watering plants as needed.
    “I feel a little funny about it,” I said.
    “Marty and Celine won’t mind.”
    “I mean … I wonder if friends as close as Marty and Celine are toomuch of a connection to us. Clitherow seemed adamant that we had to drop off the radar.”
    “But if somehow Waxx could find out who our closest friends are,” she said, “he’d still need time, a lot of time, to do it.”
    “Maybe he already knows,” Milo said.
    The boy’s suggestion was the intellectual equivalent of a shock from a Taser.
    In spite of what Clitherow had told me about the many similar phrases in the reviews of
Mr. Bluebird
and
One O’Clock Jump
, I had continued to operate under the assumption that John had become a target for destruction because of the letter he had written to Waxx’s editor and that I had earned a promise of doom merely by conspiring to get a look at the great man in Roxie’s Bistro.
    Waxx’s assaults on John and on us were no less psychotic but a great deal more logical, strategically and tactically, if we assumed that he had planned to kill us and our families
before
he published reviews of our novels. Harder to credit was that his violation of our house twice, the planting of sophisticated packages of explosives, and the Tasering were part of an
impromptu
response to the encounter in the bistro men’s room, all within fourteen hours of Milo’s brief misdirection of his stream.
    I remembered what Clitherow had said about Waxx being less a critic with opinions than one with an agenda. Understanding that agenda would be key to survival.
    “What about the Balboa sinkhole?” Penny said as she turned onto Pacific Coast Highway.
    Marty was an architect and Celine was a Realtor, but they were primarily entrepreneurs. Over the years, they carefully acquired prime properties for the land value, tore down the existing houses, built new houses, and sold for a profit.
    Usually they had two projects going at once, sometimes three. Fortunately, they foresaw the coming real-estate bust. By the time values began plummeting, they had only one project left to sell. Because it was a harborside house on Balboa Peninsula, because it had been on the market two years without an offer, and because they would make no profit from it, they called it the Balboa sinkhole.
    When they left their keys with Penny before flying to Wyoming, they also left the keys to the peninsula house on the same ring, in the unlikely event that someone wanted to tour the place. Like many high-end homes, this one could be shown by appointment only and strictly to qualified buyers; therefore, no key was left on-site in a lockbox.
    “Sounds plausible,” I said. “Let’s check it out.”

   From the street, the Balboa sinkhole was a handsome contemporary structure faced in limestone, with two double garage doors.
    A remote-control fob on the house key operated the roll-up doors. Penny parked in the only available space, beside three pickup trucks, all fully restored classics. Marty had a collection of these vehicles too large to fit in his own garage.
    From the luggage in the Explorer, we took only two overnight bags for Penny and me, and one of the huge suitcases with wheels, nearly as big as a steamer trunk, which Milo insisted he needed.
    Penny had the code to the alarm system.
    In the house, Lassie scampered off to investigate every room, as any dog will when