Tom Walton, divorced solicitor, takes the dangerous step of using money from his clients’ bank account to keep the taxman at bay.  It might have worked if book-keeper, Dorothy Brown, had not been so efficient.  Faced with her accusation, Walton sees prison looming, but his anarchic girlfriend, Jenny Lindt, proposes an alternative.

Resourceful, attractive and hard-up, young Jenny had hoped Walton was her stepping-stone out of the gutter.  She is not about to let this new turn of events stand in her way.  Scarred by the events of her adolescence, and by her sister's suicide, she finds relationships hard – except where they are relationships of a financial nature.  “Take the money and run,” she says. “Empty the whole bloody lot into a suitcase and go.  Free!"

But before Walton and Lindt have even left the country, Woo discovers that, instead of having earned a healthy commission, he is nearly three hundred thousand pounds out of pocket.  Woo joins Detective Sergeant Burbidge in a hunt for the two criminals.  But where DS Burbidge's jurisdiction ends with the south coast of England, Woo's drug-dealing net spreads all the way to the Caribbean, where the fugitives are headed.

Walton, who grew up on the East Coast, and raced yachts at Law School, steals a sailing boat and he and Jenny slip quietly away from England’s shores, landing briefly in the Channel Isles to transfer their stolen money to an anonymous Caribbean tax haven.  But the price that Jersey banker, Paul Davies, asks of Jenny is more than Tom Walton can stomach.

Affected by dramatic events that happen later in their voyage, Jenny puts another’s life before her own for once.  From here the hunt takes the couple to the coral strewn ‘Caicos Bank’ where their yacht weaves and squirms amongst the reefs in a desperate attempt to avoid the implacable Eddie Woo.

The final action takes place on the barren, desert-island of Ambergris Cay, where Woo and Walton come face to face for the last time.  And Jenny has to decide if she really wants to share her life with this criminal lawyer.

© 2004 Peter Edington

Dead Run is a work of fiction. No identification should be made between any of its characters and any real person, living or dead.