A Tennessee sheriff and lawyer want a jailed drifter to assassinate a mayoral candidate.

Four young friends, en route to the coast for a weekend of surfing and fun are forced to seek help from a strange recluse when their car breaks down. Jack Rattigan is a strange man living in an even stranger house, a decaying relic of a bygone age. Is Rattigan insane? Or are his words and acts and expression of a mind tortured by mortal anguish? What is Rattigans secret? And what is the source of his power to mesmerise?

Frank Davies is a bar owner and ex-cop. The lovely Jade Anderson walks into the bar one night and Frank is smitten. He learns that her husband is a diplomat gone bad, smuggling drugs in from Peru. He decides to help her but Jade has her own machinations. She thinks that she's got him twisted around her little finger, but he knows a lot more than he's letting on. He knows about the bomb. The money...