Run into Trouble
it would lead to a discussion of her own activities.
Drake decided that silence was the best policy on his part. He didn’t have the right to quiz Melody, and he felt uncomfortable talking about Grace. Although he shouldn’t. Nothing had happened between them. And, as a very old and very racist saying went: They were all free, white, and twenty-one. Except that Melody believed everybody belonged to the same race and that traits like color were a miniscule variation because of the latitude where one’s ancestors had lived. In addition, Grace wasn’t just white but a mixture. A mixture of latitudes. So what did that make her? Perhaps anything she wanted to be.
Drake reminded himself to quit following wisps of ideas that avoided the issue and net out what was important. Again. He had a habit of doing that. He had some sort of feeling for Grace, probably not wholesome, and he didn’t want to discuss it with Melody. He was disturbed that Melody went out without telling him, but she didn’t answer to him. So there. End of thought process. He chuckled.
“What are you laughing about?”
Drake’s muscles contracted in a startle reflex as Melody’s question brought him back to the present.
“I was just thinking that these houses are so close to the water that a tsunami from an earthquake like the one in Alaska in nineteen sixty-four would wash them all out to sea. That one uprooted redwood trees.”
“That helicopter is flying awfully low.”
Drake glanced up as the chopper went past them heading east along the line of the beach. He turned his head to follow its flight and could just barely make out Harrison and Danny who were trailing the pack of runners today. Danny had complained that his knee hurt, and Fred had sent him to a doctor who had taken x-rays and recommended that he not run for a while.
That wasn’t an option, of course, and Danny was struggling to stay in the race. Drake wondered whether he and Harrison would be the first team to drop out. Knee problems could be serious, and they were usually not curable overnight.
The rest of the runners were within fifty yards of each other. Yesterday, Drake and Melody had finished within a couple of minutes of the four leading teams.
“We have to figure out how we can gain on Tom and Jerry. Maybe we should try to break away from the pack.”
Melody looked sideways at Drake. “You know how that would end. Try not to worry about my mum. Something will turn up.”
“I’ll call Blade tonight to see if he’s found out anything on the prints.”
“Better give him a few more days.”
“Fred has got to be part of this. I’m going to put him on the rack—”
“Not yet.”
Melody was trying to keep him calm, even though she had more to lose.
The explosion behind them rocked Drake. He caught his balance and turned around in time to see black smoke rising from a beach house and several objects arcing their way toward the smoke from the ocean. His military experience immediately told him that they were shells of some sort.
Even as disbelief filled his mind, the shells hit houses in the vicinity of the one that had absorbed the first blast, sending smoke and debris into the air. Eerie silence followed. Drake glanced out to sea. He thought he saw something disappear under the waves, but he couldn’t be sure. He realized that Melody was clinging to him.
“Bloody hell!”
Her grip was so tight it hurt his arm. The other runners had stopped, also, and were looking at the smoke with their mouths open. The assault appeared to have stopped. Other than half a dozen beachgoers, they were the closest people to the destruction. Drake started running back toward the houses. Melody and the other runners followed him.
Three or four houses had been hit. Anybody who had been inside one of the houses was probably dead. Flames started to shoot up from the wreckage. Whatever the shells hadn’t already destroyed, fires would.
Melody asked the question that had just occurred to Drake. “Where are Harrison and Danny?”
“I don’t see them. They must have been close to those houses.”
The smoke, which had initially surged straight up, was being carried away from them by the prevailing wind. Drake could see the beach in front of the houses. Two men were lying on the sand.
“Look.” He pointed toward the men.
“That’s them. Harrison and Danny.”
Drake and Melody ran up to the pair who were lying amid debris blown from the houses. They were close enough
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