Lost Melody (24 page)

A bitter laugh forced its way out of his lungs. “Turns out Jill was right after all.”

“Speaking of that,” Carl glanced at his watch. “Me and the missus have got to get going. You too, don’t you think?”

The reason for Pat’s presence in the car became clear. This time Greg’s laugh was genuine. “You’re evacuating.”

A dark red flush stained the man’s cheeks. “Yeah, well. Never hurts to be cautious, you know?”

“Go.” Greg waved him toward the car. “I’m right behind you.”

“You’d better hurry,” Carl said as he rounded the front bumper. “You don’t have much time.”

Greg entered the restaurant at a jog.

J
ILL CRANKED THE
SUV’s
HEATER
as far as it would go. Her time on the rocks by the lighthouse had left her cold and wet with salty spray, but at the same time refreshed, even energized. The December wind gathered a frigid chill from the Atlantic Ocean and blew it into the harbor, clearing the rocks of snow and whipping the water into a furious dance. Watching was exhilarating in a way nothing else could be. She’d forgotten.

She shifted into reverse and the vehicle started to roll backward. The rear end lifted as though the tires had climbed a short ridge of some sort. A rock, maybe? Jill stepped on the brakes, but not quick enough. The vehicle bounced as the tires rolled over a bump.

Gingerly, she pressed on the gas pedal. The engine revved, but the SUV did not move. She shifted into drive and gave it a little gas. Nothing. She pressed the pedal farther and the back end slid sideways, but the tires merely spun. She was stuck.

Ignoring a tickle of alarm that brushed at the base of her skull, she put the vehicle in park and got out to inspect the tires. The ridge she’d driven over proved to be a long railroad tie that marked the end of the parking space. It lay buried in snow.
Behind it, her spinning tires had cut deep gashes through the snowy slush, all the way down to the soft mud beneath. The more she spun the tires, the deeper they would sink in the mud.

Maybe she could move the railroad tie. She bent and tugged, but it was too heavy, and frozen into the ground besides. With a gloved hand on the SUV to steady herself, she made her way to the rear of the vehicle to inspect the other tire. When she did, her foot sank in slushy snow up to her calf.

Rising panic threatened to clog her throat. What if she couldn’t get out in time? How stupid she’d been to come to the lighthouse. Nobody knew where she was. Would Greg come looking for her, or would he assume she’d already left and go on without her?

Fighting desperation, she fished her cell phone out of her jacket pocket. Maybe he’d turned his phone back on.

Thick gloves made her fingers clumsy. The phone tumbled out of her hand and landed in the wet snow. With a gasp, she bent to retrieve it. Her foot slid and she tumbled forward, landing on her knee with a painful jolt. Her cell phone! Her knee had driven it down into the watery slush. She ripped off a glove and scrambled to retrieve the phone, a sob caught in her throat.

The screen was blank.

“No.” The word came out in a long, thin wail.

I’ll dry it off. Maybe that will help.

The only piece of dry clothing she wore was her sweater. She unzipped her jacket and rubbed the phone with quick, frenzied gestures. Fingers nearly frozen, she stabbed at the power button. The screen remained blank.

She lifted her face toward the cloud-covered sky. “God, please help me.”

Her shout was muffled by the sound of the waves crashing against the rocky shore.

I’ve got to stay calm.
She closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath.
Maybe if I wedge something flat beneath the tires, they’ll have something to grip. But what?

She opened her eyes and scanned the area for a board, or anything flat. Nothing. What about small rocks? If she dug beneath the packed snow that covered the parking lot, she could fill the ruts behind her tires with gravel.

A glance at her watch clenched her stomach muscles into knots with a sense of urgency. After nine thirty. No, gravel would take too long. She needed a quicker solution.

Her gaze fell on the SUV’s rear window. The boxes containing their belongings filled the rear compartment.

Cardboard! I can wedge flat pieces of cardboard beneath the tires.

Desperate hope swelled in her chest as she struggled to her feet. She opened the hatch and began pulling items out, tossing them into the snow. When she uncovered a large enough box, she turned it on its side and dumped the contents. The towels that wrapped Nana’s precious dishes went to pack the muddy gouges beneath the tires. Nana would understand. Then she ripped the box in two equal pieces and wedged them as far beneath the tires as she could manage. If she could roll backward, she’d fill the gap with more stuff from yet another box, and drive right over the top of the railroad tie.

When her makeshift ramp was as sturdy as she could make it, she returned to the driver’s seat. She closed her eyes. “Please, God. Let this work.” Breath caught in her chest, she shifted into reverse and pressed gently on the gas pedal.

The tires rolled backward, freed from their ruts.

Five precious minutes later, Jill pulled away from the lighthouse parking lot. Her muscles clenched into knots when she saw the clock on the vehicle’s dashboard. Almost a quarter till ten. Greg would probably be frantic with worry. Either that or he’d assume she had left him behind. She turned left onto Harbor Street and pressed the gas pedal.

As she feared, there was no sign of him or anyone else at Harbor Square. She pulled alongside the curb where the buses had been earlier, her hands tightly gripping the steering wheel. Did Greg leave? Or had he changed his mind?

No, ridiculous. That was a paranoid thought. She’d seen love shining in his eyes yesterday, had heard it in his voice when he left the message this morning.
Hey, beautiful.
His greeting sent a thrill through her every time she heard it.

I must have just missed him. He knew where the buses were going. I’ll find him waiting for me with Nana and Mom at the shopping mall.

With a whispered prayer that Greg had, indeed, gone on ahead, she took her foot off the brake and stomped on the gas pedal. The tires skidded across a patch of ice, but then found purchase and the SUV shot forward.

Traffic was lighter than normal today. She didn’t encounter many cars as she sped along Harbor Street. How many of the Cove residents heeded her warning and evacuated quietly on their own? Her lips curved into a smile.

The next moment, it faded. How many residents hadn’t?

Thrusting that thought behind her as she reached the far side of town, she turned onto the road that bordered the bay.

“Glad you finally decided to show up, Bradford.” Richard Samuels, seated in the same chair where Dad had been yesterday, made a point of looking at his watch. “We’d just about decided we’d been the victims of a juvenile prank, waiting here for you to show up while you left town with the lunatics.”

“Sorry I’m late.” Greg ground out the words through gritted teeth. He couldn’t force himself to look at Rowe, and Samuels’s smirk made him feel sick. Instead, he directed his apology toward Mitch.

“What’s going on, Greg?” Mitch turned in the chair to face him.

“Let me get you some coffee.” Rowe started to stand, but Greg waved her down.

“I don’t have time. I’ve got to meet Jill and get out of town before 10:05.”

Samuels leaned back in his chair, his arms folded across his chest. “So you’re going through with this farce. I thought you were smarter than that.”

Mitch pushed his coffee mug away, shaking his head. “When you didn’t hold a press conference last night, I knew you’d made a decision. I hope you know what you’re doing, Greg.”

“Oh, I do.” Greg set the folder full of papers he carried on the table, then rested both hands on top of it and leaned forward. “Actually, when I finally thought about it, there wasn’t really a decision to be made. I’ve had political goals for a long time, but that’s just a job. In the long run it doesn’t matter. What matters is my fiancée. Jill needs my support today, and she’s going to need it even more in the days to come, no matter what happens.” He smiled and looked directly at Rowe. “I love her.”

Understanding dawned in Rowena’s eyes. She lowered her head to stare at her hands folded in her lap.

Mitch heaved a sigh. “I think it’s a mistake, but if that’s what you want to do, we’ll have to deal with it.” His gaze slid across the table toward Samuels.

“No, actually, we don’t have anything to deal with.” Greg straightened. “I’m pulling out.”

“What?” Rowena’s head jerked up.

“That’s right. I’m withdrawing from the election.”

“What —” Mitch appeared to grasp for words. “What does your father think of that?”

“Oh, he wasn’t crazy about the decision.” A gross understatement. Dad had kept him up most of the night, trying to talk him out of withdrawing his candidacy. “He’ll get over it.”

Samuels studied him carefully. “What about your tourism plan?”

Greg slid the folder across the table toward him. “It’s yours. I strongly believe it’s the right thing to do, whether I’m at the helm or not.”

Samuels’s eyebrows crept up his forehead. “I have to admit, it’s a good plan. I think it has merit.” He placed a hand on the folder and drew it toward him.

Greg glanced at the clock on the wall. He’d intended to take only a minute here, but it was already nearly ten o’clock. Jill was probably long gone. Well, he’d go after her. He’d made his statement here, and he’d done it
before
10:05. Hopefully, Jill would accept his explanation.

“Gotta run. See you around.” He let his grin circle the table. “Maybe.”

He exited the café at a run. The wind battered against him
on the way to the car. It sure was strong today. Must be getting ready to blow in a storm. As he opened his car door, he glanced out at the dark clouds blowing inland across the choppy harbor waters.

Just in time to see the two ships collide.

J
ILL AIMED THE
SUV’s
HEATER
vents at her frozen hands as she navigated the gentle curve of the road. A gigantic
crack
echoed over the bay’s churning waters. Startled, she turned around to glance over her shoulder. There, in the harbor just beyond the mouth of the bay. Two ships, one huge and the other smaller. She pulled to the side of the road and rolled to a stop, then unfastened her seatbelt and stuck her head out the window to get a better view. The ships had crashed into each other. The front of the smaller ship was embedded in the bow of the bigger one. Sailors scurried around, looking from this distance like specks being blown by the wind. As she watched, flames erupted on the damaged deck of the large ship.

Flames,

Flames voracious and vicious, roared in the cold air, whipped into a fury by a morning breeze that drew its strength from the icy Atlantic.

Her dream! This was it. She pulled her head back inside the car and looked at the dashboard clock. But it was only ten o’clock. It wasn’t supposed to happen for five more minutes.

And that was
it?
A collision in the harbor, a burning ship? That was the major disaster? They’d evacuated Seaside Cove for this?

How utterly embarrassing.

Her laughter filled the SUV. What a relief! There had been an incident, which validated her dream, though nothing that even came close to the scale she predicted. No doubt she’d be the butt of many jokes and finger-pointing in the weeks to come, but so what? In this case she’d rather be wrong than right. Isn’t that what she’d told Greg?

She started the engine and stomped on the accelerator, one eye on the rearview mirror to watch the ships. The SUV shot forward. The road curved around the bay, and the flames leaping into the sky from the deck of the burning ship disappeared from her rearview mirror. She reached up to adjust the angle.

The tires skidded on a wide patch of ice. The back end of the vehicle slid sideways. Her heart slammed a panicked rhythm against her ribcage. Without thinking, she hit the brake pedal.

Wrong move.

Release the brake! Turn the wheel into the spin!

Before she could follow the thought with action, the SUV flipped.

When Greg drove down Harbor Street, his eyes were drawn again and again to the two ships in the harbor. Jill had been right after all. This was the disaster she’d dreamed of. She’d been saying fire all along, and also cold. The fire was there for everyone to see, and the strong winds were as cold as an arctic storm.

He approached the center of town, where the wooden docks ran alongside the road on the harbor side, and a short line of cars in front of him slowed his progress to a crawl. Drivers inched forward, their heads hanging out their windows to watch the burning
ship, which was slowly drifting from the center of the narrow water passageway toward the shore. To his left, a crowd had gathered on the docks. People lined the old wooden slats, pointing. A couple of television vans had parked in the small lot at the far end of the dock, their cameramen busy filming the “disaster.” It was a pretty spectacular sight, actually. Fingers of flames punched at the clouds and belched black smoke into the sky.

“Oh, come on,” Greg muttered at the car in front of him. “Pull off the road if you want to gawk.”

He smacked the horn, which resulted in a rude gesture from the driver. The car accelerated, though only by inches. It crept toward the south end of the dock and drew alongside the television vans, then stopped again.

With a frustrated grunt, Greg jerked backward against the seat. The clock read 10:02. Jill’s timing was a little off, and she certainly overestimated the effect of the disaster, but she had the date right. December 6. A soft snort escaped when he remembered telling her she’d dreamed up the date because of the historical significance of the Halifax Explosion. Funny, that had been caused by a collision in the harbor too.

A chill marched across his skin and raised the hair along his arms. His gaze snapped toward the harbor. The smaller one was a cargo vessel, headed away from Halifax out to sea. The large one faced the opposite direction, toward the city. She sat low in the water, weighed down with a full load of cargo. A huge tanker.

Moisture evaporated from his mouth. What cargo did a tanker carry?

Fuel.

He jerked the gearshift lever into Park and leaped out of the car in the middle of the street.

“Get out of here!” His shout bellowed toward the people on
the dock. A few heads turned his way as he ran toward them, arms waving above his head. “Don’t you see what that ship is? She’s a tanker! It’s not safe here.”

A few people backed slowly away, but most didn’t move. The television cameras swung around toward him.

“Hey!” Greg ran in their direction. “You’ve got to warn them. She’s going to blow!”

Movement in the distance drew his gaze. A lone vehicle on the road that rounded the wide bay sped out of town. He knew that SUV. It belonged to Ruth. That was Jill. She’d waited for him. But now she was leaving. Good. At least she’d be at a safe distance when —

The rear of the vehicle skidded sideways. Horror bludgeoned his brain as the SUV spun in a full three-sixty, then flipped. It rolled side-over-side not once, but three times. Off the road. Across the giant, jagged rocks that formed the shore. Into the bay.

“Jill!”

The scream ripped from somewhere deep in his chest as he ran for his car. He twisted the wheel and stomped on the gas. The car shot into the center of the street, around the left of the traffic that blocked him, that kept him from Jill. Horns blasted as oncoming cars swerved out of his way. He ignored them, his thoughts fixed on Jill.

She can’t swim.

He punched the pedal all the way to the floor. The road sped beneath his tires. The five kilometer drive seemed to take hours, but he didn’t waste time looking at the clock. He had to get to Jill.

When he reached the place, he jerked the car onto the grassy side of the road. The transmission protested with a loud clank when he jerked the gearshift into Park long before the tires had
stopped moving. He didn’t care, but leaped from the car and ran across the road.

The SUV was almost completely submerged upside down in the water. Waves washed over the mangled metal underside. Tires pointed toward the sky like a grotesque bug, belly-up in death.

A choked sob squeezed through Greg’s fear-swollen throat. He had to get her out of there.

He was moving toward the water when the tanker exploded.

The blast shook the ground beneath his feet with the force of an earthquake. A blinding white flash burned into his eyes. He blinked to clear his vision, and when he looked again, a gigantic black mushroom erupted into the sky over the harbor. A powerful nausea almost dropped him to his knees at the certain fate of the people on the dock, for probably a good distance inland.

He choked down the rising acid in his throat and climbed across the jagged black rocks toward the water, unzipping his jacket so it wouldn’t weigh him down. Jill needed him.

A roar reached his ears when he shed his jacket on the rocks. He glanced up to see a monstrous wall of water thundering toward him.

He dove seconds before the tsunami struck.