Always Ready (14 page)

“You.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Yes, I am.”

Lindsey lowered the magazine and stared at her. “Why?”

Caddie smiled.
Hooked. Thank You, Lord. Help me to make good on this.
“I’ve found a magazine that’s interested in profiles of women in unusual jobs. I’d love to do an article on you. Take some pictures of you on the bridge, maybe a fewon deck. Then, for a change of pace, take some on shore when we get leave. Give the readers an idea of what our life is like. Four of us women, living on a ship with fifty men.”

Lindsey’s eyes crinkled. “I don’t know. You think they’d buy something like that?”

“Yes, I do.” Caddie sat down on the stool they used when sitting at the desk. “I thought about asking Dee or Vera, but let’s face it, Dee’s not very photogenic. Vera might be okay, but I think what you do is much more impressive. Not only do you live in a man’s world, you’ve begun to climb the ladder of rank. I think it’d be a great story, Lindsey. And your eyes. . .”“What about my eyes?” Lindsey scowled.

“They’re gorgeous. I never know whether they’re green or blue.”

“Me either. It depends on what color the water is that day.”

Caddie laughed and pointed a commanding finger at her. “See, that’s part of your uniqueness. Any other woman would have said it depended on what color she wore that day.”

Lindsey shrugged. “We’ve always got the ocean at our backs, or at least it seems that way.”

“You’re right. And that’s what I want to get across. It’s lonely out here, even though we’re packed in like sardines.”

The blue-green eyes flickered, and the ghost of a smile trembled on Lindsey’s lips.

Caddie thought how seldom she’d seen Lindsey smile, and how pretty she was in that moment. “It’d make your momma proud,” she teased.

At last Lindsey let loose with a genuine laugh. “Do you really think you could sell my story?”

“I’m not sure. But we could have fun trying.”

❧

“So what do you want. . .thirty days?” Lieutenant Greer asked.

“No, nothing like that,” Aven said quickly. “A week, maybe?”

“Well, you’ve got time coming. But if I give it to you this month, you’ll miss a deployment, and it will wind up being more than a week. If we’re not in port when you’ve finished your business, you’ll have to wait until we get back.” Greer sat on the edge of his desk, studying the work schedule. “I might be able to give you ten days, starting two weeks from today.”

“That’s fine, but I don’t want you to put the paperwork in yet. I need to get my ducks in a row.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, well. . .” Aven felt his face redden. “I need to coordinate with someone else.”

The skipper tilted his head toward his shoulder. “What aren’t you telling me, Holland?”

“Nothing you need to know, sir.”

Greer’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not violating regulations, are you?”“No. Absolutely not.”

“Good. So what
are
you doing?”

Aven gritted his teeth. No way to get out of this. “She’s on another ship.” There. He’d said it.

Greer stared at him for a moment then laughed. “Is that all? Why so secretive?”

“I just. . .I didn’t want all the men to know. I’d never hear the end of it.”

“I see. All right. It’ll be our little secret. Let me know when you want to begin your leave.”

“Thank you, sir.” Aven left the ward room to the sound of Greer’s laughter.

He wasn’t at all sure that Caddie could get time off, since she’d just finished a medical leave, but if the timing was right, he might be able to whisk her away for a few days during his ten days off duty. If it didn’t work out, he’d just have to wait awhile.

He went in search of Mark and found him in the engine room, where the men had a weight bench and a stationary bicycle—the closest they could come to a gym on board. “Mark, I need your opinion on a private matter.” It was a signal they’d worked out between cruises, when Jo-Lynn broke the news that she was pregnant. If Mark wanted Aven to find a quiet spot on the ship and pray with him, he asked for Aven’s “opinion.”

Now the tables were turned, but Mark picked up the signal, grabbed his towel, and followed Aven into the companionway. “What’s up?”

“Didn’t mean to interrupt your workout.”

“It’s okay.”

Aven looked over his shoulder. So far, so good. A few seconds might be all they got alone. “Would you pray for Caddie and me? I want to take her home to meet my family, but we’d need at least three or four days. That’s if we fly. She’ll make a fuss if I try to pay for plane tickets, but I doubt she can take more time off, since she just had all that medical leave.”

“Yeah, that could be tough to pull off.”

At that moment, the ship’s bell rang. Aven checked his watch. “I’ve got to run. I’m taking a detail to inspect another boat this afternoon.”

“Have fun. I’m off until tonight.”

Aven hurried up the ladder to the main deck. Just as he came into the open, his radio burbled. “Boatswain’s Mate Holland, please report to the bridge.”

Seaman Kusiak and another man had come on deck, and Aven called, “I’ll be right with you.” He hurried up to the bridge.

Greer waited. “The U.S. Marshal’s office just informed us that the fishing boat we impounded in June is being auctioned in Anchorage.”

“The
Molly K
?”

“That’s the one.”

Aven wondered why this was important to him. Impounded boats were sold at auction, and the money was put toward law enforcement equipment. The crews who made the arrests and impoundments weren’t usually involved in that end of the case. “Is there a problem?”

“They’re not sure. Seems Captain Andrews placed a bid on his boat.”

“He’s allowed to do that.”

“Yes.” Greer frowned and looked down at the printout in his hand. “But Andrews filed for bankruptcy after we took the boat. Now he shows up with a large chunk of cash to bid on it.”

“And they want to know where he got it.”

“That’s right.”

Aven followed his skipper to the big windows that looked out on the sea ahead. His team waited down on the main deck. In the distance, several fishing boats bobbed on the shallow waves.

“Is the marshal’s office looking into it?”

“They may hand it to the state police,” Greer said. “I told him we didn’t have any information about Andrews’s income, other than his fishing business, but we’ll share anything we turn up.”

Aven nodded. “It’s unlikely that we will come across anything. Now, we might run into some of his former crew members in other places.”

“Yeah.” Greer sighed. “Well, I just wanted to let you know and to tell you to watch your back, Holland. You never know when one of those fishermen who attacked you will show up on another boat you’re inspecting. And they carry grudges, believe me.”

❧

Caddie used her morning free time to photograph Lindsey at work on the bridge. With Captain Raven’s permission, she took her camera to Lindsey’s communications center while the ship sailed steadily toward civilization, on its way to refit buoys within Cook Inlet. She hoped they would get to go ashore in Anchorage, as she’d never seen the city, and perhaps Homer. She wouldn’t have much chance to build her portfolio of wildlife photos, but she’d have breathtaking backdrops for her photos of Lindsey. The inactive volcanoes around Kachemak Bay would be perfect if they did stop at Homer. And while they sailed, with only ocean on every side, she found Lindsey a more accessible subject.

“I feel silly with you hanging around with that camera,” Lindsey said with a scowl.

“Just do what you normally do,” Caddie told her. “I’ll snap a few candid pictures while you’re working.”

“It’s too weird. The guys are all distracted, wondering what we’re up to.”

Caddie had wondered if the occasional stares the officer of the deck and two other petty officers at work threw their way would rattle her model, but she’d secured the go-ahead from Captain Raven in advance, and she wasn’t going to throw away her chance.

“Ignore me,” she said. “Ignore those guys, too.”

She found that Lindsey was most relaxed when she stood back several paces and used her zoom lens to get the close-ups she wanted.

When Lindsey’s shift was over, they went below to the mess hall and got a cup of coffee.

Sitting in a corner with her notebook on the knee of her blue uniform pants, Caddie smiled at her roommate. “Let’s talk a little bit about your background. I don’t think you’ve ever told me why you joined the Coast Guard.”

Lindsey hesitated. “You want the truth?”

“Of course.” Caddie smiled, but her interviewee wasn’t smiling.

“I wanted to get away from home.” Lindsey inhaled deeply, not meeting her gaze. “Things weren’t good between me and my folks. I wanted out of there as soon as I graduated.”

“Wow. That surprises me.” Caddie couldn’t help the mental contrast between her own years of longing to enlist in the branch of service that her father was a part of and Lindsey’s apparently random choice. “Why the Coast Guard, though? Why not the army or the navy?”

Lindsey shrugged. “Their recruiter came to my school first.”

Caddie forced herself to look down at her notebook and scribbled a doodle on her paper, pretending to take notes.

When she glanced up, Lindsey’s nerves again showed in her sober face, and she twisted her mug back and forth in her hands. “I’m not sure I’d want you to print that in a magazine.”

Caddie leaned toward her and lowered her voice. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to barge right in on a sensitive topic. And I’d never put something you’re uncomfortable about in the article.”

Lindsey licked her lips. “Okay. Well, maybe we can talk about something else and come back to that later.”

“Sure.” Caddie sat back and checked her list of questions. “What do you like best about your job?”

“Hmm. I have to think about that. I suppose knowing I’ve done a good job. At least in the military, you know when you’re doing okay and when you’re not.”

“How do you mean?”

Lindsey sipped her coffee and paused for a moment, looking off into space. “It’s just that before. . .well, at home mostly. . .I never knew if I was going to get yelled at or what. I liked school better, because if I worked hard there and stayed out of trouble, I could do well. For the most part, the teachers were fair. And that’s what I found in the Coast Guard. Basic training was tough, but I knew when I passed each part that I’d succeeded.”

“You must have done well in your advanced training, too.”

“Pretty well, I guess.” Lindsey straightened her shoulders. “I was determined to make it. Because I wasn’t going back. I had nothing to go back to.”

Caddie studied her pinched face. Although sorrow shadowed her heart, Lindsey didn’t want pity; she could see that. “You’ve done a good job.”

Lindsey’s features relaxed. She closed her eyes for a moment then opened them, still determined but less wary. “Thank you.”

“It was different for me. I didn’t want to get away from home so much as I wanted to get into the Coast Guard. My father was—”

“I know. Your father was an illustrious officer.”

Caddie felt stung. Was this what had caused the underlying animosity she’d felt emanating from Lindsey since she’d transferred to the
Wintergreen
?

“Yes,” she said softly. “I wanted to be like him. Now I wonder if my ambition was misdirected.”

“Oh? He
was
a good officer. I’ve heard people talk about him.”

“Yes, but. . .I’m not so sure he was a good father.” Caddie squirmed a bit in her chair.

Okay, Lord, I’m supposed to be doing the interviewing here. Do You really want me to talk about this?

“Then why did you want to please him so badly?”

“That’s just it. I didn’t think that was my motive. At least, I never used to look at it that way, but. . .well, a lot of the time, Dad wasn’t there. He was always off at sea. Mom stayed home with us kids, and she never got bitter about it. She built him up as a hero for us.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“I don’t think we ever really knew Dad for the man he was. Only the man we
thought
he was. Because we could only snatch time with him here and there. I’m not saying he wasn’t a good person. Only that I didn’t really know. And I think that might be why, as a kid, I fixated on joining the service. To be like him. To have that in common with him. To have something special with him that I’d never had before.”

Lindsey sighed. “Well, trust me, a dream kind of father is way better than the kind of father I had. At least you didn’t have to run away from him.”

They sat in silence. A couple of sailors came from the galley and began restocking the supplies for the next meal.

Caddie thought about Lindsey’s words.
Dear Lord, I don’t think I’ve ever really appreciated the father You gave me. Please show me how to relate to Lindsey in a way that will help her.