His Last Defense

by Karen Rock

  She felt herself tighten, resisting what she was about to say. To admit.

  “Not so good. Haven’t found much crab. I’m—ahhh—wondering if you might have any leads on where they might be at.”

  In the ensuing silence, her palms grew damp.

  “Yeah. Just set a town soak string right over a hot spot. Better haul ass and start mowing if you’re gonna beat these other assholes that might be listening in.”

  “Thanks for the tip, Bill,” someone else growled over the line. Jake Scanlon, the youngest and newest captain in the fleet. “What’d you say those coordinates were again?”

  “Shove it, Jake.”

  Nolee grinned as she jotted down Bill’s rapid-fire coordinates. “Roger that, Bill. And, thanks.”

  “Don’t choke me down, Nolee,” he added, referring to a practice less scrupulous skippers had of setting lines to prevent others from extending their run. “Or, Jake. Over.”

  She stopped herself midbristle, knowing he was only messing with her, and teased the crusty captain right back. “Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t. Oh. And one more thing.”

  Nolee eyed the bustling crew below, her gaze lingering on Dylan. He’d admonished her that she wasn’t her childhood self and neither was he.

  He had unresolved issues here in Alaska, serious ones that included a secret even Dylan didn’t know yet about his family, one his mother had insisted Nolee keep until she could tell him herself.

  No matter what he said, or didn’t say, he hurt over them...even if he couldn’t admit it. She owed it to him to help him gain closure over this aspect of his life, before he left Kodiak. Although, technically, he hadn’t mentioned his transfer papers in a while...was it possible he’d changed his mind?

  She brushed off the tempting thought and asked, “Will you tell Dylan’s mother he’ll be at Chart Room Grill in five days if she still wants to meet with him?” They had their second offload date with the distributing plant and would have a one-night layover in town.

  “Does Dylan know about this plan?”

  “Not yet, but he will.”

  “You think he’ll agree?”

  “Let’s just say, I might have some influence...”

  “Roger that, Nolee. Bill, out.”

  Nolee settled the unit back in its holder and set her coordinates. Outside the wind chafed the surging sea and pushed back against the scuttling crew. Dylan stood tall, legs spread, body unbowed by the storm. He looked invincible, but she knew better.

  She was taking a chance pushing this issue with Dylan, and he might not agree with her planned reunion. He’d be furious with her. Yet she sensed that part of his restless spirit would never be free of his past until she helped him resolve it.

  As for herself...well...it seemed as though she only risked reopening old wounds by being with him. But she’d survived one morning after without falling hopelessly in love with Dylan Holt again.

  Only fourteen more to go.

  12

  A FEW DAYS LATER, Dylan shook feeling into his numb hands and exchanged a grin with Nolee across the deck’s tank chute. His heart thudded at the childlike delight on her face as if he was swimming in thirty-foot swells. The need to pull her into his arms and tempt her to his bed, ever present these days despite their grueling work schedule, hit him hard. He shoved down the driving impulse. With others around, he had to bide his time to get her alone.

  Private moments had been frustratingly few and far between with the crew underfoot and Nolee working more on deck. Stu’s arthritis had flared yesterday, and she’d swapped her longer shifts at the wheel to let him rest his joints.

  “Tanks topped!” Nolee spun the hatch closed on their second full tank, bringing them closer to a million-dollar catch if they kept up these numbers.

  “Boo-yah!” Tyler fist-bumped a grinning Jo then pulled back his hand, fingers spread wide.

  Tim grabbed something invisible and thrust his hips forward, grinning maniacally. “Now that’s what I’m talking about! Uh! Uh! Uh!”

  Flint danced his trademark Krabby Patty jig. “We’re rockin’ and rollin’, baby! Take me to the bank.”

  “Now put it back in with a bunch of bait,” Nolee ordered the crew, teeth flashing, eyes sparkling. Dylan’s breath caught. No woman had ever affected him this way. “We’re offloading in ten hours.”

  Bill’s tip had paid off big-time. They’d been running hard, working sixteen-hour shifts, hauling as much crab as possible before their looming offload date. They had to be at the heart of a mammoth school, or its leading edge, because the crabs were big and clean.

  Seemed like they’d left their nail-biting days of grinding off zeros behind. Yet even these large numbers didn’t make up for earlier setbacks. Nolee still worried, as did Dylan.

  He’d been distracted, at least, when the old rhythms of fishing returned to him. It was exhilarating to labor on the Bering Sea again, surrounded by a rugged landscape more beautiful than any he’d encountered in his travels so far: the changing, volatile climate, the dramatic sunsets, the endless ocean. He’d missed his hometown, he realized, now that he’d seen more of the world. His time here didn’t have to be the misery he’d imagined. How long since he’d fished? Hiked? Camped?

  Suddenly he wanted to do the things that’d once seemed more like familial obligations. Most of all, watching Nolee, he wanted her as much as he ever had...maybe more. His emotions had deepened, fueled by the knowledge that she’d given up their future together so he could have his dream. Could he have it all, temporarily, and still walk away?

  * * *

  A SMALL EXPLOSION sounded off the starboard side and the entire boat vibrated. A shrilling note squealed through the pilothouse’s glass. Nolee whirled from the launcher, her face stricken.

  “What was that, Stu?” she called.

  “We’ve got an issue in the engine room.”

  Nolee spun and Dylan sprinted after her and Wesley toward the engine room, his short hard breaths harsh in his ears.

  “God damn it,” he heard her swear before she flung herself through the hatch. He plummeted down the vertical ladder after her and yanked on a pair of the headphones they used to muffle the sound of the deafening engine. The cramped, humid room reeked of rust, sea water and oil.

  “Which alarm is it, Wesley?” she demanded, squinting up at their pressure gauges.

  “Over here.” Wesley pointed at one of their engines. He’d pulled back the cover.

  Dylan joined him, Nolee on his heels. He held his hand over it then yanked it back. “It’s hot as fuck.”

  “Got to check the gearbox!” Nolee shouted and Dylan followed her to the apparatus.

  Dylan scanned it, noting that the coolant wasn’t reading. “It looks like it’s seized!”

  The noise of the engines was deafening, a never-ending timpani of thumping and grinding. It deluged the room, his ears, his head. He struggled to hear himself think even with the headphones on.

  “Engine oil’s down,” Nolee canted, her features set. Fierce. His warrior-captain. “Jacket water’s not registered. Nothing pumping for the starboard engine.”

  The boat lifted under them, sending all three staggering against the wall.

  “Wow,” yelled Wesley. “That’s not good.”

  “No shit, Sherlock,” Dylan ground out, his pulse slamming through his veins.

  “All this vibration is coming from here.” Wesley pulled back the metal access and pointed at one of the gears in the starboard transmission.

  They stared in horror. It was frozen, making it impossible for the engine to transfer power to the prop and push the boat forward.

  “You can’t fix a gearbox for a main engine at sea,” Dylan thought out loud, then swore. “Son of a bitch.”

  Nolee relaxed her balled hands and met their gazes,
her features set. Chin raised. She grabbed a radio set from its holder and spoke into it.

  “Stu, do you copy?”

  They strained to hear.

  “Stu,” Nolee repeated. Louder. “Stu, do you copy?”

  After a static-filled pause, the answer came through loud and clear. “Stu here, over.”

  “We’re down to one engine. It’s going to be real slow going from here on out.”

  “We’ll miss our offload time,” Dylan heard Stu shout through the small speaker they now crowded around. “Do you want me to radio to reschedule? It’ll be days...”

  “We’ll lose the crab.” Wesley shook his head.

  Dylan’s jaw clamped tight. The extra time in the tank, waiting for the busy distributor to fit the boat in to offload, would kill off the crab; they’d lose their first solid take.

  “Unless...” Nolee breathed a fast breath and her nostrils flared, her diamond stud flashing.

  “Nolee...” he began, knowing that ferocious look on her face. It was the expression she wore right before she did something really, really risky. Every cautious bone in his body seized.

  “Stu. Set course.”

  “Where?”

  “False Pass.”

  Dylan’s heart dropped. Damn it. Nolee knew better than to take the treacherous shortcut. It’d save them time, if—and it was a big if—they made it though. It cut too close to the shoreline to be anything but a dangerous pass of last resort. Seasoned captains had run their ships aground there, lost their hauls in that dangerous, narrow and winding channel.

  He opened his mouth to object and reason with her. Better to risk losing their offload date and payoff than the entire ship. Crew. But his lips clamped shut at her determined expression, and he followed her topside.

  Real and present danger loomed, but it wasn’t necessarily a given. A skilled captain had a chance of pulling them through, and Nolee, he’d come to learn these past couple of weeks, was damn good behind the wheel.

  Her claims of I’ll take care of it weren’t just talk. She did take care of it. The sweat equity she put into the crew and boat... It might make him lose sleep, but that same daring, crazy, ferocious quality made her an outstanding captain the crew was lucky to have. They respected and trusted Nolee, and he should, too.

  The Bering Sea would chew you up and spit you out. As a skipper, you had to be able to hang and she’d proven her mettle. She wanted, needed, deserved for others to believe in her and right now, that started with him.

  Once on deck, she paused at the rail and stared out at the rollicking, surging chop, the darkening line of clouds on the horizon. Gulls circling the scene were shrieking. He squeezed her waist. “You got this, Captain.”

  Nolee turned, as if brought back reluctantly from distant thoughts. “I’d better have it. Would you join me in the pilothouse?”

  “You couldn’t order me away.”

  The staring, anxious crew filed into the galley after them for their first break in nearly twelve hours. Nolee must be exhausted, too, but she didn’t show it.

  “Are we dumping the crab, Captain?” asked a muted-sounding Flint, his expression hangdog, his features falling in on themselves. He leaned, whey-faced, against the counter.

  “Nah. We’re taking a shortcut. False Pass.”

  Tyler whistled. “Ah, buddy. Knock ’em dead, Captain.”

  “Got it covered. Get some shut-eye. Everyone but Wesley. We’ll be offloading in eight hours.”

  Upstairs, Stu vacated the captain’s chair and Nolee slid behind the controls.

  “Get some rest, Stu.”

  The older man crossed arms over a prominent belly and braced against the heaving boat. “I’m talking you through this. Looks like we got some weather coming in.”

  She shook her head. “That’s an order. You’ve been driving straight for twelve hours. Your wrist is swollen as hell. Soak it in Epsom salt and get some sleep. Besides, I’ve got Dylan.”

  Nolee’s eyes, when she looked at Dylan, were clear and steady, a rich brown. He nodded. If she was taking a risk, it wouldn’t be alone. They had each other.

  Always had.

  Time, distance and heartbreak hadn’t changed a single thing between them. Was he a fool for thinking he could leave her and Kodiak in just under a couple of weeks?

  Damn straight.

  But no time to think about that now, not with a disabled engine and an incoming gale degrading their already complicated mission.

  Nolee wanted his support, wanted him, at least for now, and he’d make the most of every moment they had left...even this one.

  He took his place at the windshield to call visual cues as Nolee steered the boat to the treacherous sea lane. Dylan stared out of the glass at the water heaving and churning around them, occasionally meeting the salt-stained windows with an emphatic slap.

  “Don’t worry, Nolee.”

  “Do I look worried?” She flicked him a quick look then peered back at her controls. Her dead-serious tone nearly made him laugh despite everything. Of course she wasn’t anxious. She had him to do all the worrying.

  And there was plenty to be concerned about.

  “I’m down, but I’m not out,” he heard her murmur under her breath. “I’m down but I’m not out.”

  He brushed a hand over the back of her head. “Nolee?”

  “I’ve just got to start talking positive to myself,” she continued as if she hadn’t heard him. She edged up the throttle, pulled it back, her hand on the black joystick of the thrust. “I can do it with one engine.”

  He opened his mouth to object then shut it. Crab-fishing boats had twin screws and didn’t function well on one engine. They were designed and made to run on two. Without both, they’d lose steering and speed. With half the horsepower, braving the narrow pass in stormy weather would test Nolee’s skill and put the lives of the crew, as well as the boat and the lucrative catch, at risk.

  “There’s no reason I can’t do this,” she said to herself. “I don’t want to hear any worst-case scenarios, okay, Dylan?”

  He nodded. She was right. His brand of negative thinking had no place here. The time to second-guess was long gone. He squeezed her shoulder as Stu stumped downstairs to his berth, muttering warnings.

  “You’ve got this.”

  She briefly placed a hand over his, then returned it to the controls.

  Forty-five tense minutes later he spotted a bobbing red triangle. The silver-blue sea darkened to slate, muddied and swelled into threatening peaks. The winds, born as whispered breezes, grew to stiff gusts, then amplified to gale force, hurling javelins of rain. His heart rate quickened. “First marker. Port.”

  “Copy.” Nolee maneuvered them past the first outer sandbar. “Race is on. It’s going to be tight.”

  His pulse shot, rapid-fire, through his veins. If she missed even one marker, they’d run aground. She had to hug the winding, narrow route exactly, avoiding its shallow bottom while maneuvering through its weird currents and whirlpools.

  No margin of error.

  He pointed at the marine map. “The current flows right past here. And there’s a sandbar. See that deep ditch?”

  Nolee nodded and labored to steer with limited power. If she brushed up against the sandbar, the Pacific Dawn would start sucking sand up into the tanks, suffocating the crab.

  “Want Wesley to turn off the pumps?”

  “Not yet. I don’t want to deprive the crab of oxygen until I absolutely have to.”

  He bit back his cautionary words again. Nolee had the right mindset for a commercial fisherman. Work like hell for a big payoff that profited the boat’s owners, herself and her crew. Bring everyone and the vessel home safe.

  Not the same point of view for a professional rescuer. Assessing life’s potenti
al dangers was automatic for him. He expected, prepared for, worst-case scenarios. Worked like hell to minimize or avoid them entirely. His life-and-death work required him to constantly weigh the odds and choose the safest route.

  Not so for Nolee. She never flinched from rolling the dice.

  But in some ways, he and Nolee had that in common. That night in the bar, she’d reminded him that they weren’t so different. Both risk-takers. Both living dangerously. Both doing whatever it took to defy the odds.

  Except when it came to one another.

  Nolee squinted at her depth finder. The blue screen, punctuated with red to orange to yellow spikes, heralded dangerous fluctuations in depth. A large number flashed on the lower right corner of the screen.

  Twenty-six feet. The Pacific Dawn’s flat bottom only gave them a ten-foot leeway. Sweat beaded on his brow; he tore his gaze away and studied the chop.

  “It’s getting nautical out here,” Nolee muttered as she strove to harness her crippled boat. Beneath them, the ship bucked and rolled her way through the waves, groaning with the effort. “With one engine, she’s going to do what she wants.”

  Twenty-two feet.

  Several minutes ticked by. A half hour. Forty-five minutes. Time was marked only by the pounding of the seas, the periodic sounding of the depth reader, the incessant clanging of the metal chains outside.

  The boat pitched violently. “This is getting worse the shallower we go,” he said, widening his stance to keep his footing.

  “A real washing machine,” Nolee affirmed without looking up from the fathometer.

  Twenty feet. The number blinked lower and lower. Eighteen feet. Seventeen.

  “It’s just going down,” she gasped.

  A channel marker loomed yards off the bow, catching his eye. His pulse slammed. The ship barreled right at it. “Are we making the turn on the track here?” He pointed at it then whipped his head around to study her sharp profile.

  “I’m trying.” Her strained voice emerged through clenched teeth. She jimmied the thruster and peered up from her monitors and out the window.

  The Pacific Dawn churned forward.