Michael nodded, waiting while she checked their bearing and adjusted the heading slightly. "You realize this means that your brother is in this right up to his neck."
She stared at the distant horizon, her lips pressed together. "Yes," she said finally. "Though we probably disagree as to his motive. I've been thinking about it, and I believe that Gary found out whatever Ken was into and was trying to extricate him. And maybe that meant helping him hide the money."
The idea had some merit. Michael wondered again whether Gary was being framed. But that didn't explain the money in the locker—no one had access to it.
The trawler began to rock as they neared the breakers, and Michael planted his feet more widely. "What else haven't you told me?"
"Nothing important," she said, too quickly.
"Right," he said, letting the sarcasm bleed through. He ran a hand through his hair, still angry.
She glanced over her shoulder, her expression was pleading. "Look, let's listen to the radio while we lift the pots, then take it from there. Deal?"
"When we get back to port," he ordered, "you're handing the money over to your pal Lucy. And you don't make a move without me—I just became your round-the-clock shadow." She started to protest, and he reached out with both hands, yanking her around to face him. "No. You don't get a choice on this one. I'm not letting another person I care about die on my watch. You got that?"
"Don't confuse me with your fiancée," she shot back. "I don't need your protection."
His tone turned hard with anger, his hands gripping harder. "If I have to, I'll have Sykes confine you. I'm sure he'd be happy to oblige."
She paled. "You wouldn't."
"Cooperate, or you're about to see."
She jerked out of his grip. "We're about ten minutes away from the bar. You should get below."
"I'm staying right here."
Their gazes clashed. She was the first to look away, turning her back to him. "Then shut the door. I don't want to be standing in a foot of water while I navigate."
#
Fifteen minutes later, the coffee Michael had ingested was threatening to make the rest of his day miserable. Huge waves were coming at the trawler from all directions, and remaining on his feet was impossible unless he braced himself against the wall and hung onto the equipment console. In all his summers of crabbing back East, he'd never been this close to being puking.
Kaz stood, feet braced with both hands on the wheel, for all outward appearances cool and calm in the face of what was sheer insanity. But her eyes moved continually—from landmarks, when they were visible, to the navigational maps, and then to her equipment.
He wasn't merely impressed, he was in awe, his respect for her skills having increased ten-fold in just the last five minutes. He knew the Columbia River bar was the most treacherous stretch of water in the Lower Forty-Eight, but until he'd experienced it, he'd had no clue. Waves battered them relentlessly, crashing over the trawler in a crazy jigsaw pattern, tossing the boat about like a toy. A person had to be crazy as a loon to tackle this every day. No wonder she wasn't worried about the occasional intruder in her home—the guy would have to be armed with an Uzi to make her even break out in a sweat.
"You do this every day," he said, breaking the tense silence that still remained between them.
"Most days, yeah." Her response was absent-minded. "This is pretty calm today."
He nearly laughed out loud. The swells were over ten feet. And how long would it take the trawler to break apart if she made a mistake? No more than a few minutes, max. He couldn't even think about what it must've been like for her that night fifteen years ago. He fought down the urge to demand that she turn around and take them back to port where she'd be safe—to demand that she never do this again. To tell her that he couldn't handle it if she went out and never came back. "You need counseling," he said instead.
She shot a quick grin at him. "Nah. I had counseling, right after the shipwreck. It didn't stick."
He shook his head.
She gestured at the horizon with one hand. "This is all part of a tradition—going back, for most of us, at least three generations. I may have left this life behind, and I may have had some bad experiences out here, but I'm discovering that it's still a part of who I am."
He couldn't deny what she was saying—his brothers who fished back East felt the same way. They faced harsh conditions, but nothing like this. "Why not dock the trawler somewhere farther down the coast?"
"All the good mooring basins have river bars." She paused to listen to the radio for a minute, then continued, "Other than the fish processing in Coos Bay, the buyers are all right here in Astoria. The river bar is an inconvenience—" she rolled her eyes at the understatement—"but it's a fact of life."
"And death."
"Yeah." She pushed the trawler up and over another vertical wall of water. "Gary has always said that you have to be lucky, each and every day you're out here. Because if you aren't, all the skill in the world won't make any difference."
She fell silent, her face unaccountably sad.
Michael's family had been lucky—they hadn't lost anyone in more than fifty years. But he'd seen the effects of such tragedies on the other fishing families back East. He'd always been in awe of their acceptance of the hardships they put up with, year after year.
The waves suddenly lessened in intensity, and the rough water changed texture. They'd left the river bar behind and entered the Pacific. Kaz's shoulders visibly relaxed, and she turned to him with a slight smile that was perhaps a peace offering. "We've got about 45 minutes 'til we reach the pots. Let's use it to get warmed up—it'll be our last chance."
He wanted to touch her, to rub those proud shoulders and soothe the rest of the tension out of them. Looking at her made him ache to help her. But he held back. Instead, he said, "I'll bring you some more coffee—I'm going to wait a bit."
"While you're down there, throw on hip boots and a sou'wester, along with rubber gloves. You don't want your hands icing up when we start lifting the pots."
#
Hugging the coastline, they traveled south until they came to a string of buoys whose colors matched the black and green stripes painted on the sides of the Kasmira B.
The weather, Kaz noted worriedly, was getting nastier. The wind had picked up, and there was considerably more sleet and snow mixed in with the rain. She cut the engines down to a low rumble as they came alongside the first buoy. Then she came out on the deck, dressed in hip boots, pulling on her gloves.
Michael was already kneeling alongside the railing. He glanced up at her. "I'll lift and rebait—you steer the trawler."
She shook her head, moving the hydraulic block that they would use to haul the pots out of the water into position. "It would be better if we had a second crewman, but you're stuck with me. It'll go faster if I help."
They worked in surprisingly companionable silence for the first twenty minutes or so. Michael had slipped easily into the rhythm of the work—lifting the pot while she chopped the frozen bait with a cleaver, working with her to throw back the females and undersized males, then baiting and dropping the pot back into the water, only to repeat the process with the next one down the line. Every so often, she stopped to readjust their position along the lines, then come back out on deck to help.
The catch was looking good, thank God. The business needed the money—this was only their second lift of the season. If production stayed this steady, it might cover some of the repair expenses they'd already incurred. The catch a few days ago had been much lighter; she'd begun to wonder whether she'd have to move her pots to slightly deeper water. They were at twelve fathoms now—a good depth in most years.