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problem. Wenz will radio if he finds anything. Any sign of trouble yet?”
    â€œNothing other than the tension on the ship. I think having passengers is making the crew antsy.” Laz hadn’t captained the crew of a tanker before. His small sailing yacht back home was just right for himself to crew. He had no problems giving orders, but a part of him was leery of having all these men under his command because he just didn’t know them. He trusted Hamm but beyond that he wasn’t sure of any of the other men.
    â€œMakes sense,” Savage said. “They are used to being themselves without witnesses.”
    â€œTrue.”
    â€œYou doing okay?” Savage asked.
    Laz thought about it for a minute before answering. He didn’t want to admit that seeing Savage and then Mann marry had him thinking about his future and whether he’d ever find a girl to settle down with. He especially didn’t want to say that now when he was in the middle of a tense mission.
    â€œYes. I like being at sea and making sure the ship is in top shape. To be honest I could almost see myself doing this.”
    â€œUh oh, thinking of leaving our group?”
    â€œNever. But this is a glimpse at what my life could have been.”
    â€œI know the feeling.”
    â€œI’ve got to get back to work. I’ll look forward to hearing from Wenz. Laz out.”
    â€œSavage out.”
    Â 
    The first-aid office was really all that the medical facility was. It had a battered desk that was bolted to the floor, as was all furniture on the ship. A cabinet held rudimentary medical supplies.
    â€œDoes this kind of fighting take place often on board?” Daphne asked Hamm after Renault was patched up and had left to talk to the Captain.
    Hamm was the second in command on the ship and had a friendly next-door kind of face. She realized that he had a way of moving that was completely silent.
    â€œSometimes. Depends on the crew. Tankers are a world of their own for the length of the cruise so we tend to just do our own thing. I’m not sure what those boys were fighting over.”
    â€œMen can be that way,” she said, thinking of her own boys, who just got testy sometimes with each other, and needed to slug it out to get back to normal. She’d been surprised at first at that type of behavior in her boys. She’d done everything to discourage violence, but she’d noticed from a young age that their play involved more physicality.
    â€œBoys can be that way,” Hamm said. “Men learn to control themselves.”
    She tilted her head to the side. “I’m sorry. I was only thinking of my boys, who can be that way sometimes. I didn’t mean to offend you.”
    â€œYou didn’t. I just wanted to make sure you knew that men can control their tempers,” Hamm said.
    â€œI’ve never been in a situation like this,” she said.
    â€œWhy are you here?” he asked. “Pardon me for asking but this seems about out of your milieu.”
    She smiled at the way he said it. He was trying to be polite but being here wasn’t her thing. Serving on the board for Doctors Across Waters—that was her thing. Traveling across the world on a tanker…that was not like her.
    But she’d changed. Been forced to realize that her life wasn’t on one set path. She had choices. And she’d made this one because she was tired of always wanting to make a difference in lives but never leaving her practice or her office.
    She wanted to be an adventurous person, she thought. Part of it was because of Paul and the way her marriage had ended, but a bigger part had been when her youngest son Lucas had declined to go on a scouting trip because he didn’t want to risk being out of the city.
    She realized her reluctance to face her own fears had been passed on to her boys. And she wanted—no, needed—to be a positive influence on them. They were the one thing