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her feelings perfectly; she’d made mistakes, a lot of them, but it wasn’t her fault that she was an admiral’s daughter, or that both of her parents were successful. And it wasn’t fair that Richie blamed her for it, assuming that she was some kind of debutante just because she came from money.
    Her father’s voice was tough, unforgiving. You gonna give up then, sailor? Throw in the towel because some classist asshole thinks he’s better than you? You have the skills, Kit, you worked hard to get them; don’t let anyone tell you that you don’t belong here.
    “Right again, sir,” she whispered, and let the anger go in another deep breath, blown out slowly. She’d had to prove herself before, and she was at least as smart as anyone else on the tug . . .
    Foster squared her shoulders and headed off to get a cup of sorely needed coffee, which she would drink out on the deck with the others. They didn’t want her there? Too bad; her ass was on the same line as theirs and she wasn’t going to run off crying because Richie or Everton or any of them didn’t like it.
    I am woman, hear me roar—or get the fuck out of my way, she thought, and found herself smiling for the first time in much too long. Just let Everton try to ignore her now.

    The captain sat at the battered desk in his quarters and stared down at the clutter, feeling old and tired and more than a little drunk. Papers and photos lay across the crowded desktop, a few words distorted and magnified by a shot glass that was somehow empty again.
    My whole life, right here, he thought miserably. Sitting on my own goddamn ship, sitting here with my whole life right in front of me . . .
    It was pathetic, the small spread of papers that made up who he was. Financial records from the bank that spanned decades, told of every hard-earned deposit and every meager withdrawal—up until the last one, of course. There was a picture of his tiny house in Guam, sold now; not even a place to hang his hat when they made it to land . . .
    “Not gonna make it,” he mumbled, and reached for the shot glass and the half-empty bottle. Whiskey, and not even a decent brand. Everton felt a drunken self-pity well up inside and hated himself for it, which only made the feelings stronger.
    At least there would be no witnesses to talk about his failure, to tell people what had happened. The Sea Star was still taking on water; he could feel her heaviness, her slow and inevitable settling into the sea. His beautiful little tug was going to sink unless the crew managed to stop it somehow, and they weren’t good enough.
    The crew, his crew. They hated him, but did he care? Jokes, the whole lot. A bitch navigator, an ass-kissing helmsman, a couple of screwed-up deckhands—a primitive with tattoos on his face and a pot-smoking black. And the engineers—he’d expected more from them, the only two he’d worked with before, but they wouldn’t be able to plug a bottle with a cork; pretty boy and his Cuban pal, probably buggered each other anyway.
    He poured the cheap whiskey with shaking hands and a few drops splashed across a snapshot of the Sea Star, taken on the day he’d brought her home. He brushed the liquid off and held it up, studied it. There he was, young and strong, grinning like a man without a care in the world; he was standing in front of the tug proudly and wearing the captain’s hat that his young, pretty wife had bought for him. Sarah had taken the picture, and he could remember her laughing, making him don the cap for the posed shot. She’d been wearing a dress, green with tiny white flowers . . .
    Gone, Sarah, everything’s gone now.
    Everton picked up the glass and downed it, felt the fire pour down his aching throat and loosen the knot in his belly. It would all be over soon, one way or another.
    The captain poured himself another drink and carefully avoided looking at the revolver that lay across one corner of his desk; it wasn’t time, not yet. He wanted to finish