Jim planted a hand on his chest. “I wouldn’t do—”
“Kaplan!” Mr. Fiske grabbed the younger man’s shoulder. “Get back to work.”
He backed off, but sparks arced through his dark eyes. “Yes, sir.”
Emotions certainly ran high on that crew. Jim had findings for his detective friend. Too bad he didn’t know shorthand.
“Hey, Avery!” Mitch Hadley called down from the bridge. “You floated into a mess there. You’ve got to be careful where you let the wind blow you.”
Jim fixed a hard stare on his fellow ensign but bit his tongue and headed to his cabin to change out of his casual khaki uniform into dress blues for dinner. Hadley’s words held the sting of truth.
He climbed down a ladder below deck and crossed through the empty wardroom to officers’ quarters.
In the cabin he shared with Arch, his friend buttoned up his white shirt. “Time to get ready.”
“Need to take some notes for Mary first.” He opened a desk drawer, pulled out a notepad, and wrote down what he’d heard.
“For Mary, eh?”
“Yeah. Some of her saboteur suspects got into an altercation up there.”
Arch glanced up. The ammunition handling room for the number two mount lay directly overhead. “Should we worry?”
“With all those people watching? Nah.” He finished his notes. “Mary will love this.”
“Is that so?” Arch bent over to knot his tie in the mirror on their locker. “Gloria thinks you should ask her out.”
Jim winced, tossed his cover onto his bunk, and ripped off his khaki tie. “We go out almost every weekend.”
“As friends.”
“Yes, as friends.” He unbuttoned his shirt. “That’s what we are.”
“I think you’re crazy.”
“And I think you’re a nag.” Jim flashed a grin and shrugged off his shirt. “She’s like another kid sister to me. There’s nothing romantic between us.”
Nothing at all. Sure, she was pretty. Sure, she intrigued him. But she wasn’t anything like Quintessa.
Besides, Mary acted like a kid sister around him, no flirting or self-consciousness—just normal. That was best. Things might get awkward if she developed a crush on him.
Jim made a funny face in the mirror over Arch’s shoulder. “She’d have to be stupid to fall for a fool like me.”
“Thank goodness the woman’s smart.”
He punched his friend lightly in the shoulder. “Thank goodness for that.”
9
Saturday, May 24, 1941
Mary eased her way down the ladder to the USSConstitution’s gun deck, inhaling the scent of ancient oak, brine, and history. “Old Ironsides,” the US Navy’s legendary oldest ship, had asserted America’s budding strength in the War of 1812. Now she rested in well-earned retirement at the Boston Navy Yard, restored in the 1920s in a campaign partly funded by schoolchildren. Mary had contributed her own pennies for the project.
“Look at all these guns.” Jim bounded ahead with Arch behind him. “Can you imagine reloading shot after every firing? Now our 5-inchers can pump out fifteen rounds a minute, and with a range up to ten miles.”
“Someone’s been studying hisNaval Ordnance and Gunnery Manual.” Arch ran his hand along a gun’s iron barrel.
“I’d better.” Jim knelt to study the contraption the gun rested on.
