“Let them feed. Mavis will soak it up.” Mavis, Shane’s mother, rode the high of her son’s death like a starved pit bull, seizing and chewing every scrap of attention the anchors threw her way.
“Why do you put up with her?” Cheri said.
“Because she’s his mother. I know she’s grieving, too.” Somewhere in that deep dark pit of a soul.
Evie snorted, “You’re a better woman than me. If she talked to me the way she talks to you, I’d slap her in her big fat face.”
The image brought a smile to Amy’s lips, however brief. The limo stopped. A huge crowd surrounded the graveside service, ringed by men in uniform. Amy took a deep breath, closed her eyes and let the ice creep through her veins. If the media wanted a show, she’d give it to them.
Hunter, Shane’s team leader and Evie’s husband, stepped to the door and opened it, offering his hand. They’d all grown up together, here in Mercy. Hunter, Ranger, Shane, Evie and Amy. Evie exited and then Cheri. Evie leaned up and whispered something in her husband’s ear. Hunter nodded and motioned a soldier over to him. After a brief talk, the other man walked off, shoulder’s squared as if on a mission. He poked his head inside the car and held out his hand. “Don’t worry. We’ll take care of them.”
She didn’t have to ask who he meant. As she emerged from the car, a team of uniformed men surrounded the news anchors and tightened, cutting off their access like a noose. Amy heard their protests and stiffened. The last thing she wanted was a circus show today. Hunter placed her hand on his forearm and gave her a reassuring squeeze. “We’ve got this.”
Amy bit her lip, helpless to do anything but watch. The circle of men started to move away, the media trapped in its confines. The journalists in the middle yelling and snapping pictures and threatening lawsuits. Everyone stared.
A strange sort of hysteria crept up her spine and wrapped around her throat. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Not here. Not today.
Today she buried her husband.
Her hands and feet started tingling and the humid air grew thick like mossy pond water, stifling her oxygen. Evie appeared in front of her. “Breathe, hon. Just breath. They will be gone in a minute.”
Amy saw her friend’s lips moving, but her words seemed blurry and distorted. What kind of monsters fed on grieving families?
“Crap. She’s going comatose again.”
“Move.” Cheri pushed Evie to the side and grabbed Amy’s face between her palms. “Focus on me. Look at me.”
But I am looking at you.
“Dammit Amy, if you don’t look at me right now I’m going to slap you and give those bastards something real to report on.”
I can’t move.
“Someone get me some water.”
Come on girl, get it together. You promised to be strong. You can’t break down now. Not here. Later. Compartmentalize. You just have to get through today. Tomorrow you can fall apart.
Amy reached inside and forced herself to move something. Anything.
She blinked.
“That’s a girl. Now drink.”
Cheri took her hand and closed her fingers around a water bottle. Amy lifted her hand, the movement feeling strange and disjointed. She took a drink of the lukewarm water.
“Good. Now we’re going to walk forward. Focus on getting to your seat, okay?” Cheri stayed right in front of her face.
Amy nodded. Good. Focus. Move your feet.
Hunter still stood on her right side, her hand held on his arm. Cheri stepped to her left, took the water bottle, passed it off to Evie and took Amy’s other hand. The crowd parted, her vision tunneled on the green canopy tent about twenty feet ahead.
“You ready?” Hunter leaned down, his six foot four inch frame dwarfing her by a good foot.
Would she ever be ready? “Yes.”
The trio moved forward as one. They got halfway there and Amy became aware of the silence. No more screaming news anchors. Not one sound. Like God himself had thrown a blanket of tranquility over the proceedings.
A weak wind stirred and the black netting covering her face snagged a stray strand of hair. Dark grey clouds slung low and heavy in the summer heat. Thunder grumbled in the distance. Amy couldn’t help but peek back over her shoulder. A wall of men and women blocked the entrance to the cemetery, holding the rabid scavengers at bay.
Tears pricked her eyes. This was why she loved a man in uniform. They weren’t afraid to show their respect. She stepped under the tent and stopped.
The bold colors of the American flag stood out over her husband’s coffin. Colors of honor. Colors of freedom. Colors of sacrifice.
She’d never thought they’d be the colors of death.
She sat on a padded metal chair. Shane two feet away. Separated by two inches of wood. Patriot. Warrior. Hero. The words carved in bold script across the side of the polished mahogany coffin, gleaming even in the absence of sunlight.
Patriot. That’s what they called the men who joined the military.
Warrior. That’s what they called the men who fought for their country.
Hero. That’s what they called the men who died for their country.
Shane was a hero.
The row of chairs behind her remained empty. No one approached. As if they were afraid to sit too close. As if death was infectious and would contaminate their lives.
She couldn’t blame them for not getting close. Death had infected and destroyed her life with the opening of a door. Amy choked, took a breath and reigned in her control.
She wanted to reach out. Touch him. Remember how his skin felt. But he wasn’t in that coffin. His body lay somewhere in some unknown desert, in an unmarked grave.
“It’s your fault he joined the military. It’s your fault my son is dead.” Mavis Carter, the only person sitting in the second row of chairs, leaned forward and spewed her venom.
Chills spread across Amy’s arms and neck.
Cheri hissed in a breath beside her and turned to face the dragon lady. “You’re bat-shit crazy.”
Amy didn’t turn, didn’t speak. She didn’t need to see how her overweight mother-in-law’s bloodshot eyes glowed with hate.
“You say another word, Mavis, and I’ll have you thrown out.” Ranger appeared not one foot away. His dress blues making him seem bigger, more threatening.
Amy’s gaze collided with Ranger’s. Shane’s best friend. The man who’d told her of Shane’s death. He’d caught her when her knees gave out. He’d fought with her to make sure she ate and drank. He’d fought to make sure she survived.
Now he fought for her.
Ranger turned, his heels clicked together, and marched to the end of Shane’s coffin. Hunter took position at the other end.
They grasped the corners of the flag lying on the coffin and lifted, keeping the flag high and tight.
Seven soldiers in dress blues stood off to the side, their line precise. No more than a foot apart, their rifles rose in unison. They moved in perfect synchronization, nothing out of order. Flawless.
The first round of gunshots exploded into the sky. Amy jerked and clutched Evie’s hand.
Bang. Another round. Fire seared through her chest, like the bullets had lodged in her heart.
Bang. The last round of the twenty-one-gun salute blasted with finality. Tears she had fought hard to contain slipped free.
Was a gunshot the last sound Shane heard before he died?
A lone soldier raised a horn to his lips, the mournful sound of Taps filled the cemetery.
Hunter walked toward Ranger, folding the flag corner to corner into a tight triangle. They took their time. Made it perfect.
Then Ranger took the flag and Hunter saluted. His white gloves stark against tanned skin. Both of them stood tall. Stiff.
Amy started praying.
Ranger knelt at her feet, head bowed.
No. No. No.
He raised his head, his blue eyes red-rimmed and staring at her like a dark bruise. She couldn’t move. Couldn
’t reach out and take that flag.
She kept her hands clasped in her lap, white knuckle tight. Ranger pried them apart and laid her right palm open. He placed the flag in her hand. Pulled her left hand down on top of the smooth triangle.
Her heart hit hard and fast, like a train speeding out of control. About to go off track and kill anything within striking distance.
“People die all the time, honey. If I die, I’ll die for a worthy cause.” Shane’s words whispered through her mind.
She clutched the flag to her chest, clutched it for everything she was worth. She held on to the one thing her husband had believed in with all his soul.
2
Chapter 2
Eight months later…
Amy soared. Just her, the sky and the sixty-acre stretch of soybeans below. She pulled up her Air Tractor crop duster at the end of the field, swooped out right, turned back left and lined up for the next round.
Long straight rows stretched out in front of her in GPS mapped perfection. She pushed the control stick forward, swooped down at a smooth one hundred forty miles per hour and hit the chemical release button. The plane hovered five feet above the crops. She’d already sprayed ten fields today, but her stomach flew up into her throat with each dive. Adrenaline zinged through her limbs from the rush of crops coming at her at high speed.
Hardwood trees running perpendicular to the field grew bigger by the nanosecond. She held straight and steady. The flow of chemicals had to be maintained until the last minute or she’d waste precious herbicide. And money.
When the trees got up close and high-def she eased back, missing the tops by a good four feet. Her stomach plopped back down from her throat, leaving a tingling tickle in its wake. Her hand loosened on the control, the thrill made her feel as weightless as the fluffy white cumulus clouds above her.
She didn’t need drugs. Nor alcohol. No, those were too slow. She needed air speeds over two hundred mph, mere feet from the ground. She needed to zip beneath power lines with almost zero clearance. She needed to tempt death to feel alive.
And damn if she wasn’t addicted.
Amy banked into a wide turn. The sun would set in two hours. She had at least another good hour of flying. And she wanted every second she could steal.
Because when she was up here, she wasn’t thinking about her dead husband. She wasn’t thinking about his best friend. She wasn’t thinking about anything except the rush.
Amy dropped the plane for her fifth pass at Smith’s field. Fat and skinny shadows broke up the earth as she sped past. The sun painted shades of apple green to evergreen.
Next pass, she saw him. His bright red four by four truck pulled over at the other end of the field. She swooped down and her heart jumped. But not from the drop in altitude.
Ranger James.
That truck might as well have a flashing neon sign – warning hot male will make panties drop.
She’d warned him to stay away.
Her response to Ranger was as natural and hot as lava erupting from Mt. Everest.
Reckless rage followed the trill of anticipation coursing through her veins. She flew closer. Ranger leaned against his truck, long jean clad legs crossed ankle over ankle. That gleaming head of blond hair. Her mouth watered. She could see his biceps from here.
Power lines. Oh shit. Amy whipped beneath them at the last second, buzzing within feet of her own version of regret. Get it together. Mistakes. Distractions. Death sentence.
Her entire body hummed with energy. Fury. And unmistakable lust. Amy gritted her teeth. Any southerner with half a cylinder firing knew the people of Mercy would shred her reputation like a John Deere tractor shredded grass.
A widow only eight months after the funeral wasn’t allowed to date. It wouldn’t matter that her bed was as empty as her bank account.
And had been empty way before he left.
Her bank account was in desperate need of funds. She’d bet all her money on the farm. Literally. Ranger and his too tempting lips could sink her fast.
If she didn’t fly, she and her daughter didn’t eat.
Two more passes. That’s all she had to do. Two more. Keep it level. Precise. Her plane shook, metal rattled but she kept going. Grandpa Silo promised her his fifty-year-old plane could get the job done.
She made the wide turn, slowed a split second and took a breath. Ranger was just a man. Just a man. Just a man.
A man she’d been secretly in love with since high school.
Calm was definitely not on her radar. She pushed down, increased speed, wanting to rip a little hair off his head as she whipped past. The ground rushed up. Her muscles contracted. She gripped the stick. Hard.
She hit the chemical release button too early and gave Ranger a bath in herbicide.
That would teach the man not to show up at Smith’s field. On her time clock.
She finished this pass going ten miles an hour faster and barely yanked up in time. The treetops slapped her wheels. Then she was flying toward the clouds. Last round. Forget another hour of work.
She couldn’t stop the flash of images in her mind. Her fight with Shane. Her dreams about Ranger. Her husband’s coffin. Her heart squeezed tight. She leveled out too close to the field but didn’t care. She hit the release.
Ranger wasn’t leaning against his truck anymore. He was waving his arms like a mad man and yelling. She didn’t have to get close to know he was cursing.
Amy flew so low she risked taking the tops off the soybeans. She lined up. A few feet behind Ranger’s truck. Throttled the engine. The crop duster groaned, shimmied, but held together. One hundred twenty mph. She kept a careful eye to make sure her spray speeds didn’t saturate the plants. One hundred mph.
Ranger stopped doing the angry dance and backed up to his truck. Amy let go of the chemical button. Skimmed beneath the power lines and lifted her hand to Ranger in a salute that conveyed every emotion in her body.
And she did it with a smile.
3
Chapter 3
She flipped him the bird.
Shock rooted Ranger’s boots in the gravel as good as instant cement. Anger struck up a strong beat in his chest. Amy Carter had lost her ever-loving mind.
His eyes stung, watered. He ran to his truck and grabbed a towel from the back seat. Scrubbing his face with the cloth made the sting worse. His arms and legs prickled.
Ranger stripped to his boxers like fire ants invaded his pants. Then he threw his soaked clothes in the back and grabbed a fresh pair of jeans from his duffle. At least she was spraying herbicide today. That particular chemical wasn’t poisonous.
He’d been on his way to a new undercover op. One that required some overnighters. And he’d wanted to see Amy before he left. Make sure she was okay. Even if she’d told him to stop coming around. He just couldn’t get the woman off his mind.
The chemical bath made her opinion all too clear. She wasn’t just scared of a relationship, she was angry. And he hadn’t done a damn thing to deserve it. But he sure as hell wasn’t about to tuck tail like a whipped puppy.
He heard a car coming and ran behind his truck. Gravel crunched. Ranger spun around just as a little black sports car stopped right next to him. He clutched his jeans in front of his boxer briefs.
“My, my. If I knew I’d get this kind of show I’d a done my hair.” The sweet southern drawl had too much Georgia in it for Mississippi. Like she’d put two cups of sugar in her tea instead of one.
Ranger cringed, unable to stop the instinctive response. Tonya Lee Swopes, Mercy’s second hairdresser and first-rate gossip. Ranger had made the mistake of kissing her after high school graduation and she’d been after him non-stop ever since.
“Tonya.”
Fate must have it out for him.
Her black hair seemed too black. Almost blue. Her eye make-up more along drag queen lines than southern belle.
Tonya took her time, her mud brown eyes trailed him from top to bottom. “Come on over here and
let’s have a taste.”
“Listen, I’m running late for a date. Sorry, but I don’t have time to visit. Maybe later.” Almost to his door.
“Oh yeah, and just who is this hot date?”
“Amy. She’s waiting right now.” Liar. He wanted a date with Amy. Right after he tanned her ass for her little prank.
“That grease monkey? You want her when you can have this?” Tonya flicked her hair and gave him a look that clearly indicated she thought he’d lost his mind.
“Not every woman needs makeup to be attractive.” Oh shit. Shoulda kept his mouth shut. His father, Hank James, always said his lack of filter between brain and mouth would get him in trouble.
“And I do?” Tonya’s voice rose, part of her accent disappearing into a shriek.
Ranger jumped in his truck. The hot leather burned his ass and bare thighs but he didn’t stop to curse the pain. “Sorry,” Ranger yelled through the open window. “Gotta go.”
He cranked the engine, but the roar wasn’t loud enough to mask out her voice. “You can’t run forever, Ranger James.”
He slammed the gas pedal to the floor, spinning out in his haste to escape. Ranger spared one last look in the rearview. Tonya stuck her hand through her window and flipped him off.
Two times in one day. Great. Today was turning out to be his record for pissing off females.
Ranger sped down Smith’s Road, hung a sharp right onto the highway and squealed tires when his truck spun from gravel to pavement. He was late for a self-imposed date with a redhead whose temper outranked his commander’s.
Fields of soybeans, cotton, rice, and corn blew by in a blur. He took Deadman’s curve going seventy. A feat in itself. A few minutes later, Amy’s drive appeared on the left and he turned between the two rows of pear trees lining her driveway. He didn’t stop at the white farmhouse though. He sped past to the airplane hangar a few hundred feet behind.
Resurrection River: Men of Mercy, Book 2 Page 2