Resurrection River: Men of Mercy, Book 2 Read Free Page A

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…
    A my 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.