This Hero for Hire Read Free Page A

who’d obviously eaten too much fried chicken in his life, stopped long enough to pant and point a trembling finger at a figure bent down beside the ditch. “Arrest her!” he shouted. “She’s releasing hens faster than I can round them up.”
    Oh, boy. This wasn’t just about Hank’s careless driving. The accident had another witness. Crouched in the dirt was a lady whose sole purpose was opening crate doors to let the birds escape.
    â€œHey, you there! Stop that,” he called.
    The truck driver raced toward the woman, but she quickly outmaneuvered him and began working furiously on another set of crates. More chickens ran into the sweet late summer afternoon.
    She wasn’t so lucky avoiding Boone. He grasped her arm and hauled her upright. “What do you think you’re doing?”
    She breathed heavily as she struggled against his grip. She looked familiar. She was about five foot five, slim, dressed in jeans and a pink T-shirt. Well, it might have been pink, just like her hair might have been blond, if the woman hadn’t been covered head to toe in chicken feathers. A noxious odor that any boy raised in the chicken farming area of Georgia would know rose from her clothes and clogged his nose. He jerked his head away from her. “Phew!”
    She made a half-hearted effort to pick a few feathers off her shirt. “You could offer to help, you know. Think how these birds must feel. They have to breathe this rotten air every day of their lives.”
    That voice! He remembered it from high school.
I just wanted to do that
. No. This couldn’t be happening. Boone didn’t have time to contemplate the identity of this chicken savior, not with flashing lights from an approaching ambulance demanding his attention and the huffing, shouting Hank Simpson bearing down on them. “You didn’t answer my question,” he said. “What did you think you were doing letting all these birds out of the crates.”
    â€œAre you gonna arrest her, Boone?” Simpson demanded.
    Boone held up his hand, an attempt to calm the man long enough to get the facts. He continued staring at the woman. Maybe he was wrong, and she wasn’t Susannah. “Well?”
    â€œI was saving their lives,” she said. “This truck practically rolled over. Most of the crates have fallen out and some slipped into the creek bed. If I hadn’t opened the doors, the birds would have drowned.”
    â€œThat’s hogwash,” the driver said. “I would have gotten the crates out of the water in time, and they would still have been full of chickens!”
    â€œI don’t see how, Hank,” Boone said, taking in the number of crates that had landed in the creek. “I think the lady might be right about the chickens dying.”
    â€œOf course, I’m right,” she said. “Now will you let go of me?”
    â€œDon’t take off,” he warned. “What you did is still illegal.” He let go of her arm. “You can’t just go around tampering with other people’s property.”
    â€œEven if that property consists of living, breathing creatures that can’t take care of themselves?” She stared with disgust at the old truck, which had obviously made many trips to the slaughterhouse in its years on the road. “What you see here, Sheriff...”
    â€œOfficer,” he corrected.
    â€œWhatever. What you see is abusive treatment of the worst kind.”
    â€œMa’am, this is the way all broilers are taken to slaughter. Hank wasn’t doing anything that isn’t done on a weekly basis around these parts.”
    â€œThat,
Officer
, does not make it right. The way those poor poultry were stuffed into the boxes is abominable. Did you know that a quarter of them would have been dead by the time they reached Augusta? And many of those still alive would have suffered severe injuries.”
    Boone scratched the back