This Hero for Hire

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.”

“Are 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?”

“I 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.”

“That’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!”

“I 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.”

“Of course, I’m right,” she said. “Now will you let go of me?”

“Don’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.”

“Even 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...”

“Officer,” he corrected.

“Whatever. What you see is abusive treatment of the worst kind.”

“Ma’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.”

“That, 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 of his neck. “I’m really not up on my chicken statistics, ma’am, but I feel the need to point out the most relevant detail here. These chickens were destined for a fate much worse than being injured anyway.”

She stared off into the distance, where hens were scampering over the meadow. And she smiled. “There’s a right way and a wrong way to do a job,” she said.

“And a legal and illegal way,” Boone replied.

The ambulance came to a stop. Boone asked the woman if she had been in the accident and if she needed medical attention.

“No. I’m fine. And I had nothing to do with the truck ending up in the creek. Your buddy here...” She pointed to the driver. “He took that last curve with a bit too much enthusiasm.”

Boone dismissed the ambulance and went to his vehicle to get the standard incident report and a clipboard. When he returned, he said, “These birds are the property of Mr. Sam Jonas, and his driver here, Hank, was just doing his job.”

Hank pounded his fist into his opposite hand. “And someone’s got to pay for the loss of income this crazy woman caused today.”

“Maybe you should start by explaining to your employer that you can’t drive a truck!” she said.

Hank stepped forward, and Boone placed his palm on the man’s chest. “Let’s all calm down now. We’re obviously not going to get those chickens back.”

“Then do your job and arrest this woman,” Hank said.

“I intend to.”

“What?” The woman crossed her feather-covered arms over her chest and glared at him. “This would have been a massacre if I hadn’t come along when I did.”

Boone didn’t quite consider the loss of a few chickens going to slaughter as a definitive example of a massacre, but he knew better than to say that out loud.

“You caused a loss to one of our citizens, ma’am,” he said. “Hank’s right that someone’s got to pay, either for the loss of his chickens or by spending some time in jail—or both.” He swept his arm toward his squad car. “Sooo...if you’ll just follow me.”

“You’re taking me to jail?”

“For now, yes, I am.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” She looked across the road, where the large, weathered SUV was parked. “What about my car?”

“I’ll make sure it’s towed into town,” Boone said. “And I’ll call another tow to get you out of the ditch, Hank.”

He scratched the SUV’s license plate number on his report and stopped short. He hadn’t been wrong. The blond hair, the voice, the governor’s mention of Oregon. This day was only getting worse. “You’re from Oregon?” he said.

“Yes, so?”

“What’s your name?”

“Susannah Rhodes. Does the name Rhodes mean anything to you, Officer?”

Did it ever. It meant he had to tell this woman’s father that he’d put his worrisome little princess, covered in chicken dung, in jail. But on the other hand, it also meant he might have found a way out of this ridiculous assignment. Surely Albee wouldn’t want him for this detail now.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_c563bd50-1b87-58fe-96a5-8244b49d3218)

THIS WAS INCREDIBLY not good. Sitting in the police cruiser with the so far nice but ultra lawful police officer, Susannah could almost hear her father’s voice. “In town less than an hour and already you’re in the back of a police car.”

It would be impossible to keep him from hearing about this incident. The Chief of Police would call him even if she didn’t. And there was no way to keep him from being disappointed in her—again. She was going to jail for destruction of property! Whereas she believed she deserved a medal for humanitarian actions. Well maybe not that exactly, but the simple truth was, she didn’t have time for jail.

She stared out the window at the Georgia farmland. Green, lush meadows and fields, animals grazing peacefully on hillsides under towering oaks and fragrant magnolias. Seventeen years ago she couldn’t wait to leave a place where no one seemed to want her. In the past few days, though, she’d actually been looking forward to coming back.

Not that she expected her relationship with her dad to be a quick fix. During her infrequent weekend visits over the years she and her father had been like strangers, each frightened of saying the wrong thing. They had too much history between them, too many times in her youth when he’d confronted her with that scowl on his face.

But helping on his campaign could be the start of healing old resentments. As long as he didn’t find out her other motive for returning to Georgia. And as long as he realized she wasn’t the same girl who’d left all those years ago.

“Are you okay?”

She snapped her attention to the back of the officer’s head. So he’d decided to speak to her in a tone far more mellow than his official one. Okay. Perhaps conversation would make the man feel more lenient toward her.

“I’d like to put the window down if that’s all right,” she said.

His alert eyes, so mesmerizingly green that she could see the color in the rearview mirror, stared at her. “Sorry. Those windows must be kept locked at all times. Safety regulations.”

“For whom? If you’re concerned for my safety, then roll them down. As you pointed out, I’m giving off a rather noxious odor, and I’m about to asphyxiate.”