Truth Avenged (Green Division Series Book 1) by Ashley Monahan Page A

be a fool to try to hike the ridge in her condition, but she wasn’t fool enough to not tell someone she was going in the event something happened, again.  She couldn’t tell Paul.  Amy!  Amy Quiney was her childhood friend they’d remained close through adulthood. 
    “ Chance!”  Amy greeted excited.  “I’ve thought about you every day!  How are you?”
    “ I’m doing okay.  Listen, I need a favor.”
    “ No good conversation ever started out with those words coming from your mouth.”  Chance told Amy where she was going and when she’d be back and NOT to tell anyone in her family where she was.  She needed to do this and if she hadn’t called by 9 p.m. to call Paul.  Amy wasn’t a happy camper and threatened to call someone to stop her, but at the reminder of all she’d done for Amy, Amy stood down.
    “ You better hurry your little butt out of the woods, you are putting me in a hell of position.  If anything happens to you—”
    “ Nothing will happen to me Amy.  It’s not like the poachers would be hunting in the same place again.  And I have a gun.”  Not that she’d be carrying it.  She believed very strongly they wouldn’t be in the same place at the same time again and she wasn't fond of firearms.
    “ You be careful Chance.  It’s not worth getting hurt, whatever you are looking for.  You are still hurt, I mean, a gunshot wound doesn’t heal in a week.”
    “ It’s going to heal the same whether I’m sitting at home, or taking a leisurely stroll.”
    “ You are so full of crap.”
    “ I’ll call you when I get down.”
    She sighed heavily.  “ Be careful.”
    “ I will.”             
    She put on her hiking shoes and grabbed her new iPhone.  The old phone was still somewhere in the damn woods.  Her GPS with it, but she wouldn’t need it on this reconnaissance mission.  No matter what noise tried to beckon her astray this time, she would stay on the trail.  No getting lost for this girl, not this time.
    Climbing into the Jeep was a painful reminder of how little the wound had healed.  She took a deep breath and kicked it into reverse.  Northbound once again.
     
    *****
    ♫ I’ve got friends in low places,
    Where the whiskey rounds,
    And the beer chases,
    M y blues away ♫,
     
    Tuck mouthed the words to an old Garth Brooks song as he worked on restoring his 1967 Mustang, a project car that sat in his garage for two years with no idle time to restore it to its proper glory.  Now that he had at least two weeks off from work, time was abundant.
    A familiar number flashed on Tuck ’s cell phone, but he couldn’t place it.  To ignore, or not to ignore.
    “ Hello.” 
    “ It’s Paul Marston, Chance’s editor, I spoke with you last week.”
    “ I remember.”  Jesus, this guy saved my phone number, wonderful .  Paul was going to be one of those.  People who would call for everything and anything assuming he was their new best friend.
    “ I’m sorry to bother you, but I didn’t know who else to call.”
    Yup, here he goes looking for personal favors .  “What’s going on Paul?”  Tuck clicked off the radio and wiped the grease from his hands.
    “ It’s Chance.  She’s impossible, I swear to God she is.”  Annoyance and anger heightened his tone.  “She went up to that mountain, saying she’d lost something and needed to get it.”
    “ Wait, mountain?  Are you talking about the same place I found her? Helter Ridge?”
    “ Yeah, mountain, ridge, whatever the hell it is.  She shouldn’t be out of bed, let alone on a damn mountain.”
    R idge , Tuck thought, but didn’t correct him.
    “ I don’t know what is wrong with her, she’s so god damn stubborn.  I’d go myself, but—”  Paul sighed and paused.  Tuck waited for the rest of the story.  “I, I can’t hike, not with my leg.”
    Sure , Tuck thought.  Her editor and “friend” was an ass.  When Tuck relayed the news that Chance had been shot, Paul