The Ranger - Ace Atkins [0]
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Acknowledgements
ALSO BY ACE ATKINS
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Dirty South
White Shadow
Wicked City
Devil’s Garden
Devil’s Garden
Infamous
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Publishers Since 1838
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Copyright © 2011 by Ace Atkins
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Published simultaneously in Canada
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Atkins, Ace.
The ranger / Ace Atkins.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-51610-2
1. United States. Army—Commando troops—Fiction. 2. Murder—Investigation—
Fiction. 3. Mississippi—Fiction. 4. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PS3551.T49R
813’.54—dc22
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
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In memory of Robert B . Parker
The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.
—G . K . CHESTERTON
Don’t ever march home the same way.
Take a different route so you won’t be ambushed.
—ROGERS’ RANGERS STANDING ORDER No. 11
1
Quinn headed home, south on the Mississippi highway, in a truck he’d bought in Phenix City, Alabama, for fifteen hundred, a U.S. Army rucksack beside him stuffed with enough clothes for the week and a sweet Colt .44 Anaconda he’d won in a poker game. He carried good rock ’n’ roll and classic country, and photos from his last deployment in Afghanistan, pics of him with his Ranger platoon, the camp monkey “Streak” on his shoulder, Black Hawks at sundown over the mountains. Things you bring back home after six years away, from 3rd Battalion Headquarters at Fort Benning to Iraq to Afghanistan and back again, when you didn’t really intend to return home so fast, if at all. He drove south on Highway 7 and then down 9W, and kept heading south into the winding hill country