Prologue
The MacKade brothers were looking for trouble. They usually were. In the small town of Antietam, Maryland, it wasn't always easy to find, but then, looking was half the fun.
When they piled into Jared's secondhand Chevy, they'd squabbled over who would take the wheel. It was Jared's car, and he was the eldest, but that didn't carry much weight with his three brothers.
Rafe had wanted to drive. He'd had a need for speed, a thirst to zip along those dark, winding roads, with his foot hard on the gas and his foul and reckless mood chasing behind him. He thought perhaps he could outdistance it, or perhaps meet it head-on. If he met it, bloodied it, conquered it, he knew he would just keep driving until he was somewhere else.
Anywhere else.
They had buried their mother two weeks ago.
Perhaps because his dangerous mood showed so clearly in Rafe's jade eyes and in the cold set of his mouth, he'd been outvoted. In the end, Devin had taken the wheel, with Jared riding shotgun. Rafe brooded in the back seat with his youngest brother, Shane, beside him.
They were a rough and dangerous group, the MacKade boys. All of them tall and rangy as wild stallions, with fists ready and often too eager to find a target. Their eyes, MacKade eyes, all varying shades of green, could carve a man into pieces at ten paces. When the dark mood was on them, a wise man stayed back eleven or more.
They settled on pool and beer, though Shane complained, as he was still shy of twenty-one and wouldn't be served in Duff's Tavern.
Still, the dim, smoke-choked bar suited them. The slam and crack of the balls had just enough of a violent edge, the gaze of the scrawny-shouldered Duff Dempsey was just uneasy enough. The wariness in the eyes of the other customers, gossiping over their beers, was just flattering enough.
Nobody doubted the MacKade boys were out for trouble. In the end, they found what they were looking for.
While a cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth, Rafe squinted against the smoke and eyed his shot. He hadn't bothered to shave in a couple of days, and the rough stubble mirrored his mood. With a solid smack, a follow-through smooth as silk, he banked the cue ball, kissed it off the seven and made his pocket.
'Good thing you're lucky at something.' At the bar, Joe Dolin tipped back his beer. He was, as usual after sundown, mostly drunk, and mean with it. He'd once been the star of the high school football team, had competed with the MacKades for the favors of pretty young girls. Now, at barely twenty-one, his face had begun to bloat and his body to sag.
The black eye he'd given his young wife before leaving the house hadn't really satisfied him.
Rafe chalked his cue and barely spared Joe a glance.
'Going to take more than hustling pool, MacKade, to keep that farm going, now that your mama's gone.' Dangling his bottle from two fingers, Joe grinned. 'Heard you're going to have to start selling off for back taxes.'
'Heard wrong.' Coolly Rafe circled the table to calculate his next shot.
'Oh, I heard right. You MacKades've always been fools, and liars.'
Before Shane could leap forward, Rafe shot out his cue to block the way. 'He's talking to me,' he said quietly. He held his brother's gaze another moment before he turned. 'Isn't that right, Joe? You're talking to me?'
'I'm talking to any of you.' As he lifted his beer again, Joe's gaze skimmed over the four of them. At twenty, Shane was tough from farm work, but still more boy than man. Then Devin, whose cool, thoughtful gaze revealed little. Over Jared, who was leaning negligently against the juke box, waiting for the next move.
He looked back at Rafe. There was temper, hot and ready. Recklessness worn like a second skin. 'But you'll do. Always figured you for the biggest loser of the lot, Rafe.'
'That so?' Rafe crushed out his cigarette, lifted his own beer. He drank as they completed the ritual before battle, and customers shifted in their chairs to watch. 'How're things going at the factory, Joe?'
'Least I get a paycheck,' Joe shot back. 'I got money in my pocket. Ain't nobody going to take my house from over me.'
'Not as long as your wife keeps putting in twelve-hour shifts working tables to pay the rent.'
'Shut your mouth about my wife. I earn the money in my house. I don't need no woman paying my way, like your mama had to do for your old man. Went through her inheritance like it was water, then up and died on her.'
'Yeah, he died on her.' Anger and guilt and grief welled up inside him. 'But he never laid a hand on her. She never had to come into town hiding behind scarves and dark glasses, and saying how she took a fall. Only thing your mother ever fell over, Joe, was your father's fist.'
Joe slammed his beer onto the bar, shattering the glass. 'That's a lie. I'm going to ram that lie down your throat.'
'Try it.'
'He's drunk, Rafe,' Jared murmured.
Those lethal green eyes sliced toward his brother. 'So?'
'So there isn't much point in breaking his face when he's drunk.' Jared moved a shoulder. 'He's not worth it.'
But Rafe didn't need a point. He just needed action. He lifted his cue, studied it, then laid it across the table. 'You want to take me on, Joe?'
'Don't you start in here.' Though he knew it was already too late, Duff jerked a thumb toward the wall phone. 'You make any trouble in here, I'm calling the sheriff, and the lot of you can cool off in jail.'
'Keep your damn hand off the phone,' Rafe warned him. His eyes were hard enough to have the bartender backing off. 'Outside,' he said simply.
'You and me.' Curling his fists, Joe stared at the MacKades. 'I ain't having your brothers jumping in on me while I whip your butt.'
'I don't need any help with you.' To prove it, the moment they cleared the door Rafe pivoted to avoid Joe's swing, rammed his fist into Joe's face and felt the first satisfying spill of blood.
He couldn't even have said why he was fighting. Joe meant less to him than the dust in the street. But it felt good. Even when Joe got past his guard and connected, it felt good. Fists and blood were the only clear solution. When he felt the satisfying crack of knuckles against bone, he could forget everything else.
Devin winced, then tucked his hands philosophically in his pockets when blood spurted from his brother's mouth. 'I give it five minutes.'
'Hell, Rafe'll take him down in three.' Grinning, Shane watched the grunting opponents wrestle to the ground.
'Ten bucks.'
'You're on. Come on, Rafe!' Shane shouted. 'Whip his sorry butt!'
It took three minutes, plus thirty nasty seconds with Rafe straddling Joe and methodically pumping a fist into his face. Since Joe's eyes had rolled up white and his arms were limp at his sides, Jared stepped forward to drag his brother away.
'He's finished.' To decide the matter, Jared rammed Rafe up against the brick wall of the bar. 'He's finished,' he repeated. 'Let it go.'
The vicious rage drained slowly, fading from Rafe's eyes, uncurling his fists. Emptying him. 'Let go, Jare. I'm not going to hit him again.'
Rafe looked to where Joe lay moaning, half-unconscious. Over his battered body, Devin counted out bills for Shane. 'I should have factored in how drunk he was,' Devin commented. 'If he'd been sober, it would've taken Rafe the five.'
'Rafe would never waste five full minutes on a punk like that.'
Jared shook his head. The arm that was restraining Rafe slipped companionably around Rafe's shoulders. 'Want another beer?'
'No.' He glanced toward the window of the bar, where most of the patrons had gathered to watch. Absently he swiped blood from his face. 'Somebody better pick him up and haul him home,' he called out. 'Let's get out of here.'
