The Return Of Rafe Mackade (The MacKade Brothers 1)

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."