He brought Rafe down in a flying tackle that had them both skittering over the rough dirt into the prickle of wild blackberries.
It was a good surprise attack, but Jared wasn't foolish enough to think that would be the end of it. Rafe was a vicious opponent—as any kid at Antietam Elementary could attest. He fought with a kind of fiendish enjoyment that Jared understood perfectly.
There really was nothing better than pounding someone on a hot summer day when the threat of school was creeping closer and all the morning chores were behind you.
Thorns tore at clothes and scratched flesh. The two boys wrestled back to the path, fists and elbows ramming, sneakers digging in at the heels for purchase. Nearby, a second battle was under way, with curses and grunts and the satisfying crunch of bodies over aged dried leaves.
The MacKade brothers were in heaven.
"You're dead, Rebel scum!" Jared shouted when he managed to grab Rafe in a slippery headlock.
"I'm taking you to hell with me, bluebelly!" Rafe shouted right back.
In the end, they were simply too well matched, and they rolled away from each other, filthy, breathless, and laughing.
Wiping the blood from a split lip, Jared turned his head to watch his troops engage the enemy. It looked to him as though Devin were going to have a black eye, and Shane had a rip in his jeans that was going to get them all in trouble.
He let out a long, contented sigh and watched the sunlight play through the leaves.
"Going to break it up?" Rafe asked, without much interest.
"Nah." Casually, Jared wiped blood from his chin. "They're almost finished."
"I'm going to go into town." Energy still high, Rafe bounded up and brushed off his pants. "Gonna get me a soda down at Ed's."
Devin stopped wrestling Shane and looked over. "Got any money?"
With a wolfish grin, Rafe jingled the change in his pocket. "Maybe." Challenge issued, he tossed the hair out of his eyes, then took off at a dead run.
The delightful prospect of shaking quarters from Rafe's pockets was all the impetus Devin and Shane needed. Suddenly united, they scrambled off each other and chased after him.
"Come on, Jare," Shane called over his shoulder. "We're going to Ed's."
"Go on. I'll catch up."
But he lay there on his back, staring at the sunlight flickering through the awning of leaves. As his brothers' pounding footsteps faded away, he thought he could hear the sounds of the old battle. The boom and crash of mortars, the screams of the dead and dying.
Then, closer, the ragged breathing of the lost and the frightened.
He closed his eyes, too familiar with the ghosts of these woods to be unnerved by their company. He wished he'd known them, could have asked them what it was like to put your life, your soul, at risk. To love a thing, an ideal, a way of life, so much you would give everything you were to defend it.
He thought he would for his family, for his parents, his brothers. But that was different. That was... family.
&n
bsp; One day, he promised himself, he would make his mark. People would look at him and know that there was Jared MacKade, a man who stood for something. A man who did what had to be done, and never turned his back on a fight.
Chapter One
Jared wanted a cold beer. He could already taste it, that first long sip that would start to wash away the dregs of a lousy day in court, an idiot judge and a client who was driving him slowly insane.
He didn't mind that she was guilty as sin, had certainly been an accessory before and after the fact in the spate of petty burglaries in the west end of Hagers-town. He could swallow defending the guilty. That was his job. But he was getting damn sick and tired of having his client hit on him.
The woman had a very skewed view of lawyer-client relations. He could only hope he'd made it clear that if she grabbed his butt again, she was out on hers and on her own.
Under different circumstances, he might have found it only mildly insulting, even fairly amusing. But he had too much on his mind, and on his calendar, to play games.
With an irritated jerk of the wrist, he jammed a classical CD into his car stereo system and let Mozart join him on the winding route toward home.