Shine (Kentucky Outlaw Book 1) by Rayna Bishop Read Free Book Online Page A

truck and Julie hurried back to her car.   Kenny was driving so fast it took her several minutes to catch back up with him.   He drove back into town and after another mile Kenny pulled the pickup into a parking spot next the sidewalk. She parked three spaces up from him and watched in her rearview mirror as he stumbled into another bar.  

    Julie’s phone rang and she hit the silence button without looking to see who it was.   She didn’t know what she had just witnessed, but whatever it was, she knew she was on the right track.



“Everything square with Traxler?” asked Ged.

    “Yeah, he’s expecting us at eight,” said Ethan.

    Ethan, Ged, and Zeke were pulling plastic jugs of moonshine out of the storage sheds and loading them into the back of the truck.   They were just about to make a run, Ethan’s first in more than two years.  

    Making the moonshine was one thing, but it was worthless if you couldn’t get it somewhere to sell it.   The Dalton moonshine was popular, and almost everyone who bought it knew who made it, but only the family was allowed to be where they cooked it. It was one thing for the law to know the Daltons made the shine, but it was another thing if the law could prove it.

      They had been running shine for years, long before Ethan was born, and it required a driver that was quick and skillful behind the wheel. Ethan had been the runner since he was 14 years old, and he delivered every batch until he had left Remington. Now Jackie was the runner, and by all accounts was a better driver than Ethan, which was fine with him.   He had long since given up the need to prove himself to his family.

    After the last of the jugs had been loaded up Zeke took a look at his watch.   “It’s seven-damn-thirty.   Where the hell is that boy?”

    Ethan was wondering the same thing.   Jackie had promised to help load the shine onto the truck, but had been a no show.   That wasn’t unusual, but it wasn’t like Jack to pass up chance to drive fast.   It was close to the running time and he hadn’t even called.

    Ged sat down on a tree stump and said, “What’s the matter, little brother?   You forget what real work is like?”

    Ethan didn’t want to take the bait, but he had been putting up with Ged’s comments the entire time they were loading the shine.   “No, Ged.   I actually worked while I was gone.   I didn’t have a free place to stay and food to eat, I had to go out and grind my ass all week long to bring home a paycheck.”

    “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”  

    “It means I wasn’t cooking up shine and loading once a month.   I had a boss, and a schedule, I had to meet quotas to get by and I still got paid shit.”

    Ged lit a pipe and said,   “You think with all that you would’ve come back sooner.”

    “Hush,” barked Zeke.   “The boy’s back now and that’s good enough.   He had to take care of his own shit.   You had to do the same and Lord knows your brother Jackie gets up to enough trouble.   You just did it in town and Ethan had to go explore for a bit.”

    Ethan was surprised.   It was the closest his father had ever gotten to a compliment or kind word about him.   When Ethan was in school, Zeke’s friends would tell him about how proud the old man sounded when he spoke of him, boasting about his grades and achievements, but Ethan had never heard any of that come from his father directly.

    Ged changed the subject.   “So then, you meet any girls when you were out doing all this exploring?”

    “Yeah, Ged, I met me some girls.”

    “But none you liked enough to bring home?”

    “There were a couple that qualified, but it never lasted.”

    Ged blew out a plume of smoke, “More like Jackie than me in that regard I guess.”

    He decided to change the subject.   “So tell me what you know about Nick’s murder.”

    Zeke said,   “Nothing much to tell.   Robbery gone wrong.   Two bullets to the chest and the