Red Noon (2 page)

“Sorry, bro.”

“No worries,” he said. “They probably didn’t see you anyway. that woman was old and probably can’t see a thing without her glasses.”

“What if she did?”

“Then I’ll get you someplace safe and I’ll tell them I haven’t seen you since you left for Jax.”

“But you have. I came back for you.”

Dick rolled his eyes. “I know, man, but they can’t get us both or I won’t be able to help you get out of the country and setup somewhere else.”

“My job,” he sounded kind of whiny and pissed to Dick. It was just a stupid job doing security at some food and clothing store.

“You like Asian women, bro. I’ll get you down in Thailand with a hefty sum of money and you’ll be good down there until I can get you back should you so want to come back. You’ll be fine; trust me.”

“I trust you. Thailand sounds fun,” his voice sounded devious and almost serpentine. Dick could imagine the Devil sounding like that when he talked to Eve except he imagined Eve might have been too smart not to notice the malicious undertones in the voice. Then again, Eve had thought a snake could talk so maybe the Devil did sound a lot like his brother.

He let the thoughts slide out of his mind as he opened her mouth enough to tie a bandana around her head while having a huge wad of it holding down her tongue. He rolled the tiny body in the back into a rug and stuck her back in the vehicle before getting in and taking off toward their final destination—possibly final for her anyway since she had seen his brother’s face there was no way in hell he was going to let Ike let her go alive. He would do anything for Ike, but he owed his mother a fulfilled promise. He had promised to make sure his brother stayed out of prison and he aimed to keep up his deathbed promise there. Without the mark to testify the case against his brother wouldn’t even make it to trial. No, Ike could play as long as he wanted but then this mark was going to go into the grave by way of cement. He knew exactly the home site to put her body under because he was over security for the development of those trash HOA nearly half million dollar homes that were being built. Dumb suckers buying crap homes being built by illegals and thinking they were going to be worth their gold because of the mountains in one view and the open spaces in another. Stupid idiots, he thought. This state was dumb personified and perhaps what amazed him was that he was the only one who could see it plain as day. Moneymaking scoundrels. Maybe he should tip off ICE to the site and see how that went. But then again, he needed them to keep working if he wanted the body to go into sand first and get finished with a nice layer of cement over it. Yeah, he had to forget about his rabid anger at all things America Corporation right now and focus on his job.

He shook his head. He had never known Ike to get this bent over a woman as he had this woman—especially a black woman. Yeah, she was part Sioux Indian too, but she looked more brown and therefore she would always be considered black. Ike, dark as he may be, liked the lily white girl. He had seen the way he paraded them around like a trophy. He had done that even in high school. It was funny because most of the black guys he knew that dated white girls, now white women, did it because they truly loved them. There was something about them that had captured their interest and stoked their flames, but Ike always seemed to be on some blood lust or something. The man was like trying to tag as many of them as he could. Dick didn’t care; he went for the Italian-American women himself. New York trips were fun for that because he had time, access, and a lot of women who liked this former Army man a hell of a lot and had no problem taking him home to bed. He laughed at the thought because those women would hear Army and they assumed he just did his tour and left, not that he had been kicked out. If they knew the truth they would probably go running.

He thought about the mark. He could see why Ike had latched on to her, not just because she was beautiful, smart, classy, but because she hadn’t given him the time of day. While most women were tripping over their skin to be with him this woman hadn’t even batted an eye. He imagined that must have drove Ike crazy. No, not imagined, it had driven him crazy. Dick knew it had because he had heard Ike chatting up an overweight black woman, who was pretty herself, and definitely hooked on “black love” that she had been the one to send a picture of the woman and the details of how this woman only wanted white men to an interracial dating hate site and they had gone in on the mark.

Thing was, the mark didn’t even want a white man. He had watched her enough to notice that while the men checked her out in various settings she seemed to go out of her way to ignore them in some “if I ignore them maybe they’ll go away” kind of thinking.

Dick had thought maybe she was a lesbian but he noticed she didn’t go all blushed cheeks and batty eyes at women either. Maybe the woman was just an asexual freak or something but hell if he cared. This mark was for Ike. Deliciously golden brown with a hint of brown sugar meets cream and caramel combined came together to perfection on this gray eyed beauty, not his type though. And for Ike she was. Dick wasn’t one hundred percent sure on the type or no type thing. She wasn’t the kind of black Ike seemed to stay away from, but she wasn’t what Ike ran for either. Then again, beauty was beauty no matter the skin. Combine her beauty, her brains, and her lack of desperation for a man and Dick knew some lucky man would be blessed to have a woman like that. He also knew a man like Ike would be pissed not to add her as a notch to his belt. Clearly pissed enough to take with force what wouldn’t be given freely. Ike would take her, and then Dick would break her. Maybe he would let his brother have some fun beating her the way she had managed to beat him, only worse since she would be in chains. He would just have to remind him not to mess up the face too much. Ike wouldn’t want to screw a punching bag and he knew that. He could allow him to deliver a few bruises but no broken bones—not yet anyway.

Dick thought about their Army bond they had. Hell, they had bonded as kids, but it was the Army life that had finally revealed their true selves to each other. Sure, he knew Ike could be rough on the girls, that he liked it hard, he liked it often and he liked it with a great many women he would throw away like a used tissue when he was done, but he didn’t know the driving force of rage behind him until they were in Singapore. Singapore had changed everything for them. Ike had helped him, covered for him, but it made them both late to report back into the U.S. of A. Their CO had gone in on them hard and Ike, rage that he had, well…hell had no fury like Ike pissed off. Of course their CO got the upper hand eventually but that didn’t mean anything to the higher ranks. Dishonorably discharged for the both of them—Dick, because he actually threw the first punch and Ike, because he kept the punches flying. They got lucky; they could have ended up facing time but the CO had signed off on just the dishonorable discharge. Dick guessed the man didn’t want the black mark of being the commander of two of what he called “rabid miscreant demons.” Dick still laughed at that, “rabid miscreant demons,” yeah, he had no idea just how rabid he and Ike could be, just what kind of hell they could raise from the abyss and bring to his world, to this world. Yeah, maybe they weren’t human. Maybe they were supernatural, but they sure as hell were better than anything the military could throw at them.

That one moment had bonded them closer than they ever had been. They had always been close friends but that was the nail in the friendship coffin; that was the one thing that made them brothers, not by blood, but by honor, which was deeper to Ike than brothers by blood.

Dick had drove what took more than two hours to get toward Queen Creek because it was farther away from the higher Scottsdale area, because there was an Arizona Diamondbacks versus San Francisco Giants game at Chase Field muddying up the traffic because some people didn’t get there before they started drinking. Between traffic for the event that had already started and the pileup going east on I-10 because the idiots had caused another accident trying to check out the carnage going west on I-10 a fifty-eight minute drive had taken far too long to pull into the drive of the house he had rented under an assumed name and paid a boat load of cash to do it. He liked the house because it had a game room set up per the online ad and when he checked it out himself one night it was definitely as quiet as the man had said. He had fired a bullet into a padded can and not even one neighbor woke up. He liked that people seemed to mind their own business by way of nobody even coming over to the house to see who had just taken down the rental sign on the house. Yeah, this was the perfect suburb for what he needed. He could do a lot of damage in a room like this.

Getting off the I-10 to I-60 had helped because traffic zipped along after that, but he still had the long track when he got off the freeway to get into Queen Creek. He really only knew about the area because Ike had lived around the area for all of six months before the drive up to Scottsdale at two hours every rush hour morning had become too much for him.

As suspected it was quiet and lights out by the time he got there. As unexpected, the garage door stuck halfway up while a screaming like a banshee on the way. He had looked out the rearview to see if any lights went on; they hadn’t. It was enough space to get under it on foot, but that wasn’t going to help him. If the thing started squelching again it would probably wake up somebody.

“Nobody is up. Get the mark out the back, leave her in the rug,” he felt the need to stress that to his brother just in case he was slower than he thought. “Get her in through there and I’ll get the door up after you’re in.” he handed him the key. “This way if anybody hears the blasted thing again they won’t see you. Gotta keep you out of the view, bro.”

“Got it,” his rumbling timbers sparked confidence.

Dick watched as his brother got the rug wrapped mark out the back and managed to kneel enough to get under the entryway and still keep the rug on his shoulder. His brother was a strong man, and he would give him that.

Dick kept watch on the rearview but he didn’t see any lights flashing on. People were soon to be getting up though if they had to work northward in the morning because from what Ike had told him the traffic was hell come six in the morning so the eight to four and nine to five crowd going northward had almost a two hour commute and had to leave early. It was nearing midnight now so he could only guess people would be springing to life eventually.

He checked his surroundings again, got out and lifted the garage door by hand before getting back in the Tahoe and pulling inside. The crap garage door on the house still made almost as much noise going up and down manually as it made when it got stuck on automatic. Man he wouldn’t spend a penny on the crap they were putting out nowadays. He could make better stuff than this in his sleep.

At least nobody had seen them. At least they were inside. He had another day before he would have to go out to meet Ike at their meet-up, get a new vehicle and ditch that one…he sighed to himself. He didn’t have a day of rest to beat the mark. He had to ditch the car in the dark and get another one, report the vehicle stolen from his house, file a report and then get back over here in darkness too. If Ike had taken time off work they could have done this someplace farther away. Then again, it might look suspicious if they did it that way. Nah, they were moving correctly; he was just slipping on his function because he was working with Tiger. “Who the hell names their child Tiger anyway,” he mumbled as he walked into the house. The same fool who named their son Dick—his crap for brains father.

Father John Tucker Peters had been hell to live with. He blamed his mother, not at first, but later, for his not being able to do the whole Priesthood thing. The fool knocked his mother up with him, what did he think was going to happen? A near shotgun wedding—literally—had made him forsake the call of the church, but it hadn’t stopped his spewing of archaic one sided lies. It hadn’t stopped him from treating him and Tiger like some unholy terror. A few pills here, a little rat poison there, and Father John Tucker Peters went into the grave. Thanks to his mother and the numerous drunk driving charges against his father nobody second guessed that the fool was so wasted he mistook rat poison for sugar when he put it on his wheat flaked cereal. Yes, he and mother had gotten away clean, but that hadn’t stopped his mother from making sure he at least promised to take care of his brother who wasn’t quite gone, but wasn’t all there either.

Hell, maybe he had moved away from Florida to get away from all of them. He surely was grateful that Tiger hadn’t wanted to come back to Arizona with him after their mother died. Tiger was functioning just fine in his job and living in the house their mother had left them so why tip the apple cart over and have the fool stay with him in his city?

“Tiger, I’m going to have to go ditch the car and get another. Can you handle this until tomorrow night? I can’t come back before then.”

“I’ve got it. I already got her chained pretty tight to the overhead beam. She ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

He chuckled. “Good to know. You can play with her just remember that boss guy wants her in another way so don’t mess up the face too much.” He noticed how Tiger’s face turned to disappointment. He laughed. “All I’m saying is don’t break any bones. Split a lip, don’t break a nose. Give a black eye if you want but not a disfigured face. But if you just have to hit her more take off your belt and beat her up a bit. Don’t use your fist too much because you have too much of a punch and we need her workable if we’re going to get paid the cash I promised you.” He saw his brother’s eyes brighten up. Yeah, they weren’t getting paid but he had some cash he could give to his brother. Or maybe he could keep his money and tell Tiger he could beat her harder if he forwent his income. Tiger was pretty easy to control anyway.