Red Noon

by Capri Montgomery

  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 an
other 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.

  “Nothing sexual,” he warned him. “That’s for the boss.”

  “Not my type,” he shook his head. His green eyes looked honest enough but that didn’t stop Dick from giving him a stern look. “She’s not dark enough for me.”

  Dick nodded. His brother did like them Asian or dark, which is probably why he didn’t want to leave Florida. The women, he had said, were hotter than a supernova. What did Tiger know about supernovas other than those science fiction movies he loved to watch?

  They looked a lot alike by way of the face. They both had the cleft chin, the squared angular jaw, the dirty blond hair and thin lips, but Dick’s eyes were blue like their mother’s while Tiger’s had been green like their fathers.

  He shook the thoughts from his head. “Save some of your anger little brother. When the boss is done and I get the money I’ll let you beat her into the ground.”

  Tiger’s lips turned upward.

  Dick winked at him. “I thought you might like that. We are going to have to get rid of her since she saw your face.”

  “You’re looking out for me?”

  “I’m looking out for you. I may have to give up some of the money since I’ll need permission to do the kill, but we’ll be okay.”

  “For a kill I just might not want the money anyway. That whore broke my nose.”

  It wasn’t broken, just bloody and a hell of a lot of ugly but he wouldn’t derail Tiger’s train. “Just remember, keep her somewhat pretty okay? Not too much on the face and nothing broken.”

  “For now…but when she’s mine to payback for what she did to my nose I’m going to break a lot of bones.”

  “I’ll sit back and watch with pride, little brother.”

  Those words put the biggest smile on his brother’s face. Maybe they were a lot more alike than he wanted to admit. Tiger was excited by the thrill of the kill and Dick would admit, the thrill of the kill had excited him too. Unfortunately once wasn’t enough. Killing was like sex; once could never be enough. His lips quirked to one side. When the demons came sometimes they came in triplicate, he thought. While he wouldn’t invite Tiger into his and Ike’s tight bond, he would say they had way more in common than they didn’t on this train.

  “Garbage runs tomorrow so stay away from the windows and keep the blinds closed.” He took the head nod as affirmation before he left to handle the rest of his tasks. “Oh, this is going to be good,” he whistled as he drove down to the main road. He hadn’t had this big of a rush since Singapore.

  Chapter Two

  …Two Weeks Earlier…

  Sheila Brackett sat at the desk discussing the new magazine layout in detail. She wasn’t part of the layout team when she was hired. She wasn’t part of anything other than being his assistant who sat outside her manager’s office at a stylish oak wood desk with high products setup for a heavy workload. She liked it even though off to the right of her were cubicles of annoying women and entitled little boys claiming to be men.

  For a magazine that was so high class and upscale one would have expected marble halls and French doors, but the duo partners on this blazing magazine were style meets common sense when it came to décor. It wasn’t that the building was downtrodden. It most definitely was stylish in its own way, but it was not really the style that the magazine had. Oak wood desks were nice, but Sheila would have done a mahogany or cherry wood desk with silver hardware or even crystal hardware to style it up. She would have gone for a higher grade tile than just the almost standard office tile floors. Of course had she been the designer the office would have probably costs more than the magazine made because she definitely would have gone for crystal chandeliers, knocked out a wall, expanded the floor space and put all these people in their own office.

  She had actually told Justin Bellisario, boss number one with the dark hair, dark eyes, and very sexy Spaniard accent, and boss number two, Eddie Ottoman, with the olive skin, dark hair, dark eyes and very Israeli-American mindset, that when they asked her during her three month and you might be out review. She had also told them when they asked why she didn’t socialize with the others that they hired her to do a job. Either they wanted to pay her to socialize or work but they didn’t get both so which one was it. She wasn’t afraid to get fired, not that she wanted to lose her job or anything, but she would not work for yet another company that demanded her to socialize with everybody just to make them feel all important and special and loved. She didn’t know these people and if they knew the conversations that happened in the lunch room they wouldn’t ask her to hang out with half of them.

  She wouldn’t throw anybody under the bus but her first day in the lunch room had been her last for a reason. Either it was gossip, racists insults masked as, “oh I didn’t mean it,” type crap or man versus woman stuff she just didn’t have the energy to raise her war flag in.

  Fortunately bosses number one and two loved her more for that, upped her hours at work, upped her pay, gave her the small office between their offices, and even moved her from assistant to assistant with style input—on the magazine that was. They weren’t planning o
n redoing the office anytime soon.

  She would say that what got her the job was her own style. She made all of her clothing with her own design, her own flare, and from scratch. Everything fit her like it was born from her body. She worked with the best in fabrics that she bought when she traveled. Once a year she went out of the country to someplace where she wanted to explore more, and once a year she did a road trip across the U.S.A. hitting up fabric stores and spending her year’s worth of spending money on what would be a significant amount of work to do when she got home. Her mother had told her once, when she was living in her previous location, that she was going to run out of room in that walk-in closet in her single story home but Sheila, Shell to her friends, had told her she could always knock out a wall and build a bigger closet. She had laughed at that because she was in need of a bigger closet. She was already occupying every closet in the house—the guest bedroom which was a second master bedroom, the hall coat closet, and of course her closet was full. She was kind of addicted but she couldn’t pass up beautiful fabric. Maybe fashion and style was in her blood. She made sure her second home had loads of closet space—or at least enough not to have to knock out any walls—yet.