The Genesis Group

by Mike Dagons

Chapter 27

  Anakin and Choc were riding with me. I’d left Ceylon at the house to guard Nicole because Valow was on his back. My fight with Basin and Luther was almost over, and I was happy about it. Even though I hadn’t derived as much satisfaction from killing the people they loved as I’d hoped.

  I knew exactly where Jeffrey Basin was the minute he answered that phone call from his partner in incest. I hadn’t led a sheltered life, but I had no idea there was so much evil shit going on until I crossed paths with these muthafuckas.

  Luther was so anxious to fuck me he wasn’t using common sense. The idea that I would meet him in a fucking quarry in the middle of nowhere to exchange my life for a man that I only knew by association with his brother was ludicrous.

  He should have known better, since he hadn’t been willing to even sacrifice one of his men’s lives to save his children and their mothers. I didn’t know what or who had given him the idea that I was the bleeding heart, sensitive martyr type, but I sure in hell was glad for his misconception. He still had no idea how deep the shit he was in really was.

  The evil I’d done the past two weeks had done nothing to change his less than flattering opinion of me as a worthy opponent. They were still seriously underestimating my skills, my intelligence, and my determination to kill every last one of them muthafuckas.

  Choc said Luther and Basin each had six men with them at the old precinct building where they had been holding him, Desmond, and Kenyah. I was going to assume that he had at least that many guarding the place he was hold up in now, but it wasn’t important to my plans.

  I drove by the graystone building at normal speed just to see how many men Luther had guarding the outside. I didn’t want to look suspicious, so I’d left Anakin and Choc on a street corner two blocks away. They had both been taken by Luther’s men, and that would make them easily identifiable. Especially, if they were seen driving by the graystone more than once.

  I was surprised to see that there were only two men posted outside the building, and there wasn’t anyone staked out in nearby vehicles. I couldn’t see how many were inside because I didn’t have an infrared descriptor. Of course, it was a source of concern, but I wasn’t going to let it make me abort the plan.

  I was supposed to go back and pick up Choc and Anakin before I went in, but it would undoubtedly cost me the element of surprise. Given there were only two people standing guard, I doubted there would be more than one or two stationed inside the apartment. I was pretty certain I could handle three men alone, even if they were efficient, so circling the block to pick up Anakin and Choc would be a waste of precious time.

  I parked the car and got out. Telling myself that I was going to have to face two or three dozen of the muthafuckas before this shit was over, so if I couldn’t handle two or three men alone. I needed to go bend over Luther’s table because I was already fucked.

  I was wearing a real nice sporty tweed blazer I’d taken from the closet in the Viper safe house. The lining was dragon skin, and it looked nice with my brown cargo pants. I was wearing Anakin’s eyeglasses. And I had a baseball cap pulled down low over my eyes, which made me look preppy. There was a new growth of stubble on my face, so I was certain that at a glance. I didn’t look like myself.

  I walked up to the building without drawing any undue attention from the men sitting on the stoop. “Hey, stop there,” the darker of the two stood up when I walked up the stairs to the door, like I belonged there.

  The other one didn’t even bother to look up. And I guessed he had seen my approach and determined I didn’t look dangerous enough to warrant his attention.

  “Who are you?” I asked in an offended falsetto voice as I obediently stopped.

  “Who you here to see?” his response was gruff, and short tempered.

  I answered in the sweetest voice I could manage, and batted my long lashes at him. “Cherry, he’s expecting me.”

  “He didn’t tell us he was expecting anybody,” he barked.

  “Was he supposed tell you? What, is he in there with him? He told me he had ended that,” I said before he could answer. “I want to see him, right now,” I demanded, giving my best impersonation of a jealous lover. “If you’re not going to let me in, can you at least tell him that I’m out here?” I snapped.

  He cleared his throat loudly, and then exchanged amused looks with his partner. “Let the bitch talk to him, Jimmy.” Unable to contain his smile, he lowered his head and scratched the back of his neck.

  Clearly they both thought that LaCreme was cheating on Luther, and they were about to witness some drama. “Come on in,” Jimmy said, and then pushed the vestibule door open and walked in ahead of me.

  I followed him into the hall, and waited behind him while he knocked on the door of the first floor apartment. I had learned from Bender that the building was a duplex, and LaCreme occupied both floors.

  “Yes…just a minute,” a male voice answered in a singsong tone on the other side of the door.

  “It’s Jimmy, you have a visitor. He’s says you’re expecting him.”

  “Honey, I’m not expecting anyone but, Luther,” he said as he pulled the door open wide.

  He was wearing a wide smile, and he didn’t look anything like the photo Bender had sent to my phone. He was my height, and although slimmer and less muscular, he looked nothing like a female. “Where is he?” he spoke to Jimmy.

  “He says he’s your other man,” he cackled, and when he moved aside so LaCreme could see me, the silencer was in his face. I shot him between his eyes, and LaCreme’s scream awakened Jimmy’s sleeping partner on the stoop.

  He rushed through the door, and LaCreme leaped back inside the apartment and tried to close the door shut. I put two in the partner’s chest while shouldering the door hard enough to knock LaCreme on his ass.

  He scooted backwards, grabbing a crystal vase off the cocktail table as he moved. He threw it at me while he was getting up, and then he started to run. I dodged the object and put a bullet in his foot. He fell on the floor screaming like a girl. “Shut up!” I warned him.

  “It sounds like you’re engaging gunfire,” Anakin said in my ear.

  I could tell by his breathing that he was on the move. “I’m good. Stay put, and I’ll pick you up,” I said to him, and then I walked into the bathroom and grabbed a towel and a bottle of alcohol. When I returned, LaCreme was still sitting on the floor, and Anakin was standing over him. “I thought I told you to stay put,” I ribbed him, but I couldn’t say I was surprised to see him.

  “I was closer to here than I was to the corner you left me on, so I decided to come on over,” he grinned.

  “Take your shoe off!” I ordered LaCreme.

  He removed the loafer, and then looked up at me fearfully. Anakin grabbed up the dead bodies and put them inside the apartment, and I waited until he finished, before I holstered my Sig, and kneeled to look at LaCreme’s foot. “You prefer being called Mario or LaCreme?” I asked.

  “Mario is fine,” he answered.

  “This is going to sting, Mario,” I said, and then poured the alcohol in the hole in the side of his foot.

  “Oh God,” he hissed tearfully.

  “Wrap this tight around your foot, and then get up.” I dropped the towel in his lap.

  He unrolled it, and then wrapped it around his foot and tied a knot on top. “Where are you taking me?” His eyes met mine.

  “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m only going to use you to blackmail Luther. If he gives me what I want. I’ll let you go,” I smiled to restore his hope that he might live, so he wouldn’t make me kill him before I got the chance to use him.

  He pushed himself up off the floor and hobbled outside. I put Mario in the trunk of my car, and then we picked up Choc on the corner where I’d left him.

  Chapter 28

  Our next stop was Indiana. Bender had uploaded a map of the area surrounding the farmhouse we suspected Luther was in. We pulled the car into a clearing in a wooded area a few
hundred feet away from the house and parked it.

  Anakin climbed a tree, and looked at the house through the rifle scope. He reported an, all clear, after he didn’t see any increased activity around the house, so it was safe to assume nobody saw our approach.

  We had only used up forty five minutes of the time I’d been given to get to the quarry, and like I figured Luther hadn’t left to meet me there yet.

  I opened the trunk of the car, and looked at the drag queen I had kidnapped. Anakin had some lady boys working for him at his gentlemen’s club that were real hot as chicks, but LaCreme wasn’t just hot in drag. He was extremely handsome when dressed as a man.

  “Get out.” I grabbed hold of his arm, and helped him climb out the trunk.

  “What is this all about?” he asked, still not understanding why I had him.

  “I got beef with your man. He’s holding a friend of mine hostage, and I’m here to propose an exchange. Think of it as an opportunity to find out how much Luther loves you.”

  The blazer I was wearing was heavy, so I took it off and grabbed my vest and slipped it on. I put the blazer in the trunk for safekeeping.

  “I’m not involved in his business, and I don’t expect him to sacrifice himself for me,” he answered.

  “Well, that may be true because he sure didn’t sacrifice himself for his children.”

  “Luther doesn’t have children,” he said, and I couldn’t argue that point since I’d spent the last week killing all the muthafuckas, and the bitches that birthed them.

  I tied Mario’s hands behind his back and sat him in the backseat of the car. His foot had stopped bleeding, but I hadn’t expected him to bleed much, since I’d only clipped a small chuck of flesh out the side of his foot under his pinky toe.

  I wanted to get inside before Luther came out, so I put a rush on it. “You stay here, and you might live through this, but if you get out of the car, or make any noise, my man is going to shoot you.”

  Mario nodded that he understood, and then he relaxed in the backseat. We waited until Choc got into position in a tree with the sniper rifle, and then Anakin and I circled around behind the ranch style farmhouse.

  When we were a few yards from the back door, I spoke quietly to Choc through my walkie. “Hit the two on the roof first, and then everybody else you can.”

  When the first man tumbled off the roof, Anakin took off in an all out sprint, and I ran for the house behind him. At full speed he was like a Rhino, and he could knock down a steel door like it was rotted wood.

  He hit the back door in a flying leap with both feet, and it flew off the hinges and ripped away molding with a crashing boom that shook the house.

  I leaped over him and went through the door firing, and hitting everything that I targeted. By the time I reached the hall that led upstairs, I had killed six men and caught a bullet that grazed off my side where my dragon skin vest stopped.

  The reading I’d got on Luther from the phone call put him upstairs, but he could be anywhere now, so I stopped in the hall and listened. “A thermal imaging device would be real useful right about now,” I said to Anakin, who had walked up behind me.

  “There is only one room upstairs. I hear movement up there, and in the room at the end of the hall down here,” he responded.

  He holstered his gun, and then pulled two knives out his thigh holster. He held the knives with the blades flush against the back of his wrists. “I’ll handle what’s down here, and you hit the room upstairs,” he said. “On my mark,” he crouched in a runner’s stance. “Go,” he whispered, and then took off like a jet, blowing by me like a howling storm of wind.

  I cautiously started moving up the stairs to what looked like an attic room that was behind double doors that were closed. I heard a few gunshots coming from the room Anakin went in, but I wasn’t worried about him. He was the only man I knew who could bring a knife to a gunfight and walk away from the muthafucka unharmed.

  Nobody was in sight when I reached the top step. I got into position, and was ready to hit the door when I felt a gun barrel pressed against the back of my head. Instantaneously, a body dropped at my feet that had a knife handle stuck in the back of his skull.

  I turned and saw Anakin coming up the stairs. “I didn’t hear him come up the stairs behind me,” I whispered.

  He pushed a panel on the wall, and it popped open. “He was hiding in here,” he whispered back. “No more live bodies down there.”

  The stairway wasn’t wide enough for us to stand side by side, so Anakin stood behind me. I kicked the doors in front of me open, and then dropped to the floor, and rolled inside. I hit the first two targets dead on, and then took cover behind a wall.

  My speed and my ability to sight a target freakishly fast were two of the things that made me so deadly in a gunfight. The other was my nerve of steel. My father often said I had more nerve than a brass monkey. My brother, Ryan, told me what he meant was, it was hard to hurt solid brass, and a monkey was quick to show his ass. The thought made me smile.

  The room was so large that the king size bed sitting in the middle of it looked small. There were two wall dividers separating the sitting area from the sleeping area which was closest to the door I’d entered. There was a door directly across from where I was standing, and I assumed it was the bathroom. Anyone in there would have a clear shot at me, so I kept an eye on it.

  A blue leather sofa sat off to the right of a corner wall in the sitting area, near a picture window. I could see Luther’s reflection through the sixty inch flat screen mounted on the wall opposite the sofa. He was holding Desmond in front of him, and he had a gun to his head.

  I didn’t see the man hiding behind the sofa until he popped up and took a shot at me. The blade shot through the air, and Anakin jumped back behind the door before he saw dude catch it between his eyes and start to fall.

  “I have Baltimore’s brother!” Luther shouted from behind the cover of the wall.

  I personally didn’t give a fuck about Desmond Fox, and neither did Choc, but Ceylon made us promise to save him if we could for the sake of his sons.

  “I have LaCreme,” I answered, “The man you’re holding is Desmond Fox, not Choc’s brother, Trent Real. So, he’s not nearly as valuable to us as you think. But if you kill him, I will give Mario to Anakin, before I kill you,” I threatened. “Let him go and surrender, and I let LaCreme live.”

  Luther took a moment to think about what I’d just told him. “How do I know you have LaCreme?”

  “You left him at his graystone with two incompetent assholes to guard him,” I replied. “Now, drop the gun and step out in the open! I won’t ask you again.”

  Luther shoved Desmond out first, and then he walked out. He dropped the gun, and raised his hands high over his head. “Luther Scott, we finally meet,” I trained both of my guns on him.

  Desmond quickly got out of the line of fire, and I stood face to face with the man who trampled on my dreams. He was a scary looking big blue eyed nigga. He glared at me with eyes so frosty they were glacier.

  “We’re in the bathroom. We work for Basin, and we’re coming out with our weapons holstered,” a baritone voice called out, and I recognized it immediately.

  I kept the gun in my right hand on Luther, and swiveled my left hand to the bathroom door. “Come on out,” I said, and the door cracked open.

  Anakin stepped inside the room with his gun aimed at the slowly opening door. Two men walked out ahead of Leon, and I stepped around counterclockwise to let them get out the door that was behind me.

  When they started out the door, Leon rushed up behind them, and smashed their heads together. They dropped to the floor, and he dropped to a knee, grabbed one man’s head and twisted it, violently breaking his neck, and then he did the same to the other.

  “Two less obstacles you’ll have when you come for Basin. Expect three men and me. All heavily armed,” he said, and then hurried out the room and down the stairs, leaving us all dumbstruck.

>   “In case you haven’t figured it out, Basin has turned on you. He gave me the name of your lover, and this location,” I lied.

  “You want revenge for your woman’s death, then kill me now because if you don’t. I will kill you,” Luther growled.

  “Muthafucka, you don’t get to die an easier death than your vile offspring. Bring his girlfriend up, Choc,” I spoke into the walkie. I had decided to release Mario, but there was no way I was going to make Luther’s death easier by telling him that.

  Luther looked at me with his face pinched in pain, and I knew without a doubt that he loved LaCreme. “He has done nothing. He doesn’t even know who I really am.”

  “Then I think it’s about time he learned.”

  “Is Kenyah alright?” Desmond asked.

  “They killed her,” I said to him.

  Of course, I knew the truth, but I was not going to tell this asshole so he could tell Trent his brother killed his wife. The way Choc told the story. She deserved to die.

  Desmond just stared at me like he was in shock, until Choc escorted Mario into the room, and then he turned his attention to them.

  “Baby, what’s going on?” LaCreme asked Luther.

  “They hurt you,” he said when he saw the bloody towel wrapped around his foot.

  “It’s just a scratch. They told me to ask you why they have me here. I don’t understand,” he said.

  “I’ll give whatever you want,” Luther looked directly at me. “Take my life. Do to me whatever you want, but please don’t hurt him,” he pleaded.

  “Finally, you know what it feels like to have your heart ripped out,” I said to him. “If only you had given me an option. I would have turn myself over to you in a heartbeat to save her life. Funny how you think I should spare your lover when you didn’t even consider sparing mine. You took her life and the one she was carrying like it was nothing.” I didn’t realize I was crying until I felt the tears wet my face.

  “I’m sorry for what I have done to you. I deserve whatever you do to me, but Mario is truly innocent,” Luther humbled himself. “He is not like me, or my children. He is kind, and I beg of you. Please, let him go,” he looked at LaCreme sorrowfully.