The Genesis Group Read online

  The Genesis Group

  By

  Mike Dagons

  And

  Q. Wilson

  Severe Payne

  Circles

  Ice Capades

  Novels by Mike Dagons

  With Q. Wilson

  QnoU/NoMoney4U

  PO Box 8401

  Melrose Park, IL 60161

  Book One

  Severe Payne

  This book is a work of fiction and, as such, is a product of the author’s creative imagination. All character names and events are fictitious or used fictitiously. Any similarities of characters to real persons, whether living or dead, are coincidental. Any resemblance of incidents portrayed in this book to actual events is likewise coincidental.

  2R

  Copyright © 2013 by Mike Dagons

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission of the authors.

  Chapter 1

  Steven pulled up to the corner traffic light and stopped. I watched the man crossing in front of us, his gait slow and seemingly unrushed. He looked out of place, his coat way too retro sheik for the neighborhood.

  Growing up in Englewood, one of the highest crime areas on the south side of Chicago, you develop a certain sense for danger, an internal radar warning system— kindá your own personal Doppler, that tells you when the climate is about to change. Mine was telling me that this guy was getting ready to bring on a shit storm, so I kept my eyes on him.

  He barely glanced our way as he stepped up on the curb, and started strolling down the sidewalk parallel to our car on the driver’s side. Steven wasn’t watching him, but I was. “He can’t be trusted,” I absentmindedly spoke aloud.

  “Who Severe?” he asked, and started looking around for who I was talking about.

  This is my neighborhood, not Steven’s. He’s only here to pick me up from the local McDonald’s, where I work as a cashier.

  My name is Severe Payne. The story is, my mother was in labor with me so long, and her pain was so severe, that my father, clever man that he was, thought it witty to name me Severe, given his last name was Payne. I never got to know good old dad, since he was gone before I turned one. He left us with nothing but his clever name.

  I’m one of very few white chicks that grew up in Englewood, so even though I look like I don’t belong here to passersby; the locals know I’m right at home.

  Steven Chandler is a handsome black lawyer that I met when he came in McDonald’s for coffee one morning after he got off the Dan Ryan Expressway at the wrong exit, and then made a wrong turn that landed him in Englewood.

  I watched Steven then, like I’m watching this guy now, because like him, Steven looked out of place. It wasn’t just the expensive car he rode up in. That was a pretty common sight, but it was his attitude. His air of sophistication made him look odd. After he ordered his coffee, he sat down at one of the tables. He took off the jacket to his expensive business suit and draped it across the back of the chair next to him. I could see the thick bulge of the money clip in his inside pocket from where I was standing behind the counter.

  Steven placed his expensive phone on the table next to his coffee, took some papers out of his briefcase, and started reading. Every now and then, he’d take a sip of the steaming black brew, but he never raised his eyes from the paper he was reading. He wasn’t even pretending to be watching his surroundings. It told me that he was a man out of his element. A cherry that was ripe for the picking. He may as well have been wearing a neon sign flashing; I have no street smarts, please feel free to rob me.

  I wasn’t the only one who noticed Steven was broadcasting his vulnerabilities. I peeped a half dozen people hanging back waiting for the opportunity to pounce on him.

  I’m not going to lie, I was attracted to him. He was tall, dark, extremely handsome, and from the looks of it, very successful. He made eye contact with me a couple of times before he sat down, and he smiled, showing me perfect white teeth. I smiled back, of course, showing him my own healthy set of choppers. It’s a long story behind it, but I owe my perfect smile to my best friend, William Rottweiler.

  Roc and I lived in the same building as kids. He was a tough black guy, still is, and I was a scrawny white chick, still am. My mom was a drunk, and his was a crackhead. We bonded the first day I moved into his building. We were both four years old, and because our moms were unfit, we made a pact to look out for each other, sharing food, and clothes. He’s always had my back, and I’ll always have his.

  After we started school, he became my protector. He taught me how to fight, survivor on my own, and stay out of the family services foster care system. He also introduced me to a dentist when we were in middle school, and paid to have my teeth fixed with some of his drug dealing money.

  I’m a pretty plain twenty four year old white chick. I weigh roughly a hundred ten pounds. I’m a little over five, four with brown eyes, and brown shoulder length hair. My mom says there’s some African American in our ancestry, and it’s where I get my full lips, and heavy hair. I’m nothing special to look at, but thanks to my ancestors, and Roc, I have a great mouth, and a sexy smile, and Steven Chandler noticed.

  When he left the restaurant, a group of locals cut him off before he could make it back to his car. They had honed in on him like a jungle cat targets a baby gazelle. I left my post at the register, and went outside. Shavar, a career thug, was asking him to share the wealth by shoving a .45 in his gut. “He’s with me, Shavar,” I said.

  “Oh, okay, Severe, my bad,” he said, and booked.

  I knew I was getting the gansta’s respect because of my affiliation with Roc, who was now a very skilled, very connected assassin, but Steven didn’t know that. He was impressed by my bravery, and he asked me out to reward me for saving his ass.

  We learned, to no one’s surprise, that we were total opposites. He was thirty, and graduated from Yale with honors. He lived a cushy life back in Kentucky, and he was in Chicago on business for his boss, who was a rich and powerful man.

  I ain’t going to win no academic awards. Hell, I didn’t make it through high school, but I’m real athletic. It’s actually how I made it while in high school. Girl’s basketball, track, soccer, anything hands on; I have a natural talent for excelling in. And if you help the team win trophies, the coaches will help you get passing grades. I got my GED, and then I started working odd jobs that didn’t require any higher learning than the equivalent of a high school diploma I’d been given. No sense in pretending, I didn’t earn it. It was given to me for being persistent.

  Opposites attract, right? So Steven fell for me. We’ve been dating for two months, and that brings us back to where we are now with Steven picking me up from my minimum wage job, and this strange dude that my gut is telling me is about to jack us for this S-Class Mercedes Benz, we’re riding in.

  Unlike Steven, who had turned completely around in his seat and was giving the dude his undivided attention since I’d pointed him out. I continued to watch him in my periphery because I didn’t want him to learn he no longer had the element of surprise on his side.

  I was still pretending not to notice him at all when he stopped walking and looked straight at us. He caught Steven’s gaze, and decided it was time to make his move.

  I moved a half second faster. I flung the car door open, and jumped out as his hand moved inside his trendy coat. I know that he’s going for a gun, and I cursed myself for not having anything but my faithful Ka-Bar knife. It was sheathed at my ankle, and my hand automatically went to it, as I hurdled myself over the hood of the Mercedes to get to the other side.

  I was moving fast, but dude had already
yanked Steven’s car door open, and he was pointing the Colt at his head. He was completely focused on Steven, so he hadn’t even noticed that I was running to him instead of running away.

  I could have cut his throat. I would have if Steven hadn’t been sitting in the car watching me. He was paralyzed by fear, but I couldn’t blame him. The man had a gun pointed at his head.

  Since I couldn’t think of a faster way to spoil my innocent girl image than letting my boyfriend see me cut a man’s throat, I spared them both, and just kicked the dude upside his head as I came flying feet first off the hood.

  He staggered back clumsily. His hands flew up, and he accidently fired a shot in the air. It told me that he had his finger on the trigger, which suggested he intended to shoot Steven before he demanded he give up his car.

  “Get down!” I shouted at Steven as I hooked my arm around the dude’s neck, and got behind him. I pulled my forearm back against his Adam’s apple, and pressed my blade against his throat hard enough to draw a bead of blood.

  “Chill, sista, chill,” he exclaimed.

  “Put the .45 down on the pavement, nice and easy, or I’ll cut your fucking throat,” I ordered him.

  He dropped the gun at his feet, and mumbled an insincere, “I’m sorry.”

  I was shorter than him, so my hold was forcing him to do a backbend. I didn’t want him to straighten up, and flip me over his back, so I drove my foot into the back of his knee and forced him down on the ground. “You want my man’s car, muthafucka?” I shouted in his ear.

  “Naw, I was just gon’ ask him if he was lost! He looks lost. You do, too,” he wisecracked.

  Without warning, he grabbed my wrist and pushed the blade away from his throat. I reacted instinctively, kicking him in his back as I twisted my arm down, wrenching it free of his grip. I swept the .45 out of his reach with my foot, and then I swiftly scooped it up off the ground, and clocked him upside his head with it.

  The blow spun him around and landed him flat on his back with my foot on his throat, and holding the gun in a two handed grip aimed at his forehead.

  “Move and I swear you’re dead,” I hissed, and I meant it.

  “Okay, Okay,” he stammered, arms out at his sides. “Don’t shoot! I wasn’t going to hurt you. I just wanted the car. I need the money to feed my kids. It’s the only reason I’m doing this, okay. Please, you can keep the gun. Just let me go?”

  “Severe, please, let’s get out of here!” Steven shouted at me.

  I spared him a glance, and saw that he had closed his car door and was speaking to me through a narrow crack in the window.

  “What are you doing? Let’s go!” he shouted again.

  I wanted to interrogate the guy, but it wasn’t safe to do it in front of Steven. He was already freaked out by my response to the attacker. It was best if Steven believed the guy was simply a Jacker, so I backed up off him. “Get up and get outtá here!” I shouted at him, and I didn’t have to tell him twice.

  He scrambled to his feet on the run, and Steven lowered his window some more. “Get in the damn car, right now! What the fuck is the matter with you?” he shouted.

  Don’t get me wrong. I understood how seeing his girl, who he thought was a helpless white chick, easily disarm a man twice her size, could be upsetting. It could make anybody lose their cool, but I didn’t like the scary muthafucka barking orders at me now that he was out of danger.

  But my dislikes be damned. This was a job, and I quickly reminded myself who I was supposed to be. “Okay, baby,” I answered sweetly. I jogged back around to the passenger side, and got in the car.

  The light was turning red again, but Steven didn’t wait for another green. He punched the gas, and made a last minute left turn onto Western heading north, away from Englewood.

  “Are you alright, woman?” he asked, but he didn’t give me a chance to answer. “Why in the fuck do you want to live here? It’s like a damn battlefield. Everyday you have to fight to live. If it’s the money, I’ll take care of it!” he barked.

  I thought back to just a few months ago. I had been hurting for money, and living hand to mouth on the measly salary I made working at Mickey D’s. Roc had made the same offer Steven had just made, but I’m not into accepting charity, so Roc paid my rent a few months in advance without telling me. I learned about it when I went to my landlord and asked for more time to get him his money.

  I was pretty set financially nowadays. Roc had referred me to Charter 6, the clandestine agency he was lucky enough to land a job with a year ago. He had made his connection when he tried to rob one of their best operatives, Isaak Charles Edwards, better known as Ice because he’s so cold.

  Ice took a personal interest in Roc’s skills. After he beat the shit out of him, he gave him his wallet with the money, and told him to look him up, if he wanted to put his talent to better use. Roc went to the address on the driver’s license and found Ice, and he started prepping him for a job with Charter. The agency took him on Ice’s recommendation, and now he makes an honest living.

  Roc had tried to do the same thing for me that Ice had done for him, but I didn’t have the book smarts I needed to wow them, so I was rejected. Roc was new to the agency and didn’t carry enough clout to get them to accept me solely on his recommendation. However, I lucked up when Ice needed some low key backup on a job last summer. What he’d done for Roc made him a fucking superhero in my eyes, and he was asking for my help. I was stoked, and jumped at the chance to impress him. I was honored to do the job, but when he offered to pay me, I asked for a chance to train to work for the Agency. With his backing, I was accepted.

  I spent six months in an undisclosed camp sharpening my already stellar fighting skills, perfecting the Spanish I’d learned on the streets, and learning how to be a charming assassin.

  I left there feeling more confident about my future than I ever had before. I worked one job for them after completing the training, and then Melvin Ryan, Ice’s older brother, made me an offer to come work for him at Genesis, his new contract security agency.

  Ryan offered me more money, but even if he hadn’t, I would have taken the job because he was like Ice. They cared about people, and working for him offered me the security of working with a team that really cared about me as person, not just my skills.

  Genesis was a small diverse group of people, with different specialized skills. Like a tight knit family, we work together as a solid unit. At twenty four, I’m the youngest member of the team, in age and experience. I’m just learning the ropes, and this is a very important job. Knowing people that cared would be watching my back, gave me the confidence I needed to take this assignment. I just hoped I hadn’t fucked it up, and blown my cover with the heroics.

  Chapter 2

  I needed to change the subject, and skip talking about what had just happened, so I placed a hand high up on Steven’s thigh. “I heard that Charlie Wilson is going to be in concert here in a couple of weeks. I’ve been dreaming about seeing him live. You think you can get us some tickets?”

  Steven took his eyes off the road, and stared at me in wonderment. “You’re kidding, right? You’re just going to act like nothing happened? You could have been killed, dammit!”

  “I’ve been living here my whole life, and I’ve been taking self defensive classes at the Y for a few years. I know how to handle myself in a fight,” I said hoping to explain why I hadn’t been killed.

  “I don’t care!” Adrenaline had him screaming mad. “You should have let him have the fucking car, instead of acting like them silly self-defense classes you been taking really prepared you for an altercation with a man with a fucking gun!” His fight or flight response had kicked in, and he was fleeing much too fast to be driving on city streets.

  “Baby, slow down, you’re going to get a ticket, if you don’t kill us,” I joked.

  “It’s not a fucking joke, Severe. You could have gotten us both killed with that stunt you pulled back there.”

  “Baby, ple
ase slow down, you’re scaring me,” I begged, and tightened my grip on his thigh when he blew through a red light.

  Steven exhaled a few long breaths, and then he eased up off the accelerator, and reduced his speed so that we were cruising with the flow of traffic. “Why you take that guy on like that, Severe? Why didn’t you just let him have the car?” he asked again, unable to let it go.

  The truth was I didn’t think the guy wanted his car, but I didn’t dare tell Steven the truth. The man wasn’t a local. They all knew me, like I knew them. Nobody from the hood would have tried to rob Steven while he was with me. I had been taught to anticipate the worst and leave nothing to contingency, so I had acted accordingly.

  “You don’t have to live in this neighborhood!” he raised his voice again when I didn’t respond. “For Christ’s sake, move out of this damn war zone!”

  I hated the way rich people thought that changing your living situation was as easy as changing your socks. Maybe it was for them, but for the rest of us, it was a little more complex. It required money to move, and most of the people who lived in Englewood didn’t have any. “Move how, Steven? I work at the fucking McDonald’s. I live where I can afford to live, and I’m sorry if it’s not good enough for you!” I snapped.

  I wasn’t really as mad as I sounded, but I’d learned that he didn’t like submissive women. It was my job to be what he liked, so I blew up. The thing is Steven didn’t like brawlers either. He tended to shy away from violence, so letting him see me fight was not going to win me his admiration.

  Dealing with him required maintaining a delicate balance between aggression and meekness. I only hoped I had done a good enough job of endearing myself to him already to keep him from pushing me away.

  The encounter with the carjacker had scared him bad, and fussing at me was his way of gaining back a measure of the respect he’d lost by sitting in his car like a punk while I battled for him. He was embarrassed, so I had to be careful not to make him feel any weaker than he already did. I could not lose him.