BESTSELLING AUTHOR
NADIA SIDDIQUI
Nathan Doe Book 3
A Ruthless Victim
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 Nadia Siddiqui – All Rights Reserved
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication / use of the trademarks is not authorized, associated with or sponsored by the trademark owners.
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Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
The story continues . . .
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Chapter One
D owntown Muncie, Indiana.
It looks much as he expected it to. Nathan fully expected to see tall buildings and cars parked along the street while people bustled about from shop to shop, enjoying their weekend time, no doubt. The sun is shining overhead brightly; the heat is almost dry enough to be comforting, and there’s a dull roar of conversation and traffic sounds mingling together as Nathan walks down the street. He doesn’t draw attention to himself; that’s not why he’s here. He doesn’t want people to look at him; he doesn’t want to be the object of attention. He knows that there are certainly larger populations, and while he hasn’t taken the time to look up the local schools or where typical teenagers might hang out, Nathan hopes that just by being here, he might feel a little more connected to the place. Honestly, he hoped that something would have triggered a memory, a vision of his past, anything at all. Instead, he’s wandering through the streets like a tourist in the place that he allegedly grew up. There isn’t anything to make him think that the company wouldn’t lie to him. He has to take it on faith because he simply doesn’t know anything else to go off of. They could have given him any random information at all, and he probably would have reacted the same. Nathan is conditioned to not doubt those in charge. He’s conditioned to think that this is the only way, that this is the life that he’s meant for and nothing else.
Honestly, he’s surprised that they haven’t come looking for him. Nathan has never been ‘off the grid’ for this long before. He never checked in after his last assignment, that same one where he would admit that mistakes had been made. He wasn’t going to deny that he could have done some things more efficiently, but that didn’t give them the right to go back on their end of the bargain in his opinion. Their deal was to give him pieces of information, clues about his past that would lead him down the path to his retirement, to his freedom, to no longer being a nameless creature that did their bidding. It was supposed to be the start of the end of his contract, to becoming autonomous once again. Now he’s not sure if he just pissed all of that away as well. Nathan came here because it is the only clue that he has earned so far. When he paid for his motel room and checked in, it dawned on him that perhaps he acted rashly. Perhaps he had been a touch immature to storm off looking for the place of his birth.
For all Nathan knows, he only spent a handful of days here, if in fact he had ever been here at all. Over the course of the last three days, he was bold enough to venture into a couple of antiques shops that he felt oddly drawn to, and he caught a movie and ate at every little cafe that he could find whether he was hungry or not. The movie was particularly thrilling because to his knowledge, that was the first one that he had ever seen.
Nathan drove his borrowed rental car through as many random streets and into as many suburbs as he could locate on the map in hope that something, anything, might start to feel familiar to him. Yet, the most that he has experienced is a random Deja Vu sensation that won’t leave him for anything. He’s tried to trigger a vision whenever that foggy, near familiar feeling starts to seize him. Whenever a building tempts him in even the slightest capacity, he’s pressed into buildings and runs down streets...only to come up with nothing.
It’s like he’s hovering just over the edge of something that if only he could reach his arm out just a little bit further, he would seize it.
Perhaps that’s exactly what the Company wants from him. Nathan doesn’t know how many years he’s worked for them. He doesn’t know if the Doe project is the only one that he has served on or if he has been doing this his entire life. For all he knows, his past and history are a blinding white blank in his mind, and he very well could have been employed with the company since infancy. Though he likes to think that his body knows that it was once a soldier.
Perhaps that’s just the back story that he imagines, coming to get the better of him.
Nathan gives up on his third day of searching, and slowly walks the three blocks back to the motel room that he’s renting. He doesn’t know how long he plans to stay there. He doesn’t know if the company is going to send somebody after him. He’s unarmed; he left everything in that rental car in case somehow the company decides that he’s too much of a threat to be bothered with any longer and turns him over to local authorities. He won’t be surprised. If it were him, and he were tasked with the mission of tracking down a M.I.A Doe agent - that’s where he would have started, posed the whole thing as a bullshit missing persons search to enlist the help of local law enforcement without drawing too much attention to himself. Then again, perhaps the company knows exactly where he is. It seems unlikely that they will let him stay; he’s already dallied long enough without checking in. Turning off his phone after that last assignment had brought such a strange feeling with it. He can’t say that it’s liberating, nor is it only fear. He’s not sure what word to place on it.
He’s contemplating that same phone, still tucked into the nightstand drawer next to the bible that all motels seem to keep. He’s thinking about what will happen when he turns it back on, if he chooses to turn it back on at all, as he arrives back in front of the door with the metal ‘seven’ nailed cheaply to it. The number is slowly rocking from side to side, as if somebody slammed the door behind them in a great rush, or conversely, somebody went running down this hallway with an impressive speed. Nathan’s gut tells him that it’s the former of the two.
He is not afraid as he pushes the door open, two fingers against the wood as he silently curses himself for not even having a knife on him. Just in case. The light in the bathroom across the room is illuminated, just as he left it. The bedsheets are still tucked in neatly, and the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign is still hanging from the doorknob to keep housekeeping out of his personal belongings, but there’s something off. Nathan doesn’t have any bags; he didn’t bring anything with him. He bought a pack of black t-shirts at the convenience store when he arrived just so that he would no longer smell like rubble, but those are just how he left them on the desk as well.
Somebody has been in this room; he’s absolutely certain of it. The question
is whether they are still present or not.
Casually, Nathan flicks on the light switch and doesn’t bother closing the door, just in case he needs to make a swift getaway. The lamps are bolted to the walls above the beds so they won’t be any help, and he simply just doesn’t see the television as being any real help to him as a weapon or an efficient shield. He will have to rely on his bare hands. That’s alright; he’s more than trained in that capacity.
On the bed, is his phone. Which is not at all where he left it. The drawer isn’t open, but he’s willing to bet that inside of it, the bible will now be laying face down instead, just another sign that sweepers have passed through here. A team that Nathan has only met face to face one time, but they were a rather cynical and somehow superstitious lot, didn’t like anything of religious connotation.
The message is clear. He doesn’t need to lift the phone to know that it’s on. He knows that there will be a message with coordinates waiting for him in the otherwise empty inbox. He knows that there will be a location saved into his map and that the photos will be filled with brand new surveillance footage of the next case he’s supposed to be working on. He knows these things because he’s woken up to the exact same setup for a new case more times than he can even remember. This is the life he lives, like it or not. The message is clear, return to work. We have found you; we will always find you.
On the bathroom counter next to his lonely toothbrush is a brand new leather toiletries bag that will not have any products inside of it. Nathan knows that bags like that are almost always used to hold cash. They will pay for his room and his transportation because they aren’t cruel. Nathan doesn’t know why this sudden need to discover himself has risen, but he cannot hide from it either.
Perhaps the smart thing would be to simply message the company, to tell them that there must be something wrong with his conditioning package. That perhaps some of the work that they no doubt have done to him needs to be corrected. He should tell them that he’s slipping, that he’s having difficulty concentrating. That for the first time in probably years, he’s wanting to ask questions that he has no right to ask. He should text those things right now, but he doesn’t.
He doesn’t do anything but neatly pack the items that have been provided for him into his pockets and extract just enough cash from the leather bag to cover the cost of the room as well as his lunch for the afternoon. The rest he will tuck away. Nathan silently moves to the lobby, pushing the familiar charming facade over his features, and checks out, leaving a hefty tip. He leaves the lobby and crosses the street to the covered parking garage, only to find that the black car he drove all the way here is no longer in the spot where he left it.
Nathan is really starting to despise busses.
The phone in his back pocket vibrates subtly, and he’s almost nervous to read the message.
‘We are not in the business of second chances.’
It’s a simple text from an unknown number, and as soon as he reads it, the message deletes itself, and the map application opens to show him the quickest route to walk to the nearest bus station. He will already have the ticket downloaded onto the memory on the phone, that much he’s certain of. He should have known that they were going to come for him sooner or later. It’s exactly what he would have done if it were different.
Nathan reaches the station quickly, pausing in front of the terminal. Just one vision. Just one image of what his life might have been like, what choices that he must have made to have ended up a ward of the company. A person to be tracked down and commanded. Had he once thought that this was going to be an honor? Did he choose this service willingly? Was he drafted? Is there a way that he will ever know the answer to that?
It certainly doesn’t seem like it.
They will likely erase all memories of him ever having worked with the company in the first place when he retires, when his contract is up.
If his contract is ever up. It isn’t like there’s a paper he can find with the details on it.
Silently, with a busy mind, Nathan settles into his stale smelling bus seat for a very, very long ride to his next assignment. His head rests against the plexiglass window and watches as his alleged hometown fades away into the distance, taking all of his questions with it until he’s left with nothing more than a heavy paranoia in his gut and time to kill.
Heaving a soft sigh, Nathan opens the case file and starts yet another assignment.
Chapter Two
I t feels like needles in her skin. All of the glass from the car windows exploding inward. She raises her arm in self-defense as her daughter in the back seat starts screaming. High pitched terror washes over the pair of them as she does everything in her power to keep this man from cutting her seatbelt. Inhuman strength seems to be crushing her arm, yanking at her as she braces her feet against the driver’s side door and attempts to force her body toward the other side of the car in the hopes of not only breaking the grip that he has on her arm but also to help gather her daughter to herself. First she must free her arm, and then she will open the passenger door, lift her daughter up through the open back window and run as fast as her strong legs will carry her.
She will let her daughter scream and scream because she’s not worried about giving away their location; she needs help. They will need somebody to hear them and come to their aid. They will need somebody to assist them or give them shelter. They will need a place to hide.
Only the man doesn’t let go of her arm. He’s holding onto her like his fingers are vice grips, and she can’t get free. In an act of desperation as he hauls her back toward the driver’s side window, she bends forward and closes her teeth around those gloved fingers as hard as she possibly can. She bites as if she is a feral animal needing to chew its own paw off to escape a trap.
She doesn’t know this man, and perhaps that’s worse. She doesn’t know why he wants to hurt her. All she knows is that she can’t let something like this happen, and she certainly can’t let him harm her daughter.
She pulls the keys from the ignition and balls them between her knuckles as she has done so many times since learning the trick in college, though this is the first time that she’s needed to employ this small self-defense tactic, and she uses his grip on her to force herself closer and aim those key daggers at his face.
It works for a moment.
He howls like a dying bear and recoils, just enough for her to get her arm free, just enough for her to fumble her fingers over the lock on the passenger side door and to tumble out of the car onto the asphalt of the parking lot.
He’s opens the driver’s side door. He’s grabbing for her ankles, and she slams the passenger door shut on his arm, but he’s not deterred. It’s not enough. He lunges for her daughter at the same time that she does, and his gloved hand finds purchase on the thick, golden curls that cover her daughter’s head, flowing down over her shoulders, and her daughter screams anew - no longer just terror but also pain, and her heart feels like it’s going to plummet out of her chest. Bile is rising in her stomach, and everything feels like it’s happening too fast, and she simply can’t stop. She can’t come down; her fight or flight is triggered, and she pulls - she pulls to harm her daughter so that she might free her, because she doesn’t have a choice. Because she cannot allow this man to take them; whatever he wants is clearly evil.
Some feral sound unleashes itself from her lips as she gathers her daughter into her arms. Those small arms wrap around her neck so tight that it will choke her. Small legs wrap around her torso, and she’s holding that small body to her own frame with one arm, and she pushes, she pushes harder to run faster than she’s ever done before in her life.
Her daughter screams.
She screams and screams, and the tears running down her own face are likely mirrored in that of her daughter’s.
Behind her, a car engine rumbles to life, and she thinks that this will be it; they will run them over; they will trample them beneath the spinning wheels, and she can fe
el her heart pounding in her chest.
Just a bit further, and somebody will hear them…
The car sounds closer, but she cannot look; she cannot risk it because then she will slow. She can’t afford to slow, not even for a single second.
Her chest burns, and her legs are fire.
It doesn’t matter - she’s no match for the car. She hears the sound of a heavy side door opening and then the brakes slamming into place as the van nearly clips them with the effort of whipping around in front of them, and her force is such that she cannot stop. Her shins collide with the van’s open side cavity, and she’s pitched forward into the vehicle that doesn’t stop moving.
A person in black punches her square in the face, and the last thing that she hears is her daughter’s screaming silenced in the same fashion as she is slammed into unconsciousness.
Chapter Three
I t’s not often that Nathan sees visions. Sometimes it’s of the future, but more often than not, it’s of the past. More often than not, it’s a small clip of an event that a person has done, an atrocity that the person has committed. More often than not, Nathan is standing there, the proverbial fly on the wall, looking at the scene unfolding in front of him. He’s never been the person before. He’s never had to experience the emotions, the raw terror of something like what he has just seen, what he’s just experienced. It’s almost enough to cripple him. It hit him with such force that he’s almost unable to stay standing, the panting in his chest requires a long shower and three chugged bottles of water to get his heart back to a normal pace.
Nathan’s almost never the victim either. He’s usually the sadistic prick committing some terrible something or another that Nathan will end up killing him for. Even more disturbing is that he has no idea how this vision ties into the case or what he has even done to have triggered it in the first place. Nothing in this room seems out of the ordinary to him. He knows that there were two people involved in kidnapping that daughter and her child. However, the assignment that Nathan is here to investigate is a car bombing. One that claimed the life of a wife and daughter, that perhaps might be similar, but their bodies were found charred almost beyond recognition inside of the vehicle. The local police force had claimed it was accidental arson and said that it was an open and shut case.
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