Justice Unserved Read online

  BESTSELLING AUTHOR

  NADIA SIDDIQUI

  Nathan Doe Book 1

  Justice Unserved

  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

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  The story continues . . .

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  About the Author

  Also By Nadia Siddiqui

  1

  T here is nothing quite as disgusting as moldy carpet. That sort of mildew stench that works all the way down into the padding. In a building like this it’s very possible that there were fine hardwood floors underneath it, but it was covered up so long ago that it is likely too warped now, beyond fixing from years of careless management and misuse. This is the sort of carpet that wafts dust clouds into the air with each and every step taken.

  It’s certainly not the sort of carpet that you want to find yourself face down on, but here he is. There is a throbbing in the side of his head, he thinks it’s somewhere near his temple. As his eyes start to crack open the room around him spins and he is forced back downward for another long moment breathing in more of that sour stench. He can’t remember the last time his body hurt this badly. He is a man who prides himself on keeping in peak physical shape and takes his condition very seriously; he has to in his line of work.

  The effort it takes just to get his hand up and underneath himself is monumental. It’s even harder just to lift himself up to where his forehead is just barely hovering over that foul carpet. How has he found himself up here? What has happened to him? The throbbing in his head gets worse the closer to sitting upright that he gets. Pushing his knees up underneath him he’s finally able to will his eyes open to see the floor around him. There’s a deep crimson stain making an oddly formed circle right around where his head was lying. Gingerly, he lifts one hand to probe softly at the side of his head. His fingers come away wet with his own blood. The room is too dark around him to see if anything is familiar. He doesn’t remember anything leading up to this event. The room seems to be a nondescript motel room. Light filters in through the plastic blinds on the awkwardly large window. The door is only slightly ajar and there doesn’t seem to be anybody else in the room with him. The bed is still made and there are no signs of baggage or anything else in the room that would offer him any indication of who might have possibly hit him over the head. Has he been in a fight? His hands feel stiff but not in the bruised knuckle way that might have indicated that he was the aggressor or that he was the one defending himself. He might have been ambushed, but there doesn’t seem to be anything in this room that would say that he was the person who was staying here either. In truth, he can hardly remember any more than waking up on this floor.

  Somewhere in the distance, perhaps down the hallway, a door shuts and he wonders if he is to be found in here, what will happen? Will the police be called on him? Will he be sent to the hospital? Will anything happen to him at all? Perhaps they will scream at the sight of the blood and run right back down the hallway screaming. None of those outcomes seem like something he wants to be dealing with while still dizzy.

  A smaller noise brings his focus back to the room he’s in. Something soft is moving on the floor, vibrating. He squints as he looks more closely for the source, everything is still hazy. With the hand that’s not holding pressure to his aching head he probes the sticky, wet carpet around where he’s kneeling until his fingers bump against a cell phone. A number marked “unknown” is calling him, it has called him three times in a row now, exactly five minutes apart if the call history that he’s squinting at is to be believed. Should he answer it? Does he really have much of a choice either way?

  Perhaps it’s just a reflex that has his thumb sliding the green phone icon over and putting the phone up to his face, listening without even bothering to greet whoever is on the other end of the line. Somehow, he knows that this isn’t a telemarketer. Somehow he knows that there is a person on the other end of the line waiting for him. Just as he knows, somehow, that whatever that has happened in this room was his fault, that somehow he has made a mistake.

  “Is it done?”

  The voice on the other side of the line is formal. It seems to be a female voice but it’s not soft or overly affected. It’s bordering on clinical. He doesn’t know how to answer. What answer is he supposed to give? Was there something he was supposed to do? A task that he has failed to accomplish? The fact that he can’t remember what happened before this room is starting to cause a mild panic in the pit of his stomach. Something that he doesn’t want the woman on the other end of the line to know. So he’s silent just a moment too long, and the woman speaks again.

  “Is it done? Is the girl dead?”

  Nathan wants to speak but it feels like his throat hasn’t been used in days, like sandpaper on the inside of his vocal cords, and he doesn’t know how to answer them. Given that he’s the only one in this room, he doesn’t think he has killed anybody. Still, his eyes roll in the direction of the bathroom. Is there a body in there? None of the lights are on and he doesn’t trust himself to get up and head in there to look one way or the other. Nothing good can come from being in there because if there is a dead body in the bathtub somehow, then there is still a third person that is unaccounted for, so despite knowing so very little, he is willing to bet that, somehow, whoever this girl in question is, she got the better of him.

  Why does it feel like that’s never happened before?

  “Who—” He stops, clearing his throat and wishing for water. “Who is this? What girl?”

  The line is silent. Like the world has gone still there isn’t a single sound from anywhere in the moments that he waits with bated breath. The line goes dead a moment later.

  Whatever this situation is, whatever mess he has woken up to find himself in he is only sure of a few things. That he needs to get the hell out of here and that the idea of going to the police seems like the worst possible thing that he could possibly do.

  He manages to push himself up to a standing position and he staggers in the direction of the bedroom to find nothing out of place and takes a towel off of the small shelf and wraps it around his head like a hair turban to help hide and absorb any of the blood that might still be leaving him. He’s sure that it’s on his shirt and pants but he can’t help that. Those feel like things that he can figure out once he’s no longer in an active crime scene.

  Thankfully, there isn’t a single person in sight as he sways down the hallway. The world finally seems to stop spinning so much as he reaches the lobby where there’s more natural light coming
in through the dirty sliding glass doors. He doesn’t stop at the desk for information, and he is only vaguely aware of the fact that one of the employees is calling after him. Either because they are concerned for his well-being or because they are upset about the fact that he is stealing one of their towels.

  It seems to be early enough that the only bodies he passes are people in business suits on their way to their early morning commutes or on their way to grab coffee before committing themselves to their long work hours for the day. He can’t say he blames them for looking. He likely looks like some wineo that got lost on the way home and needs to see a doctor. It’s hard for him to focus on their faces, it’s almost like everything is just a little hazy around the corners of his vision and it seems to get worse the harder he tries to focus on it.

  He turns down the first alleyway he can find and ducks behind a dumpster, leaning against the cool shady section of brick in an effort to calm his breathing. He just needs to figure out where he is, and then he can try to figure out how he got there. Hopefully, if he is very lucky he will find out who he is in the process. He was expected to kill somebody. Is he an assassin? A secret agent? Government spy? If he is any of those things, what kind of woman was he supposed to have killed that was able to get the drop on him?

  The phone in his pocket starts to vibrate again, a silent beacon of information. He pulls the phone from his pocket without delay and answers it quickly. “Hello?” he greets this time, and the woman on the other end is silent for a long moment. He can hear her breathing in deeply before answering with a very bored tone,

  “Nathan, you know who you are.”

  Like a sleeper cell needing a keyword to remember who he was and what he needed to be doing, the mention of his name sparks something inside of him. He knows that this is not his real name but the one that has been assigned to him. He knows that this is his code name and the only thing that he will ever be called again.

  “Nathan, I have scheduled an evac team and a cleanup crew. Remain where you are, we will discuss this complication at the debriefing.” Then the line goes dead again. It’s a strange sort of relief, the way that his mind emptied and all of the questions just faded away like they were no longer important. He knows who he is, just as much as he knows that all of those questions that were plaguing him moments ago will no longer matter once he’s extracted. Once he’s back in the briefing room he will be given a new assignment and this one will never have existed. He is only one of many. The mental reset has already begun as he lowers down to his haunches, squatting behind a dumpster and breathing evenly into the arms folded in front of his body.

  Today he is Nathan Doe, one of the many Doe-classified team members with no history, a team of men and women that simply do not exist to do the jobs that nobody else can do. Human chameleons able to blend and assimilate. Tomorrow he will be asked to be somebody else, and tomorrow he won’t fail.

  2

  O ne month later.

  The wound on his head is all but gone. It’s nothing more than a faint scar now, something that his fingers will find and trace the jagged line of, but his hair has grown over it unnaturally quickly. If he didn’t already know that it was there he wouldn’t even be able to see a difference in the style of his brown hair in the first place. The place he had been taken to is all a bit of a blur. Something that he knows that he wasn’t supposed to remember in the first place so he doesn’t mention it. He wasn’t told what he was supposed to have done in that room. He wasn’t told who he was supposed to kill. He knows that this isn’t the first time that he has been ordered to kill somebody, he just knows that that was the first time that he failed. A mistake that he isn’t looking to repeat this time around.

  It’s a strange feeling that not knowing information has become so comfortable for him. He has very little knowledge of the organization he works for, but he knows it is something he wanted. He knows that this is a job he volunteered for, an opportunity that he was afforded and leapt at. He knows this is a good gig as much as he knows he enjoys what he does, the constant challenge of it. Or at least he knows he’s been conditioned to like it. He doesn’t know why he isn’t allowed to remember the specifics of his previous job. Part of his assignment is that he’s not supposed to ask questions, and so normally he doesn’t.

  Just like today.

  He can’t take the time to sit and wonder as to what sort of life he must have led to have ended up on this path. He doesn’t wonder who he was or what his real name might have been. Perhaps he was military or even special forces. Perhaps he was a civilian who was just in the right place at the right time. Perhaps he was somebody bad who did all of the wrong things and then took this new life as a way out of something. Perhaps he was in witness protection and this is what really happens whenever you agree to be given a whole new life and identity. Luckily, Nathan is rarely afforded the downtime to delve too deeply into that downward spiral of thoughts.

  He does feel comforted by the fact that he knows most of the people he is sent after deserve everything that is done to them and then some.

  Nathan arrives by bus to a small town just outside of Kansas City. He is greeted by a muggy heat, the sort that is going to have his clothing pasted to his body with sweat in no time at all. It’s hotter even than he could have expected, the long road away from the bus station is lifting in mirage lines of heat from the roads. Nathan knows that just outside of the station there will be a plain black sedan waiting for him with the keys tucked up in a keybox under the wheel well. He also knows there will be air conditioning and a full tank of gas.

  The phone in his pocket vibrates; a text message alert greets him with the name “Hank Pettyfer, reporter for the Sun Journal,” which is a clue as to the persona and identity that he is to adopt. The one sending the message he now refers to as “Zeta”. All of the paperwork to support this pseudo identity will be waiting for him in the glove box of the car as well as a plain black duffle bag in the back seat with anything else that he could possibly need to sell his identity and look the part. Whenever Nathan arrives at the car and locates the keys, he gets another text with an address that no doubt is also already programmed into the car’s navigational system of whichever hotel room they are putting him up in for the night.

  It’s such an easy path for him to follow that he doesn’t have to think at all. He gets into the car and follows the directions, all the while starting to pick through the contents of the file folder that was also waiting for him in the glove compartment. It’s an easy drive, not many cars out at all, and he has nothing else to distract him. The file is filled with case files from recent robberies and break-ins. All three of the senior living communities and one memory care facility have all been targeted over the last six months. The residents have had their things vandalized and stolen. Some of those in the further stages of dementia had bruises placed on their bodies that weren’t possibly made from having fallen. Suggestive in places that none could have consented to. Nursing staff and caregivers have all been placed under review and some have been let go. Employees who have worked places for most of their adult lives are suddenly being looked at under a microscope. The police have said that there are no leads whatsoever and that as they age folks cannot hope to speak for themselves to say what happened, so it’s going to be a case that will be very difficult to crack.

  The patrols have been added, private security beefed up, but the sad reality of the situation is that most of the people in this small town are on the government-funded forms of health insurance and the facilities simply don’t make enough money to sustain those sorts of security measures long term. Perhaps that’s why Nathan has been called out here to pose as a reporter in hopes of shining a brighter light on this entire situation. If a national eye is drawn then there will be more resources afforded to this small town from the state. At least that’s the impression Nathan wants to give.

  In reality, he just wants to ensure the suspect that his employer has pegged is the true suspect here. Where
all of these facilities might have been lacking in funding to fuel their technology, his company certainly isn’t. Where the local police might have been reluctant to look into things for any number of reasons offered to the public, his company has pieced all of the bits and pieces together to form what seems to be a very damning report. Only, unlike the police or other traditional forms of government-approved legal recourse, his company has a whole other method of dealing with things. Those are usually the ones that call for Nathan’s special talents.

  Zeta and Nathan have come to a very particular agreement for the outcome of this case. As his previous mistake was something so strange on his otherwise unblemished record, she was approved to make him a unique and one-time offer to validate his conditioning. Something to make sure that his mental programming, for lack of a more suitable term, hasn’t been tampered with. They are dangling a piece of information about his real life, identity and how long his contract is supposed to remain active for in exchange for this job being completed as quickly as possible.

  Until his last job, he hadn’t even been aware that was something he even wanted. Now the temptation of knowledge about his real self is too tempting not to chase. He would have done the job anyway. He likely would have done it exactly as the plan is laid out for him now, but he likes the idea of having a reward waiting for him. Perhaps this will be the last job; he’s not an old man but now the idea of retiring, of having a contract with an end date anywhere in sight is a worthy goal in his opinion.

  Nathan checks in at the hotel and it has already been paid for by the company. He takes the room key and heads up to his room after smiling pleasantly at the man behind the counter. Nathan isn’t an unattractive man. He’s just handsome enough to be glossed over. He has an ordinary face, which can be charming enough in the right light or downright intimidating if that’s how he would rather be seen. A five o’clock shadow is nearly always on his face with just the bits on his jawline starting to show any of the first signs of starting to age. He’s of average height for a man of his build, standing at five foot ten with a lot of lean muscle on his frame. Presently dressed in a three-button shirt and slacks, Nathan doesn’t stand out in a crowd at all. He looks like any other man waiting to attend any number of conferences held in the large hall that is the only claim to fame in this small town.