The Preying Doctor Read online

  He is going to be folding himself into a group of men that call themselves the Smiths for a reason that Nathan doesn’t care to research. As far as they are concerned Nathan has been contacted by a relative of one of the latest victims of this evil Doctor Cox and will be looking into the case more closely. Mostly, Nathan is going to be using their contacts to get a line on the Doctor Cox's movements and his day-to-day life. If he’s able to convince the Smiths to do some of the leg work for him so that he doesn’t have to, then that’s exactly what he’s going to do. Whatever will make the job quicker.

  Putting the car into drive, Nathan heads to the motel room rented under the name of Franke Locke that will also be serving as his headquarters until this job is finished. With a stroke of luck, he will be wrapping up this job quickly. It’s his personal desire to catch Doctor Cox outside of his home and shove him inside. Nathan wants very much to tie this man to his own kitchen counter and dissect him. He wants to use his unskilled hands to butcher him while he screams. He wants to force him awake with adrenaline and continue the process over and over until the man’s heart finally gives out from too much pain. That’s what Nathan wants to do. He has the man’s address but since he’s an avid workaholic it’s going to mean tracking down the man’s schedule and find out if he isn’t sleeping at the hospital on that particular night. As Doctor Cox is the resident on-call specialist for both of the ER rooms, he’s rarely at home. Nathan absolutely doesn’t need witnesses.

  He will, however, permit himself the use of the shower before he has to step into the mind and personality of another person. He will shower as Nathan, hopefully cure himself of this throbbing, intrusive headache as Nathan, and then he will leave this motel room as Franke Locke. What can possibly go wrong?

  3

  N athan isn’t sure what he was expecting a base camp of a bunch of mercenary types to look like, but whatever he would have imagined, this is absolutely not the place. Nathan pulls up in front of a normal two-story house in the middle of a suburb, complete with a white picket fence and a wraparound porch. Certainly not the sort of place he would have pictured a bunch of men to be living in together. Perhaps this is just the house of one of them that they liked to meet at. Then again, perhaps he is totally and completely wrong.

  Nathan parks his car on the street and heads up the path, expecting at the very least a large, bloodthirsty attack dog to come bounding up toward him. However, there is nothing there either. Perhaps he has the wrong place? It feels impossible, so he heads up to the front door anyway. It’s not even open yet and he can hear sounds coming from inside. A loud television is blaring something he can’t make out and a couple people are arguing loudly about whatever just happened on the television. They don’t hear him knocking so he rings the bell and everything on the other side of the door goes quiet. No whispering, no sound at all, so quickly that Nathan almost thinks he imagined the revelry from seconds before.

  What sounds like heavy boots stomp up to the door quickly and then a face peers through the peephole before a deep voice bellows toward him without even cracking the door open, without undoing a single lock.

  “Who is it?”

  “Uh … it’s Locke, Franke Locke? I’m not sure I have the right place…” Nathan comments, turning back to look over his shoulder as he speaks. The lawn is perfectly manicured, there’s even a small pink plastic flamingo in one of the corners of the yard. It looks like the door should open to a house with two point five children inside and the smell of cookies.

  And yet, he hears the sound of locks slipping open on the other side of the door. The process takes longer than appearances would have made it seem, giving the distinct impression that the inside of the house is far more fortified than it looks on the outside. When the blue painted door finally swings opens it reveals a large, tattoo-covered man with a buzz cut and yellow house slippers looking at him very seriously. Though Nathan can smell cookies. What a mixed message that sends him.

  “You’re small.”

  Compared to the large man standing in front of him he can’t deny that to be true. Behind him Nathan can see another two men watching what appears to be ice skating on the large television with an assortment of snacks piled high on the coffee table in front of them. They must have been the loud voices that he heard moments ago, and Nathan lifts a hand and waves. Each one of these men could bench press him easily; there is zero doubt in his mind about that. At least, should this turn ugly for some reason, Nathan will have the obvious advantage of speed on his side.

  If this were a longer mission, Nathan would have taken the time to really gain their trust. To get to know them as people, and he would have already have been given a detailed profile about each one of them, their triggers and the best pressure points to play on to manipulate them to get exactly what he wanted out of them. In this instance, since the body count is so high and he is on such a short deadline, Nathan just needs to use them as a halfway house on this business venture. He doesn’t have to take the time to become one of them, he’s just relying on the background that the company has laid out for him and hoping they did their own minimal research into who they were inviting into their home and that they have decided amongst themselves that he might be trustworthy, at least insofar as this.

  “And you’re blunt,” Nathan responds, lifting a cynical eyebrow, feeling like he’s being mentally sized up, but the large man steps aside and allows him passage anyway. Once the door closes behind him it’s a different thing entirely. The large man slaps a hand against the flat pane of his back in greeting before sliding a thickly muscled arm around Nathan’s shoulder and starts to guide him toward the living area.

  “That I am! Good to have another here, we call this the clubhouse. I’m William and that there on the couch in the sweats is Denzel; the goofy looking one that’s Logan. We’re usually the only ones that live here, though sometimes we have a couple drifters passing through. Are you going to need somewhere to stay, Locke?”

  Nathan, Franke Locke, shakes his head, slipping the rest of the way into his alternate persona. “No, I got a room down at the Lucky Stop in town for the night, though your place does smell infinitely better, I must say.”

  The two on the couch exchange glances before dissolving into laughter and nodding. “Well, we don’t smell like roach shit, so yeah, I would imagine that we smell a good deal better.”

  “Is that cookies that I smell?”

  “Good nose, my small new friend, it’s actually chocolate pancakes. Got them chock full of protein powder and all of the good stuff that might make you grow into adult height if you’re hungry,” William teases him from the side.

  “No thanks, I don’t really want to look like a swollen tick today,” Nathan teases right back and William laughs. Instantly, it’s hard for Nathan not to like these men. They are so much warmer than their profession would otherwise imply about somebody who looks like them. The two men seated on the couch snort and turn back to watching the competitive ice skating that’s happening on the television in front of them, speaking loudly about the way that the form of the girl on the screen should be corrected and what they would do if they were her. Nathan is almost tempted to make a joke about what they would look like in tights, but he doesn’t feel he knows them nearly enough to make such a comment.

  For a moment, just a passing moment, he wonders if at any point in his life before the company he had friends. Was that why he was snatched up by the company? Assuming of course that it wasn’t by his own design, that this wasn’t something that he walked into readily, was it because he needed a purpose? Had he wanted to do something ordinary as a child? Did he have a friend group back home in Muncie, Indiana that missed him and wanted him to come home? Did he have somebody there who mourned his departure? Nathan knows there is little point in thinking like this because the past cannot be changed and nothing will stop the future from coming. He just knows, he can tell by looking at them, that if any of the men in this room went missing, they would move heave
n and earth to try to find their missing party. It’s not often that Nathan witnesses closeness like this. It’s a comfort that just spreads around the three of them. Nathan almost wishes that he could stay, do things here the long way around today.

  “So don’t take this personally or anything, my new friend,” William starts, pulling his hand from around Nathan’s shoulders and going back to packing up what looks like prepped breakfasts for the three men. Color-coordinated containers have been placed in seven rows across the marble countertop. Nathan has to assume they are for the days of the week. He can’t fathom what else they could possibly be for. These are the sorts of friends who likely spend all of their time together. Do they have families? Is that even possible in their line of work? Nathan has always been led to believe that, no, it’s not possible.

  He is starting to feel like he’s being tested.

  “So we looked you up online, your rap sheet’s pretty impressive, my guy,” William announces.

  “Yeah, only thing better would have been some military time—ooh rah!” Denzel pipes in from his spot on the couch. It’s hard to imagine that man, avidly watching a woman twirl around while whispering, “Toe pick,” under his breath could have once been a marine, though he is certainly built for it.

  “Don’t listen to him; you have more than enough experience. So what I’m getting to is what do you need us for?”

  It is more than just professional courtesy. It’s more than just the fact that this is their territory, their town; it’s something bigger than that. Mostly, Nathan just needs plausible deniability should anything go wrong. He needs them to do the footwork. “Well,” he starts, easing himself into one of the benches connected to the kitchen island William is working at. “I need a couple more pairs of eyes I think. My suspect works in a couple different locations and I figured you guys would be the best start—I’ve looked you all up as well.”

  Well, it wasn’t totally a lie.

  “You’ve been contracted for a handful of missing persons cases around here over the last four months, haven’t you all?”

  William nods. “Yeah, but they don’t ever pan out to anything. Let me tell you, it’s not something that happens to us very often,” he says while starting to portion out pancakes and individually packed Tupperware pots of syrup into each and every container on the counter. He fills at a time and then goes back and adds a small pinch of sprinkles. “For color,” he explains before starting to snap in the lids one at a time and stacking them. “We are pretty good at what we do, we have been working together since school for me and Logan over there; Denzel joined up after boot camp brought us together. There are not many cases that we have that failed. As you know, dead ends are eternally frustrating.”

  “Pisses me off, that’s what,” Logan chimes in from the living area.

  “So we—” William stops in the middle of his next sentence because all three of their phones go off at the same time. The three men all exchange glances and then the television is quickly shut off and the yellow house slippers are kicked to the side. The three men move together like a polished unit, gathering items and arming themselves from weapons stashes that Nathan hadn’t even noticed.

  “What’s happened?” Nathan asks. “What did I miss here? This some sleeper cell sort of thing? What’s on the phones?” He attempts to tease them but all traces of humor have fallen from their faces. William checks the magazine of a handgun and double-checks the safety before tossing the weapon to Nathan, who easily catches it.

  “We have an assignment, you up for a little fun?”

  “Fun?”

  “Yeah, apparently some idiot attempted to rob the bank on Fisher Street and the police need backup. You down?”

  Despite it having just been checked moments ago, Nathan checks the ammo and safety of the gun that he was tossed and nods. “Fuck yeah, let’s go.”

  “I knew I liked you.” William laughs and the group of them head into the garage to pile into “The Beast” as they call their truck. It isn’t the assignment Nathan is here to do, but he is supposed to get in with these guys. A little side action couldn’t hurt … at least that’s what he tells himself.

  4

  T he bank on main is a part of a strip center. There’s glass walling as one would expect from a bank, but all of the patrons seem to have been forced just out of view. When the Beast is parked, there are already four police cars lining either side of the street and stopping any other traffic from passing through. The car doors are opened and the police are in a holding position behind them like shields in a standoff without an obvious villain. The captain doesn’t even blink at the appearance of the Smiths, no doubt he is the one who called these men personally for their assistance.

  Seeing the three men now, in their protective bulletproof vests and gear and armed to the teeth, they appear much more like Nathan was expecting. Formidable and intimidating, he almost feels out of place despite the knowledge that, standing with them, he easily looks like he fits in, just smaller than them. He has a good idea that none of the Smiths would have made it onto the police force simply because there are too many rules and none of them really seem like the type who ever wanted to have to sit behind a desk and do paperwork. It is easy to tell just by looking at them that this is their real bread and butter, this is what they live for—the sort of high-stakes adrenaline rushes. Perhaps this is where Nathan would have been now if he had continued living the life that his first name would have given him. Perhaps the future is permanent and he would have still been doing the same work, still taking out the trash of the world, just in another capacity.

  He does so love what he does.

  “What do we have going on here, Captain, any demands yet?” William starts; Nathan is starting to think of him as the leader.

  “Did they get into the safe?” Denzel asks.

  “How many hostages are in there, and where are they?” Logan finishes. All three minds working toward the same goal, really it would be nearly as satisfying just to sit here and watch them all work.

  “No clue,” the police chief starts. “One of the clerks managed to trigger the silent alarm on the inside of the building when this all started happening and then it seems to have escalated very quickly. The best that we can tell, all of the hostages have been moved behind the teller desks in the back there.” The police chief points one uniformed arm in past the glass windows indicating a small row of desks that are separated from the rest of the lobby by Plexiglas and small name placards. It seems like beyond that is a small hallway, presumably one end for the offices of loan officers and then the other direction would be to the vault or safe, whichever they have, and Nathan is willing to bet that it’s a safe given how small the building is.

  “Are there security cameras? Any feeds that we can tap into to see just how many people are inside? How much money is here at any given time?” This isn’t a large town, just big enough that there could be a handful of people in the bank at this lunch hour but not small enough that Nathan can ask the officer who the likely suspects would be. Too many people to keep track of.

  “Hard to tell, I’ve got men attempting to figure out if there is any way to get eyes inside the building right now. We don’t have any reason to believe that they got into the safe because it’s registered as having a separate alarm from their security system. Sadly we don’t have much more information than that. This branch only opened a few months ago since they wanted to have this new location in town. The main branch is a way down the highway so this made a lot more sense for people who wanted to do shopping, higher foot traffic, all of that good stuff. Guess that means it’s better for business. Like any bank, it will get robbed at one point or another; this is the first attempt, popping its robbery cherry if you will.” The police chief laughs as do a few of his officers. None of the Smiths do. Nathan wonders what they think of the police. Do they even take them seriously? It’s hard to picture.

  “How long until we get word on the security cameras?” William
redirects the conversation to the situation at hand. “Have you called swat in from the city? Hostage negotiations?”

  The police chief pulls himself back together and nods. “Yeah but they can’t get anybody out here for another couple hours so we’re on our own till then; that’s why I thought it might be best to go ahead and call you lot out here. Wasn’t expecting a fourth though, where did he come from?”

  “Locke here? He’s always been here. What do you mean you weren’t expecting a fourth?”

  For a long moment, the chief is bamboozled, attempting to recall in his own mind if somehow he has forgotten a fourth, smaller member of the Smiths before realizing that they are pulling his leg and laughing.

  It’s obvious to see that not a single member of the Smiths takes this police chief anywhere near seriously. It only takes the three men about five minutes to totally take control of the entire situation. William squares his shoulders and starts giving orders, fixing the positions that they are currently in, while Logan is taking over the computer side of things and attempting to get better access to remotely take over the security systems inside of the building if there are any while Denzel starts to look over the blueprints of the building and determine the best entry point that won’t have them busting through the glass.

  The building was never meant to be a bank; that much is obvious. There’s an employee entrance in the back that has been blocked off and then the glass entrance in the front. One way in, and only the one way out. This isn’t Nathan’s area of expertise. This isn’t his strong suit and a part of him knows that he should have left this to them to sort out. He has other, more pressing matters to be attending to. It will be more difficult of course, now that these three men are occupied and not able to help him, but it could also be a blessing in disguise. It could very well be exactly the excuse that he needs, the cover and distraction to simply abduct Doctor Cox from either of the hospitals that he is working in and get the job finished. It will be simple enough, Nathan just needs to find a way to excuse himself.