The Preying Doctor Read online

  About that time, the laptop that Denzel has been typing away on flickers and then switches over to a live stream of the happenings on the inside of the bank. There appears to be a handful of civilians sitting with their hands behind their heads in a line behind the teller desks, just as they had assumed they would be. It’s hard to make out from the grainy, low-res footage being streamed, but they appear to have tape over their mouths, which, in turn leads Nathan to think that probably their hands are at the least zip tied behind their heads. The man with the mass-produced ski mask on his face was stupid to think that he was going to pull this off all on his own. Nathan says nothing at all as Denzel bounces back and forth through the five different angles that are shown on this security monitor. One with the hostages and the alleged robber, one of the lobby facing the glass window where the flashing lights of the police cars can be easily seen, one of the break room, one of the office and one that is totally dark. No doubt the last one is the view from inside of the closed safe. They might not have even gotten around to unlocking it for the day. It is highly likely that they don’t handle enough cash on any given day to keep it open for the duration. A branch this small isn’t likely to have an abundance of additional features like many safe boxes or anything of the sort, which makes it all the more strange that the man chose to rob the place today.

  However, greed doesn’t always pair with brains. The police are going to be tied up here for hours. They are going to need to be dedicating the majority of their resources to this event and Nathan is all ready to slowly sneak away and venture further into town, perhaps steal one of the parked cars belonging to anybody in that small crowd that has formed on the other end of the police brocade, all idiots hoping to see some kind of carnage; all wanting to break up their otherwise boring, monotonous lives.

  Denzel starts conferring with the surrounding officers asking them what their normal protocol would be for this sort of situation and comparing and correcting it with his military tactics as they quickly start to form a plan. Another officer is assigned to pick up the phone and call the bank, hoping to get a list of demands or at least some semblance of wants that this idiot was hoping to achieve for the day before he failed horribly and ended up keeping a bunch of hostages against their will. Nathan’s attention snaps back to the same hostages shown clearly on the screen. A mother and her child, the child is as tucked up underneath its mother as it can be, no doubt terrified beyond its comprehension and scarred for life. The mother seems stoic, Nathan assumes that is also in an effort to keep her child from understanding just how fucked they are. A man in a medical coat is seated next to another man in scrubs and then another woman is seated a few chairs down from the others, though it is the man in the medical coat who catches Nathan’s attention. Could be any doctor … he can’t be seeing what he thinks he is. It takes a special kind of arrogance to walk around outside of the hospital in your medical coat. That is the sort of arrogance that comes from being a man who doesn’t care about the mountains of crippling medical debt that he has accrued. From his file, Nathan would have known his face anywhere, but the footage is too blurry to make a positive identification from the image alone. He is the only one of the hostages who looks openly irritated that he’s being detained. That much is obvious.

  “He’s not answering, there isn’t anybody picking up the line. What do we do?” a younger officer says, hanging up the phone in his old patrol car. No doubt he was given that as part of his initiation for some sort of “homage to the old days” type of hazing. Not that the young man seems at all fazed by the situation.

  Denzel swears. “How many men do you have around back?”

  “A few, I think I’ve got two cars back there with two officers a piece.”

  Denzel appears to do some quick mental calculations before turning to his team, he seems to mentally confirm with William that the pair of them are already thinking the same thing and they nod in unison. “Alright then, it’s settled, William and I will get up on the roof for access and see if we can get in through the ducts that way, while Locke and Logan will go around back to see if they can finesse their way into the building through the employee entrance and then, when the four of us are in position, we will signal you lot to get in through that front shop window. It seems like there’s only one of him and we can see he’s armed, but there’s no way of telling how much more he might have in there because their cameras don’t record, it’s live footage only, which isn't super helpful as you can see. A few broken windows are going to be the least of their problems. I can tell you right now that man in there is scared, he wants a way out, they always want a way out because they will do anything to keep living. We don’t know why he woke up this morning and decided that theft was a good idea, but that’s a person in there y'all and we will remember that before shooting. Everybody agreed?”

  Nobody breathes a word but everybody nods their head, Nathan even finds himself nodding along with the rest of them. Just that quickly, he has been folded into the honorary ranks of the Smiths, one of them, for however long he needs. It will be for the best that he is going to get into the building before the others. Doctor Cox is in there, and that is exactly where he needs to be too. An officer finds a bullhorn and starts to speak through the small end, projecting his soothing voice into the building.

  “By now, you will realize that you are surrounded. We have attempted to contact you for negotiations, please answer the phone and we will do everything in our power…”

  Nathan mentally shuts out the man speaking as Logan tugs on the shoulder of his vest and takes off into a jog to make his way around the end of the strip center and then to the police barricade around the back of the building where they will start to work on getting that door open. William and Denzel have already jogged three shops down, scaled a car, and one of them is hoisting the other up onto the roof as Nathan and Logan disappear around the corner of the building.

  5

  N athan is of the opinion that this is the most live action that a lot of these uniforms have gotten to see. This must be some sort of launching-off point for a lot of these officers, a sort of slow station that will allow them to get their feet wet but in a mostly safe, controlled way. Most of the people who live here seem to be medical professionals. There is a college about one town over so a lot of grad students are doing their medical rotations and then there is a fairly popular film school not too far outside of that, which oddly seems to spark a good deal of tourism here within the city itself. This is just one of many shopping strips but nowhere near the foot traffic that the larger outlet malls would have gotten. Those Nathan had passed on his way into town, he had seen the large signs and the uniform signs as they passed. No doubt this person, whoever he is, thought that because this is the bank most of the doctors and nursing staff use somehow that must mean there is a good deal of money here, which is just about as stupid an idea as attempting to rob an ATM machine. Impossible to get money out of and even if you do succeed in breaking it open, there are limited funds contained inside at any given moment.

  Money is virtual these days, which makes Nathan think that the person in there waving his gun around is likely some terrified kid, probably a nursing student who feels that they are underpaid and underappreciated, which wasn’t going to mean anything if Nathan is forced to rush him to subdue him. It’s been a long time since he was allowed to put his hands on another person. He’s oddly looking forward to it.

  Up from the roof, William taps the side of the building with the end of his gun to make just enough noise to get their attention before waving them inside of the building. Nathan assumes that means negotiations must have failed or the rubber never ended up calling in the first place. Still no concrete word on if he is working alone or not.

  The door lock pops open fairly easily with Logan’s coaxing. He’s clearly done this a fair few times before, enough that he gives the impression that no door is ever locked to him. Logan takes point, and Nathan takes the safety off of his gun and pulls
his combat mask up over the lower half of his face, adapting to the situation that’s presented to him. He cannot remember ever having learned the military signals that Logan is using as they clear the office and the break room, but following them, and knowing exactly what they mean, their purpose unsettles him. He must have been a marine at some point …or at least military.

  Focus Nathan.

  They stop in the hallway just before the door that will lead them to the lobby, wishing that they had thought to grab a mirror or some sort of looking device that would confirm just how far away each person in the room is as well as their current positions. Down the other end of the hallway is a dark corridor. No lights there so he assumes that the safe is just beyond it and sealed up tight. From their new position, Logan takes a swift glance into the room. The robber's gaze must be turned away because Logan swiftly moves to the other side of the doorframe and holds, giving them both a better vantage point of the area as well as equal footing to handle the situation going forward.

  They can hear the man muttering to himself, the strap of his gun making a clicking sound as it hits against the shaft of the weapon as he paces, brandishing it carelessly. The mother has shifted just enough to have her legs wrapped around her child, her arms covering him in as much of a shield as she can make. The pair seem to be sitting in a pile of the child's urine, no doubt his fear response, and Nathan can hear her whispering or singing softly to him. Softly enough that it doesn’t seem to disturb the man pacing whatsoever.

  Logan signals to Nathan to look and he does, quickly. Just a glance to see that there does appear to only be one person pacing, and the nurse seated beside Doctor Cox seems to have noticed that they aren’t alone. The male in scrubs leans over to the doctor subtly, whispering or mouthing something, and then Nathan looks back at Logan.

  “Didn’t mean to …wasn’t supposed to …they were gonna … left me … fucking left me.” The pacing man is muttering loudly enough for the group to hear. It’s unclear as to whether he’s attempting to convince himself of something or if he’s attempting to calm himself into the mental capacity to formulate a new plan. He has to know exactly how fucked he is in this situation. How William and Denzel are going to come in through the roof neither Nathan nor Logan has seen yet. For now, they are in this alone until they are discovered. Is the man distracted enough that he will be able to exchange himself for one of the hostages? Will he be able to pull that off? Not without a good distraction.

  “I hear you! I fucking heard you!” the robber screams toward the glass front entrance, spittle flying from his mouth in his rage. He’s just a few moments away from losing his entire mind and it’s obvious that people are going to die. The man lifts the gun and starts to point it toward the glass as if somehow he’s about to march toward the police cars and then he stops after two steps and thinks better of it.

  The next events happen so quickly that Nathan won’t be able to retell them properly even if he wants to. The armed man marches over to the woman and her child, grabs her firmly by the hair and rips her away from her child. He is shouting something that feels like a ringing in Nathan’s ears that just helps to blend the entire event together. The armed man releases the mother and instead snatches up the child, lifting him fully off the ground by his hair, and the mother turns feral. Her screams add to the deafening shouting from the armored man and the child starts to scream for his mother. In spite of her concern the mother launches herself toward the armed man and he kicks her away from his body with a combat-boot-covered foot, forcing her back down as her breath and scream are knocked out of her.

  From beside Nathan, Logan launches into action. He lifts his large gun up to his shoulder and steps into the open doorway with a grace and swiftness to rival those ice skating ballerinas he was watching so raptly earlier. Nathan doesn’t have time to blink before there’s a flash of light and Logan fires a shot off into the back of the man’s knee—hoping to cripple him and in turn allow the child to tumble from his arms.

  At the same time, the female at the corner seizes the opportunity to scramble to her feet and runs as quickly and as awkwardly as she can toward the front with the glass doors. Doctor Cox merely covers his head, and the man clad in scrubs beside him launches upright just enough to cover Doctor Cox with his body.

  The armed man howls in obvious pain and sees the flash of movement to the side of his eyes and he fires lazy shots toward the running female. He fires so quickly that he doesn’t seem to notice the child crashing to the floor or the mother hurling herself toward her child and scooping him up any more than the armed assailant notices when Nathan rushes forward to grab the woman and child and bodily throws them in the direction of the hallway where he was hiding moments ago. With any sort of sense they will run as quickly as they can out of this building.

  The woman who ran gets shot in her side, and she screams and falls. The glass is peppered with bullet holes that don’t totally pierce the bulletproof glass. In his rage at having been shot, the armed assailant seems to realize that he’s shot one of his hostages, condemned himself from attempted robbery charges and heightened himself instantly to either murder or attempted murder and also that this woman can’t possibly be the person who has shot him and instead he whips around to see Logan in full combat gear. The assailant’s face shifts into a snarl of rage and, in the same moment that Nathan regains his footing and whips around to aim his gun at the assailant, the assailant lifts his gun again as Logan fires another three quick pops into the assailant’s chest; the assistant fires one back. A lucky shot that just so happens to pierce the space between where his armored vest meets his shoulder pad on the right side of his body—and Logan goes down swearing.

  Logan drops his gun in favor of applying pressure to his wound and for a moment Nathan hesitates. He should have subdued the target. He should have shot the man another handful of times to guarantee that he was dead. It isn’t even that Nathan is at all opposed to shooting the man when he deserves to be shot; he knows the law will be on his side. While he also knows that he will be disappearing into the wind as soon as this case is over, were he to stay he wouldn’t have caught any charges for this execution. The technicalities involved in eliminating a threat that isn’t technically a part of his case is a gray area with the company. He’s never had any extra bodies die on cases that he’s been assigned to. It must have happened at some point before, surely they have a way to handle that much like they seem to handle everything else that happens regarding him or the other operatives.

  No, this time Nathan hesitates because he’s worried. Yet another thing that he doesn’t think he’s ever felt before. He’s worried about Logan and what might happen to him. He knows that it’s not a fatal wound, but he also knows that the bleeding must be kept under control or it could very quickly spiral. Luckily, the initial three shots that Logan fired at the assailant seem to have taken care of their immediately pressing issue. Nathan’s eyes shift over to Doctor Cox, knowing that he can help. He knows that as a doctor, even a sadistically evil one, he attended medical school and outside of the killings that the company has tracked back to him his record is otherwise perfect. There is no doubt in Nathan’s mind that the doctor can help Logan. It’s just a matter of pulling it off in the time it takes for the police force to secure the building and get a medical team in here to assist Logan.

  Doctor Cox owes them. They did save his life after all. It seems to be the same thing that crosses both Nathan’s mind and the doctor’s at the same time as he shoves the man in scrubs off of the top of him and scrambles, still low to the ground, over to where Logan is. Doctor Cox barks at the man in scrubs to apply pressure to the wound while he attempts to find something that can help to keep it clean—but in a bank they aren’t really certain just how to pull that off. At least it should only be moments, just a handful more, before the police break in or, at the very least, William and Denzel come to their aid from the roof.

  Only Nathan is wrong yet again.

  From out
side, the sounds of an automatic weapon are heard, causing everybody in the room but himself to flinch. Doctor Cox hisses that the man in scrubs needs to keep the pressure on the wound and that they are probably safe behind the desks. It’s easily apparent that the gunshots are not being fired into the bank or even in the direction of the bank. No, instead they appear to be being fired at the police out front of the building. The sound is deafening at first, carrying over through the glass to the point of shaking. It’s impossible to speculate as to who, what, or even how many people might be causing this hail of bullets.

  All inside the bank are more than distracted enough by the happenings out front that they don’t notice another addition inside of the bank until it’s too late. In all of the noise from outside they don’t hear the vault’s heavy metal door scraping open. They don’t hear the heavy thud of duffle bags stuffed full of newly printed bills and other valuable items. It’s not until Nathan hears the click of a gun being cocked right behind his head. He can’t stop or let go of his grasp. The girl toward the front of the building screams, apparently being shot hasn’t yet killed her, but her screams of pain are something that works down inside of his skin. Something he won’t easily forget. Using the distraction to his advantage, Nathan whips around and puts his combat training to good use. He grabs the wrists of the man behind him and holds them steady with one hand while his other elbow rails backward in an attempt to catch the new assailant off guard, to catch him and hopefully to disarm him. More than that, he needs to provide the doctor with enough time to get that wound as much under control as possible, as it now seems that there isn’t going to be anybody coming in to help them. There isn’t going to be a medical team until whatever is happening outside is stopped.