The Preying Doctor by Nadia Siddiqui (most recommended books .TXT) 📗

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