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

perfectly doable, but for a person like Logan who is such an active person and relies on his limbs so heavily there’s always the chance that he would take it as a fate worse than death.

Nathan has heard far too many stories about men and women whose whole identities are wrapped up in their fitness, in their bodies, and their sense of self comes from being able to move and protect. A violin player without any fingers could very well lose his will to live if he could not do what he loves any longer. Nathan wonders for just a moment if Logan would be one of those or if he would become a success story. Those sorts of inspirational tales of a man with one arm, leaning into his friends and then overcoming all in the face of adversity. Then again, he could still bleed out and die, get an infection and die. Nathan needs to find a way out of this as quickly as he can.

There’s nothing around him that he can use as a weapon. “How much did you get?” Nathan blurts. It’s an unexpected question, enough that the armed man turns his focus right back onto him. “You heard me, how much did you get? Maybe …ah … maybe I want to help you for a cut.”

The man squints at Nathan before belly laughing. “You? You think I would give you a cut? That’s a laugh. You’re a scrappy fighter, to be certain, but you couldn’t run with the likes of me and mine.”

Nathan doesn’t even want to begin to speculate what that comment might mean, how many there might be based on that implication alone. Then again, he might be lying. The armed man isn’t looking exactly comfortable with the way that things are playing out on the street.

“I just… Look; I don’t want to die, man. I'm just making conversation since you gotta wait … what’s your name?”

The man lifted his gun back directly at Nathan’s face with a snarl. “You talk too fucking much, boy.”

Nathan really doesn’t like being called a boy, but this man’s anger is going to be his downfall. Just a step closer—Nathan just needs him to take another step closer. Out of the corner of his eye he can see Logan’s clenched fist slacken at his side and the tension lines in his forehead go out. The doctor’s hands haven’t stopped moving and he tears off a long section of his once white doctor’s coat and starts to bind the shoulder and pack the wound as much as possible. Nathan hopes that means that Logan’s still alive. However, the tearing noise catches the attention of the armed man and the gun whirls from being pointed at Nathan back to Logan.

“Hey, I said hands off!” the assailant barks—and Nathan lunges forward and rams the hard part of his forehead into the assailant’s temple while his hands wrench the pistol right out of his hands. The assailant stumbles forward, disoriented from the blow to his head, and Nathan takes advantage of the momentary confusion and punches the tender spot in the man’s ribs that he has hit before and hears a sickening crunch of fractured ribs giving way and likely puncturing an organ.

The assailant grunts in pain and uses the very last of his concentration in an effort to keep his hands on the gun, but Nathan’s had enough time to rest and his only focus is getting Logan out of here and managing to get the gun away from this idiot. The rest will be just icing on the cake. Nathan cocks his fist backward and rams it forward into the side of the man’s jaw and he finally surrenders the gun. Nathan then holds it in his fist poised with the barrel in his palm and slams the metal of the gun down hard enough on this man’s temple that he will internally bleed inside of his brain until he is dead. It will only take a matter of minutes.

Breathing heavily and staving off an adrenaline rush, Nathan staggers over to Logan. The heist is over, there is no more noise coming from the street. This will all be over in a moment. Nathan bends to see if Logan is still breathing as Doctor Cox leans back onto his heels, a triumphant smiling passing over his annoyingly handsome face. Blood is smeared across his skin as Cox lifts his arm up to his brow and wipes at it, pleased that he’s managed to use enough of his torn jacket to keep the bleeding from getting any worse. While he’s distracted, Nathan grabs the assailant's gun from the ground, careful to hold it with his T-shirt in such a way as to keep any fingerprints or any other semblance of DNA from getting onto the weapon, before he aims it at the doctor. Logan is unconscious but still very much alive.

“Oh, ha, ha, very funny. They are coming to get us now, right? Thanks for saving our lives.” The doctor seems like a normal person at this moment. He’s smiling and all of the stress lines have smoothed away from his face giving him the mask of a stand-up citizen. Nathan knows that all of the worst, most debauched humans always look normal. It’s a sign of the intelligent killers, the ones that he is normally contracted to eliminate.

“I was never here to save you; I am here to kill you, for all of those lives you’ve cut short on purpose, doctor.”

Confusion flicks over the doctor’s face before he slowly seems to mentally put all of the little pieces together into an order that makes sense. “Who are you?”

“Who I am is unimportant, I suppose you could say I’m yet another ‘Doe’ that’s bent on revenge for all of my other nameless brothers and sisters. How many have you cut down? How many have you had