A Ruthless Victim by Nadia Siddiqui (best novels to read for students .txt) 📗

Nathan steps backward. This will force Alex to have to come further into the room. Really, he hopes that Alex is stupid enough to do it; he hopes that the man is high enough on his own power trip to be foolish and to make a mistake. It will only take one. Just a moment and then Nathan will free himself and find a way to free them as well. Nathan’s eyes scan the plastic barrier once more for a sign of a door, wondering how that’s going to work when a scream sounds from far away. Alex startles enough that he jerks and drops the syringe. Weak. He is nothing but a weak man pretending to be something bigger than he is. Nathan wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if Alex has always had this problem, leaving a trail of hurt people everywhere that he goes in his life.

Upstairs, Tabitha screams as the sound of glass breaking can be heard all the way down here. It sounds like at least three people have stormed in through the front office. The company, no doubt. Nathan is willing to bet that they are the other Doe operatives like himself coming down here to rescue him, Lila and Emma at this very moment. The screams start to draw closer, and Alex runs up the concrete steps. Not to Tabitha’s aid as it would otherwise appear but to slam that divider door shut right in her face so that he can save himself, or at least he thinks that he can.

“You son of a bi-” Tabitha’s last words before silenced shots shut her up. Nathan really hopes that he shot her right in her mouth; that would be fitting in his opinion. Looking across the way to Lila, Nathan attempts to offer her a calming smile as if he somehow planned this, which he sort of did. They almost did him a favor by attempting to kidnap him as well. Without having been placed down here himself, Nathan never would have known that these two girls are still alive after all of this time. He would have assumed that Alex had killed them, and in doing so would have executed Alex, eliminated Tabitha and ended up leaving these two down here to actually rot to death. Somehow, that didn’t sit right with him. Somehow, this is a detail that the company missed. If he’s incredibly lucky, this will be grounds enough to have his accidental kidnapping dismissed as an error in judgement. Though that might be pressing his luck.

Alex runs into the surgical room and comes back with a gun - apparently intent on executing Nathan or Lila from the way he can’t seem to decide which door to open. He chooses Lila’s, but it's obvious that he’s intending to go for Emma, hoping to use her as a deterrent from being murdered himself, but Alex’s hand slips and ends up opening Nathan’s door instead. The thick, plastic barrier slides sideways into the wall and disappears from view, and Nathan grins savagely. He doesn’t even need hands for this. Alex’s face shifts into a clear mask of terror as he attempts to steady his hands just long enough to lift his gun, but Nathan is too fast.

Nathan’s joined wrists slam upward into Alex’s throat, and the man makes a gurgling sound before crumpling to the ground, and Nathan spits on him. He steps over Alex to the control panel, and the other plastic barrier melts away into the wall as he staggers over to Lila, attempting to free her from her chains at the moment that his team breaks down the door. “It’s okay, it’s all over now,” he says to Lila who clearly doesn’t trust him. “Your husband sent me - I’m here because of Brad...he misses you very much…”

The Doe operatives clear the spaces and turn to Nathan for instruction; he orders them to find something to wrap Emma in and to take her to a medic and get her ice cream. Nathan gestures to Lila that she can follow them if she can walk, and he offers to carry her up the stairs if she can’t. The masked Doe operative cuts his hands free, and Lila glances from them to Alex.

“What will happen to him?”

Nathan studies her expression carefully. “What do you want to happen to him?”

“Put him in the box to rot.”

Nathan nods, and grabs Alex by the wrists and starts to drag him down the hallway, and Lila almost looks shocked that he would do it. Clearly, the fact that he’s not police dawns on her. With shaking legs, she follows and walks into the box with him, stopping to grab a scalpel to make a few body modifications of her own, and Nathan turns his back to give her the privacy to do whatever she wants. He doesn’t ask, and whenever she comes back out a few moments later with blood covering her hands, she doesn’t offer the information. She simply shuts the door and bolts the locks into place. As nobody knew about this basement, it’s unlikely that anybody will ever find his body, and he will die a very slow death. That much they are certain of.

“Will you take me to my husband?” Lila asks and Nathan nods.

“Absolutely.”

Chapter Seven

N athan should have left hours ago. He finished packing his bags this morning and gave his statement to the company. There will be no police involvement; there isn’t anything that the police will be able to do for any of them. Nathan knows how these sorts of cases will work. The Kramer family will be given all new identities and more than enough money to make up for the time that they have lost. They will be given passports to any location that they choose, to be of any country of origin, or they will be provided with a new home to