This case in particular isn’t like the others that he normally is assigned to. Usually, he’s the one that gets his hands dirty insofar as quick message sending execution. He likes to make sure that these corrupted, evil souls get exactly what’s coming to them. If it were strictly up to him, after having read all of the things that this doctor has done to his anonymous or nameless patients, he would do the exact same thing to this sorry bastard. Instead, he’s to blend himself into a team setting. If he could have objected, then he would have. Nathan has never much liked working with partners; he is a solo sort of guy. In his opinion, he thinks that allows him to move more swiftly, quietly through the places that he needs to be. He doesn’t want to have to worry about another person or their safety.
The identity that he unpacks here is perhaps his rarest one because it’s the hardest to get the clearance for on a time limit. It means to Nathan that they want this handled today, no background work done. Today he will be Franke Locke, an early retired detective who was injured on the job. He will have been discharged and started work in private security until he discovered by accident the bounty hunter life that flourished into a predominantly missing persons hunting career. Locke is rumored to have a very high success rate so far in most of his cases because he can see things that most others don't. He will be witty and charming and a little mysterious. It’s perhaps the easiest of all of Nathan’s roles because it’s not a far stretch from the life that he actually leads.
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
