The Desert Standoff

BESTSELLING AUTHOR
NADIA SIDDIQUI
Nathan Doe Book 5
The Desert Standoff


Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2021 Nadia Siddiqui – All rights Reserved
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication / use of the trademarks is not authorized, associated with or sponsored by the trademark owners.


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Table of Contents
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The story continues . . .
About the Author
Also By Nadia Siddiqui


  1 Nathan
N athan has never liked Las Vegas. Over the years that he has been working with the company he has been sent to many different places. It has forced him to realize that he doesn’t much care for the heat. While the cold has its own disadvantages, it doesn’t make him this level of miserable on his waiting periods in between cases.
They have been sending him to fewer places as of late. Not that he minds so much. It’s mostly that he just has too long to think. He also knows that it’s far simpler for him to just do what he is told. That is how it has always worked with the company. He gets his orders, all of the information that he needs for a case as well as the transportation and the tools that he might need whenever he gets there. Nathan has a preset group of false identities that he is supposed to adhere to on his cases. They change depending on which one will work best for whatever situation it might be.
The waiting time leaves a lot of room for his mind to wander, he guesses too much; he doesn’t focus on the things he needs to be focusing on. The feeling that he needs to find out who he was before he started to work for the company is growing with each passing day. They have given him some information; he knows what his name is. However, he has tried using it and it never feels right. Nathan is the name that the company gave him, and as strange as he knows it must be, he feels that it fits him better than simply using the birth name that he doesn’t feel any sort of attachment to. He has been told the town that he grew up in. He has gone to visit that town, but nothing there really felt like it was calling to him.
The best he has been able to uncover is that whenever he agreed to work for the company, under whatever situation or circumstances that must have happened in, they wiped his memory in order to transform him into whatever human machine he needed to become. They twisted and shaped him into their design so that he could be the assassin they need him to be. They have never sent him on a mission in which the person he killed didn’t deserve it. Nathan can remember a time when that didn’t bother him. It is a recent change. He wonders if that might be why he is questioning so many things. Perhaps whatever conditioning they placed him under is starting to unravel. He suspects that this is because his time with the company is coming to a close. He thinks he must be near the end. However, he has never discussed this with them. A part of him thinks that one evening he will go to sleep Nathan Doe, a member of the Doe collective for the company, and whenever he wakes up, he will be in another place as his original self without any memory of the last twelve years of his life; though he thinks it is more likely still that he will simply go to sleep one night and then never awaken again. That it will just be done and then he will have finished his contract in that way.
The not knowing is difficult to handle.
It’s not like he can text them on the phone that he is issued. The only purpose it has ever served is to receive orders so that he knows where he is to go next. It hasn’t ever been purposed for anything else. He doesn’t think they would be likely to answer him even if he were to ask why things are changing. Once a year, Nathan has to report in for a physical and to his estimation he will be due for that shortly. Therefore he might ask them at that time.
The case he is assigned to this time is mostly observation, a learning mission. The company has directed him to watch and learn as much about the target as possible. He is to report back with all of his findings. A simple task, but it is leaving him more bored than he knows how to process. Not to mention how familiar things are starting to feel.
He is reminded of his early days with the company, as far back as he can remember. Nathan has been very fortunate in that his training has made his success rate very high. He has only failed to catch one of his marks, something that he blocks out of his memory as often