The hallway is brightly lit, clean and institutional—a completely different feel than the Victorian Boudoir effect in the rest of the house. We hit the end of the hall and turn right, wrapping around the outside of the "business beds," as they're called. I can't believe I never noticed a lack of windows in those rooms. There are doors on my left, their finishes revealing the fact that they're metal, not wood.
I hear moans. I can't tell if they're from pleasure or pain. My palms itch for the grips of my guns. I ball up my hands and dig my fingernails in. Part of me realizes my stress reactions are relatively new; I never felt concern about women in trouble before the whole thing with Ray and Rowan. I clench my jaw. Emotional reactions aren't going to save anyone.
"You ever see how Ray did his girls?" Frankie asks as he opens the door at the far end of the hall. We head down a set of stairs, me slightly behind him, up a few steps so I can see the beginnings of a bald spot at the top of his head.
"No. I saw the maintenance equipment—the headphones at the dorm—but I never saw the initial process."
"Ain't room enough in any one city for more than one establishment like ours. Even though we all started with the same tech, over time we all got our own flavors. Ray had his honey pots, Mr George's got cheer and goodwill, Amos's got enough Texan gold to spill over into another building. Heck, I heard there's a place in Arkansas. Wonder what flavor of girl they like there."
One floor down there are to doors, across the landing from each other. Frankie opens the one on the left, labeled "C&G." The other one doesn't have a sign.
"Why even use mind control, anyway? Wouldn't it be cheaper to just hire women who want to be prostitutes?"
Frankie lets out a short bark of a laugh, "Now where's the fun in that?"
I'm instantly on high alert. I might be the kind of woman Mr George and Frankie might consider 'fun.'" The only reason I don't bolt is because Frankie let me keep my guns going in. If he was planning on abducting and brainwashing me, he would have had a second man and a pat down and a request to yield my weapons.
The room is narrow but long, probably the entire length of the house. It looks like a hospital ward. There's a man behind a desk near the door, multiple beds along the outside wall, a few privacy curtains hanging limp and useless. The beds are empty except for one. She's too far away to see much more than brown hair and pale skin.
"Frankie," the man says.
Frankie doesn't return the greeting. "She got a new name yet?"
"Mr George just e-mailed the suggestion of LaTrois, since she was here for LaDeux."
Frankie snickers. His back is to me as he picks something up from the desk. I hear a scribble. Without looking up or turning to me he says, "Rebecca's interested in seeing how we do things."
"Oh yeah?" says the guy behind the desk.
I try to smile at him, but I'm sure it comes out as a sneer. I lift my chin in the international badass greeting. He lifts his chin back.
"She's got to sign in, too," he says.
Frankie hands me a clipboard and pen and I realize why I could never do this job without someone like Rowan—and an organization like the FBI— forcing me to: this is the kind of evil that's fucking boring as hell. I sign in and toss the clipboard and pen onto the desk. Why a paper and pen, I think, when they've got fingerprint recognition built into their doorknobs?
The guy behind the desk stands and walks us over to Nancy.
"Doc says she just needs a few more hours to prime," he checks his watch, "Nine o'clock I'll put the headphones on."
We reach the occupied bed. I put my hands on my hips so I don't reach for my guns or cross my arms. I stand back a little, giving Frankie and the guard—or nurse or whatever—some room, but I'm watching Nancy. She's pretty. Her eyes are closed, her breathing calm, her wrists and ankles bound in wide brown leather straps attached to the bed's frame.
"Doc find anything wrong with her?" Frankie asks.
"We're still waiting on the lab results from the blood tests," the guy says, "but everything else is fine. She's a healthy specimen, physically."
"And the psych eval?"
"Normal, for a lesbian. I mean, she was pissed and she was all, 'What did you do to her, you bastards!' But, yeah, normal. Brad dug up the tapes we used the last time we brainwashed a dyke. Can you believe it's been five years?"
Frankie shakes his head. "Just not enough of 'em around, maybe. Shame. We get a lot of requests for 'em." He doesn't look at me. He doesn't have to. I'm getting the subtext: "Fuck with us and you're next." Another reason for me to sell the act that I've bought in to the organization and won't make trouble.
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