"She's pretty, ain't she," Frankie says, running his fingertips down Nancy's arm. Nancy's eyes open but they don't focus on anything. She's unconventionally pretty. What I can see of her, anyway. There's a sheet over her feet, legs and torso, which strikes me as pitifully and incongruously proper, considering she's strapped down to a hospital bed, about to be turned into a sex slave.
"She's deep under," the nurse-guard says, a sloppy, leering grin on his face, "you can do whatever you want and she won't know it."
"She'll feel it, though," Frankie says. He turns to me. "You want a crack at her? A little girl on girl action before we straighten her out?"
"Passive and drugged out doesn't do it for me. I prefer the kind of girl who'll fight back when I knock her around." Close enough to the truth that I don't flinch. Frankie and the nurse-guard laugh. Frankie claps me on the shoulder.
"Just like one of the guys," he says. I laugh along with him and nurse-guard, focusing on the idea of both of them dead on the floor and my guns hot in my hands.
"I gotta piss, just like one of the guys," I say, "Where's the bathroom." Frankie takes his hand off me and points to the far end.
"Door on the right's a closet, the other's the toilet."
Once inside the bathroom I pull out my phone and verify the FBI's app has been recording. I e-mail the audio file then text Rowan: work done? Not sure. Code for: is this enough proof? Do I have permission to extract myself and anyone I think requires assistance?
I get a text back: I'm keeping dinner warm.
Code for: stay there and keep recording.
I relaunch the recording app, slip it back in my pocket. I flush the toilet, wash my hands. Every action is clipped and fierce, a controlled anger. I take a deep breath. The FBI's goals are bigger than Nancy but it's hard to see that when I walk back down the narrow room of hospital beds to discover that Frankie's stripped her of the sheet and is pumping two of his pale, skinny fingers in and out of her cunt. He's giggling. I want to puke.
Nurse-guard looks from Frankie to me. I must have a certain look on my face because he blanches and takes a step back.
"I thought you were a professional," I say, trying to pin my disgust on something other than watching a drugged girl being raped.
Frankie keeps his fingers in her but cranes his neck to look at me.
"Just checking the merchandise."
"Didn't you have a chance to do that when you first abducted Nancy?" I ask, trying to get him to ditch the cliches so the evidence is clearer.
Frankie shakes his head. He slips his fingers out of Nancy and straightens up, turning slightly as I move a little closer to join the group.
"I've been sick," he explains, "holding on to her while she struggled took a lot out of me. As soon as I got her down here I passed out on another bed, myself. Got up a few hours ago, but by then Doc was here and Nancy's procedure had already started."
"What you got?" I ask, morbidly curious.
"Dunno."
"You should see Doc," nurse-guard says, "every time I see you, you look worse."
"Yeah, okay. Next time Doc comes over I'll ask him to take a look at me. I just keep thinking it's, like, a cold or flu."
"If it is, that's all the more reasons to keep your hands off the girls," I say, my voice cold and judgmental. Frankie shrugs but meets my gaze. I see a flicker of the professional, managerial man Mr George trusted, and it contrasts strongly with the man standing in front of me now. It occurs to me that perhaps Mr George has seen this contrast and is making plants to oust Frankie. And if I can see that, maybe Frankie can see it, too, and maybe he finds me a threat. Yet another reason to be on my guard around him. Even better, though, is to use this idea to poke around a little more, incite him to confess something.
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