"One hundred, " she heard herself say. "Go on… go on."
"Ninety-nine… ninety-eight The blue Johnny covering her was pulled away, exposing her breasts. She shivered at her nakedness and the sudden chill. 71 "Ninety-seven… ninety-six… "She's under, Jason."
"Excellent. Let's get started, then."
"No, Jason, " she begged as russet anesthe ic was swabbed over her breast. "Please wait. It hasn't worked yet. The anesthe ic hasn't worked."
"Turn the music up a bit. Fine, that's fine. Okay, then, knife."
"No, wait! Ninety-five!.. Ninety-four! Please hurry, please work."
Overhead, the bright, saucer light flashed on. Gloved hands appeared just below Jason Mainwaring's sterile, blue eyes. Nestled in the right hand was a scalpel. In agonizing slow motion it drifted down toward her.
"Jason, no! " she screamed as the blade cut into the skin by her shoulder, releasing a spurt of crimson. The pain intensified as the scalpel began slicing a slow arc around the base of her breast. But before she could scream, a gag was pulled tightly between her teeth and tied behind her head, and her arms were bound just as vigorously to her sides. Soundlessly, praying for the relief of unconsciousness, Suzanne endured the agony of the surgical removal of her breast. And when the dissection was complete, she looked down at herself in wide-eyed terror.
Where once there had been skin and breast tissue and a nipple, now there was only a gaping, bloody crater. In that moment, amidst a final, silent scream, blackness mercifully intervened. Fascinated by what he was observing, Frank set the stereo playing Fantasia on Greensleeves for automatic repeat and turned up the volume. For once, at least, his goddamn brother had been something of a help. Suzanne lay semiconscious on her back on the rug, twitching and shuddering from time to time, and crying out as much as the handleerchief tied tightly through her mouth would allow. Frank loosened the sleeves of his suitcoat, which he had used to bind her arms, and then cut a bath towel into strips. It was probably overkill, he realized, even to bother tying her up.
Mainwaring's syrupy music was doing as fine a job of immobilizing her as any truss. Still, at least until she could be removed from the hospital to some safe-and permanent-resting place, it was worth the extra precaution. He rolled her onto her side and bound her hands tightly behind her.
Then he laid her back and secured her ankles. Her eyes remained closed, but her restless movements had increased-almost in reflection. to the intensity of the music. Frank knelt beside her. Even under such difficult circumstances, she was a real beauty. Brains and looks-Leigh Baron without the hard edge. When Suzanne had first come to Sterling, he had made several carefully gauged attempts to start something up between them. Each time, she had politely but firmly refused him. It angered him that, after just a few weeks in town, his brother was already getting inside her pants. Well, so be it, he thought. The two of them deserved one another. And as soon as the board meeting was over, he would set about seeing to it that they got to spend an eternity together. He had tried to play it easy with both of them, but that approach had nearly blown up in his face. They had forced him to take off the gloves, and now they would see what kind of competitor Frank Iverson really was. He had always played to win, and now there was far, far too much at stake even to think of backing off. He reached down and ran his fingertips over Suzanne's face and then down over her breasts. She really did have a phenomenal body. Phenomenal! Lisette, Suzanne-Zack was spiteful enough to be planning on screwing them both, if he hadn't done so already. No way, Zack-o, Frank thought as he dragged Suzanne into his bathroom and set her on the damp floor of his shower stall. No way you're ever going to humiliate me like that. He smoothed out his suitcoat and then combed his hair. The music reverberated through the tiled room. Behind him, reflected in the mirror, Suzanne continued to jerk spasmodically.
Perhaps, Frank thought, after the meeting, before he set about arranging an accident of some sort for her and his brother, he would take a few minutes to enjoy the favors she had denied him. To miss such an opportunity would be a shame. Besides, he mused as he checked himself in the mirror, a moment before setting off for the board meeting, it would be a crime to waste such romantic music.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
"I'm sorry, Dr. Iverson, but as I told you before, I'm under strict instructions from Mr. Iverson that no calls from you are to be put through to anyone at the hospital except him."
"But all I want you to do is to page Dr. Cole for me. Ask her to call me. @ An hour had passed since Zack had been fired and ushered out of the hospital he had expected to work in for the rest of his professional life. He had driven home with the patrol car following him right into his driveway, and then had tried to reach Suzanne at her office. After a number of busy signals, he had gotten a tape saying that the office would be closed until one. He bad tried his own office, but the line had already been disconnected, Now, after a fruitless call to the hospital switchboard and a no-answer try at Suzanne's home, he was giving the page operator one last shot. "I understand what you are asking, Doctor,
" the operator said. "And even when I tell you it's a medical emergency you won't do it?", Mr. Iverson was quite specific."
"What's your name?"
"Janine."
"Well, Janine, I appreciate that you have your orders, but how is Mr. Iverson to know if you just put this one call through for me? "
"You'd be amazed at the things Mr. Iverson finds out, Doctor. And if he does, it's my job. Now please, I've got to get back to my board."
"Janine, wait damn."
Zack slammed the receiver down and then snatched it up for another attempt. This time, he stopped before the switchboard operator could even answer. Frank had put an airtight sea] on the hospital that no simple phone call was going to breach. Nor did it help matters that his decision to forsake his father's care in favor of the town derelict had reduced his influence around Ultramed-Davis to near zero. Still, he had to get back into the hospital-to tell Suzanne of the trigger, and, he hoped, to enlist her help in confronting Jack Pearl. He had given up on even trying to speak at the board meeting. Frank would have him in a cell before he could get close to the door. But Toby Nelms was a different matter. Without cooperation from Pearl, without the man's willingness to admit what he and Mainwaring were doing, he felt quite certain the boy was as good as dead. Perhaps, he began to think, the board meeting might be the key. With Frank inside the conference room, and his security people stationed nearby, there might be some other, unguarded way inside the hospital. He scratched out a crude drawing of the building as best he could remember it. There was, he was nearly sure, a delivery entrance outside the cafeteria-one that had to be open.
Assuming Suzanne was in the ICU, he could enter the hospital through the kitchen and reach the ICU by a back staircase. He checked the time. The board meeting, if not already under way, would be starting any minute.
He could park on the highway and circle through the woods to the delivery entrance. Police or no police, it was worth a try. He tied Cheap dog on his run and then lurched the camper out of the drive and down the hill toward the hospital, hoping that the time for Toby's transfer to Boston had not been moved up. As he drove he pictured the boy sitting cross-legged on the rug in his house, watching his favorite hero cavorting across the screen, urging him to join in a song extolling the virtues of the letter P. "Alas my love, you do me wrong…" How many others, Jack? he said to himself, practicing the words he would use. How many other time bombs have you and Wnwaring planted in your patients?