"Why up there? Goons carry Truth Serum. Besides, the witness further states that they didn't look like anything but a couple of chummy dates. Real chummy."
"How about if—Maybe he was helping her? Andra's not a bad looker.... If she turned on the tears—"
"You've been reading your own scripts, friend," said Frank, not unkindly. "This is reality we're dealing with, not never-never-land on film. This Lloyd Bodger, Junior is not the boy-most-likely when it comes to helping anti-Hive people. Face it, Bob. Something's up."
"So why, I repeat, aren't we all on our way down the chute costumes, cameras and all?"
"That's the only thing that doesn't make sense," Frank admitted. "And the only thing that prevents me hiring a sniper to knock her off."
"You'd do that?" said Bob. "To Andra?"
"For the time being, we'll let it ride," Frank decided on the doorstep. "It may be handing ourselves over on a silver salver, but—We'll let it ride. Till we hear from her. And she'd better make it convincing."
"I know she'd tell me the truth—Whatever it is," said Bob, then regretted his rhetorical lapse into doubt. But Frank let it pass, and simply said, with a fleeting smile of compassion, "If I were you, I'd take that Goon's advice, from yesterday when Andra was carted off: Get engaged to somebody else."
"I want to talk to her," Bob insisted.
"If it was your neck, fine. Talk. But it's all our necks. I can't risk it."