Guardians of Illusion

Chapter One

Amy spent the flight from Boston to San Francisco reading the Unabridged Guide to Treasure Hunting , and instructions that came with the metal detector, because she had to purge the ugly scene in Ramjani’s office from her mind. Shouting obscenities was a poor way of communicating for two doctors, both brilliant by all accounts but brilliance didn’t excuse a truckload of vulgarities the two of them hurled at each other.

Ten hours later, standing on a beautiful serene beach sheltered on both sides by dark rocky walls, she reflected that she should have slept instead.

The instruction brochure that came with her new metal detector prepared her for everything, from sinkholes left in the sand by other beach hunters to effectively keeping the tool a hair’s breath away from scratching the rocks but it totally failed to cover the subject of a naked man walking out of the surf.

She slackened her hold on the metal detector then dropped it because she had to rub her eyes.

It was just after six o’clock. She was starving but it was a little too early for dinner yet and too late for lunch. She took a red-eye from Boston and arrived in San Francisco at eight a.m. It was a three hour drive to Point Arena and she should have arrived at the Poseidon Estate no later than noon. The car rental company at the airport lost her reservations and she had to wait two hours before a car became available. By then, she didn’t care if it was an old Fiesta as long as it had four wheels that turned fast enough to make it upstate California before night time. She ended up with an angelically gleaming pearl-white Escalade some executive custom-ordered and never showed up to pick up. By the time she left the shoreline highway and turned left on to something that had no right to call itself a road since all she saw were two tire indentations in the sand, it was almost four o’clock.

Fortunately, the adventure of driving on compacted sand lasted only five minutes, and then a red-cobblestone road sprang before her eyes as if it had indeed materialized from the mist. Pliny Shaw, the Boston real estate agent who sold her on renting the villa, must have seen it only in a brochure or he’d not have pitched it to her as a very nice seacoast vacation home.

The brochure didn’t do justice to what she saw– a glass-and-stone fortress with just the right touch of wood here and there to soften its serious façade. It was nowhere nearly as whimsical as its name–the Poseidon Estate—implied. Whoever owned it must have either never laid his eyes on a book of Greek myths…or let his PR firm pick the name.

The villa came with a staff of four to look after her needs but they were day staff, meaning they’d arrive at eight in the morning and would want to leave no later than eight at night…if that late. She’d raised the absolute privacy issue at night with Pliny and he quickly changed his pitch to fantastic price—a thousand bucks for two weeks of stay. It was a fantastic price, especially for a California coast. She should have questioned it. She might have found out the villa’s private stretch of beach, indeed a sheltered cove, came with a built-in hazard…or entertainment. It depended which way one looked at the spectacle of a gorgeous hunk of masculinity walking out of the surf buff-naked.

She lowered her hand. It was useless shielding her eyes. They functioned as well as the rest of her. A naked man emerged from the deep blue water and walked out to stop just inside the line where the waves could still reach before lapping back. He seemed to be posing rather than pausing to orient himself. He was about thirty feet away but she was a doctor…an orthopedic surgeon and a robotics engineer to boot. Her laboratory back in Boston at the Hopecrest Memorial Foundation had walls plastered with images of well-developed musculature– full body, extremities and joints. Her job was, after all, designing extremities to replace those lost to disease or an accident and coming up with innovative ways to make these user-friendly through totally integrated joints.

However, if movement was indeed a cooperation of muscle and nerve fibers, thus providing the means by which an organism interacted with its environment, the superb organism that had just emerged from the surf appeared to be rooting…or at least sedentary.

She shook her head. She’d come down to the beach to shed the cobwebs of her professional power struggles with Morris and Ramjani back in Boston, while staff finished setting up for dinner. She hadn’t eaten anything else than a tea biscuit and chi-latte she’d picked up at the airport, waiting for the Hertz agent to find her a car. She had to be hallucinating. She blinked a few times to dispel the illusion but instead of dissolving, it took a step…and another, and another.

He was well over six feet tall, with a swimmer’s raw-power build more so than body-builder’s workout-cultured muscles. His light crew cut was suited for water sport and he probably shaved his chest to better show off its symmetrical rippling that spread down from the stemocostal head of pectoralis major muscle. The oblique muscle on either side of his abdominal head of pectoralis major was a rope-twist symphony…or a serenade. The musical mood depended entirely on the eye and the mind of the beholder.

He didn’t look like any man she ever knew, caught, took to bed and released in her shallow catch-and-release stream of life. He didn’t look like any man she ever argued with, in real life and in medical journals. Most of those were either twice her age or half her intellect or both. He didn’t look like any man she ever outfitted with a prosthetic limb, or any face she ever saw above the clipboard when she looked up to see the patient without the gas mask. He simply looked like a new-forged god of the sea, coming ashore to take a piss so he’d not pollute his watery kingdom. His deep tan didn’t have any lines of demarcation that would suggest clothing was worn at some point in his walking ashore adventures. It’s what banished the amused orthopedic surgeon and robotics engineer and brought back a concerned woman.

Can I help you? she asked, immediately cringing inwardly at her own stupidity. History of mankind was full of poignant examples of how naïve women indeed helped naked men. It was the last thing she wanted to think about right now.

He didn’t reply but took another step toward her. Involuntarily she glanced down to see the source of the swinging movement between his legs. Well, at least he wasn’t raising a flag in an ominous invitation, though she shouldn’t relax just because he didn’t have a hard-on…yet.

This is a private beach, so you’re trespassing, she said more loudly, suppressing an urge to glance down to see where she’d dropped her metal detector. It had a long metal handle. She could certainly use it as a weapon because her warning didn’t seem to have any impact on him.

He tilted his head to a side and she heard him murmur, Oh, English of course…good. He pressed his right index finger against his temple. He seemed to be listening rather than contemplating the situation.

Carefully so as not to lose balance, she leaned to a side and stared at the waves frothing and breaking on the jutting rocks.

Tell me you didn’t swim here all the way from Haiti, she murmured.

He took a step back and then turned aside, giving a small hand wave at the sea beyond. That’s the Pacific, he said. He had a deep voice that for some reason coursed through her as if it were current. She felt a strange sensation similar to that when she first tried on a thong and spent a day walking around aroused by the sight of every male body that crossed her path. Even medical diagrams threatened to bring her to climax. After that, she stopped wearing underwear. After all, she was a doctor who spent her day talking to patients who were still traumatized by the loss of limbs. The memory of what the thong was capable of doing to its owner lingered for months afterward.

That’s correct, she said, taking a tiny step to the side to be within reach of her metal detector.

He turned back to face her. This is California coast.

The last time I looked, yes, it is, she finished in a stronger voice.

Then why would you think I swam here from Haiti? The Haitian island is in the Caribbean.

Oh God, she moaned inwardly. I hope I’m not facing a Hannibal Lecter clone.

I was being facetious, she said, feeling that it was best to stay with simple truth.

I see, he said but she felt he was still sorting it out and his claim wasn’t all that factual. He could also be splitting his attention between what went inside his head and external stimuli because he kept touching his right ear.

It occurred to her that perhaps he had not been alone when he went for a swim, and his companions pulled a mean-spirited trick on him and ran away with his clothes. If that were the case, then they should be coming back to enjoy the results of their prank.

Did your friends leave and take your clothes? she asked, trying to figure out a way to leave the situation without his feet slapping in the wet sand as he chased her down the beach.

He shook his head. No. I came alone. The sun will set in fourteen minutes. The light is already fading. The beach is not a safe place to be in the dark. We must go into the dwelling.

Dwelling? she echoed, pretending she didn’t hear that ominous assumption– we.

He motioned at the villa perched on top of a cliff that had a zigzag set of wooden stairs anchored into the rocky portions of the wall. I mean that architectural rendition of someone’s concept of a medieval castle and the modernistic glass structure erected on the site in 1984.

That’s a very good description of the Poseidon Estate, she said. It’s not my dwelling. I’m just renting it. I can’t invite you over. There is staff. They would report to the owners and then I’d be asked to leave.

I don’t need an invitation. He said exactly what she dreaded to hear. We must leave the beach before it is dark. He moved toward her and when she jumped out of the way, walked past her, heading for the stairs. The light was fading but it hadn’t faded sufficiently for her not to see his ass was the kind that shouted invitation to women to slap both hands on it and squeeze. Last year, when the nurses and female doctors at Hopecrest threw a bachelorette party for Sarah, thirty-five of them packed into Cat’s Paw, a nightclub where male strippers earned a ton of money that night. All of it was stuffed into their thongs but not before the hands doing the stuffing did a survey of the stripper’s ass. Those three studs had rock-hard buttocks. The ass receding from her was good enough to be made into a screensaver on every female doctor’s computer.

Maybe Ramjani was right and I’m having a nervous breakdown, she thought. This can’t be real. I must be hallucinating. She was almost convinced she was cracking up when her hallucination stopped and turned around and impatiently waved her on.

What the hell, she murmured and moved to catch up to the naked man who at no point during their economical interaction showed even a slightest sign of arousal. He didn’t say a word as they climbed the stairs, side by side since the staircase was designed for a crowd of pirates ascending from the seashore. She tried to remember when was the last time she went to a day-spa, spent more than thirty bucks on a haircut or looked at herself in the mirror when she got out of the shower without first having draped a bath-size towel around herself. After all, she did listen to Doctor Schultz…obviously a little too well.

When they emerged on to a wide terrace that on one side ended in a swimming pool while on the other was a hot-tub and a Finnish sauna house, she reached out and grabbed his arm. His muscles were so hard her fingers practically bounced back as she tried to apply pressure to stop him.

There is staff inside, she said when he turned to face her. I wasn’t lying about that. They might become concerned if they saw you…without apparel, she found a word that she felt complimented dwelling.

He lowered his head and stared for a long time down at his feet though he must have been staring at other parts as well. Those didn’t rise in salute to her femininity, not even a twitch to show he was fighting discomfort.

You mean naked, he said, lifting his head.

That’s exactly what I mean, she said, stifling a groan.

You weren’t concerned.

I’m a doctor.

Are doctors then accustomed to walking alongside men without apparel?

More or less, she said, wondering whether walking beside a male patient wearing only a hospital gown counted.

I understand, he said.

Understand what?

Your absence of concern at my appearance.

Oh. Well, now we seem to understand each other, wait here a moment, she said and walked down to the pool. The maid said she could find towels in a cedar chest next to the barbecue, if she opted for a swim instead of trying out her new metal detector.

Here. She returned, and handed him a white plush towel. He accepted it and threw it over his shoulder. She wondered what showed on her face because he frowned and then threw the towel over his other shoulder.

Neither of those parts needs to be covered, she said, forcing her lids to stay up because her eyes wanted to close, while the rest of her wanted to collapse in a heap at his feet, laughing.

He took the towel, held it in his hands and gave it a tug then started to raise it, obviously intending it to become a blindfold.

That’s when she moaned, Don’t…just don’t. Did he really expect her to lead a naked man wearing a towel for a blindfold into a house?

He lowered his head at the same time as he lowered his hands holding a towel and stopped at his waist.

Lower, she found her voice of authority. He lowered it two more inches.

Keep going.

He slipped the towel down another inch or two.

Keep going, mister, or you’re going to be spending the night down on the beach, and I understand nights can get pretty nippy this time of the year.

He lowered it another inch and then opened his fingers to let the towel unfurl down to his knees, then raised his head.

Something lurched in her chest as if whatever muscles she had in those regions suffered a brief attack of arrhythmia. His face was like the rest of his body, strongly defined with a chiseled jaw and straight nose, but it was his eyes and lips that spoke to her in a silent language she knew only too well but refused to admit its seductive nature. After all, she’d spent ten thousand dollars and many hours on a couch, counting acoustic tiles on the ceiling and listening to Doctor Schultz’s strategy and how to counteract the curse she was born with.

He either had a flashlight behind his orbs or the last rays of the setting sun shone through a hole in the back of his head because their silver sheen was as hypnotic as moonlight in a crystal garden. His lips curved upward in a smile that had her momentarily contemplating snatching the towel to see if those parts behind that had been so placid all along were reacting in tandem with his look and smile.

Is that better?

She heard his husky voice, tinged with amusement.

No, she said truthfully, but it’ll do. Now, let me do the explaining and whatever you do, don’t let the towel slip.

She was already reaching for the door handle when something occurred to her. She turned around to find his face inches away from hers and yet she didn’t feel him crowding her.

What’s your name, anyway? she asked.

Niven.

Is that first or last?

Does it matter?

She mumbled that he was right. At this point, nothing mattered. Her insanity had been clearly established. I’m Amy, she said, reaching for the handle again.

I know, he said quietly.

That’s when her hand on the door handle grew clammy cold.

Chapter Two

Back in Boston, Pliny told her the Poseidon Estate was owned by a Hollywood celebrity. She thought he just wanted to raise the profile of a place he was trying to rent out. Now, she reflected that the real estate agent could have been telling the truth.

The staff at the villa was probably used to all kinds of wild and bizarre eccentricities for which the Hollywood celebrities were renowned. Male guests clad in a towel brought in by patrons who rented the place hardly merited a raised brow. The staff accepted her brief introduction in polite silence and only inquired whether she and her guest were ready to sit down to dinner. She desperately tried to give a casual appearance because if Niven was an escaped psychiatric patient or a yet to be profiled psycho, he would have to be content with a solitary victim tonight—her. The staff didn’t deserve to become his victims. She was a doctor. She took a Hippocratic Oath to help ease the suffering, not add to it through her sheer stupidity.

Will you be needing anything else, ma’am? the housekeeper came to ask her when she and her husband, the cook served the dinner. The maid and her teenaged son, who looked after the pool and did odd jobs around the house, had already left.

She smiled and thanked them, reaffirming there was no need to wake her up in the morning and they could go about their jobs.

Enjoy your dinner then, the housekeeper said and turned, heading across the great expanse of polished granite that covered the entire first floor of the three-story sprawling villa. She kept forcing herself to hear the echo of her heels clicking on the stone but knew the illusion of safety the sound represented was going to fade all too soon.

The first floor was actually a middle level that had a terrace offering a breathtaking view of the Pacific. It served as the entrance from a private road paved in red cobblestones and formed a courtyard for the villa. The floating staircase leading to the upper level didn’t have a railing. It was the kind of staircase you didn’t want to be chased on, up or down. If you stumbled, you’d reach the bottom very quickly and you might not be able to get up ever again. Unfortunately, the upper level was the sleeping area, where the maid had taken her luggage and her cell phone and laptop. It was the first time she had consciously left her ubiquitous tools behind because she was, after all, on vacation. She needed to un-stress, according to her boss Morris’ estimate when he summoned her into his office after the episode with Ramjani. She hadn’t bothered asking the house staff about the lower level. Three thousand square feet spread on one level was more living space than she cared to explore. It was enough she’d have to spend the night alone, on another three thousand square foot level high above the main floor.

The dining room was an open space. It was raised by two steps above a living area defined by a large crimson Persian rug, couches and a giant flat TV screen on a freestanding glass-block wall. For once she would have welcomed a formal table that seated a small army. It would have given her some distance from her dining companion who managed to find a pair of jeans and a dark green t-shirt during his excursion to the upper level, though he remained barefoot.

He walked down the stairs so lightly she only caught a flash of a bare foot noiselessly landing on a stone step. It had a good arch in spite of its width, and it was at least size thirteen, like the rest of him. One of the ortho nurses at Hopecrest had a foot fetish, and a death wish. Depending on who the op-surgeon was, the scrubbing could be a mild affair or agony. That’s when conversations would be terse, and bizarre. It took four difficult surgeries and two months for Heather to tell them she shopped for pussy-pleasing big toes in her fitness club.

You let a man stick his big toe up your vagina? Jess, an assistant nurse, asked.

When that big toe slides in, it ain’t vagina no more. It’s an oven, Heather said, nudging the faucet handle with her elbow.

Do you know what lives on the floors of fitness clubs? Amy cocked a disapproving eye at the nurse.

I suck it clean first, Heather said. Amy just groaned but Jess wanted to know the criteria for a pussy-pleasing big toe.

Long, fat, nicely rounded tip and a little curved upward. The up-tilt’s important. That’s what you want to catch on the way in and out. Heather shared the results of her private survey of men’s digits.

Amy’s mystery guest had a pussy-pleaser that would have killed Heather with an orgasm. She watched it land on half a dozen steps before she caught herself and averted her eyes. She hadn’t yet sunk to the level of Heather’s depravity but she was weakening. The ass receding from her was just as perfect as when it was bare. Some men wore jeans to hide their flaws. He wore them as a gift to the jean industry. His ass had an almost textbook symmetry. It was ripe, it was dangerous, it was sensual, and it was totally unavailable. She caught herself.

While undoubtedly a superb fit, the jeans and the t-shirt gave him that disquieting look of a soldier—a mercenary. What if he was a soldier, suffering from post-traumatic syndrome? She found she didn’t want to consider such possibility. Somehow, she felt that it would be easier to deal with a garden-variety of psycho than a military nutcase.

So, what happened down there on the beach? she asked, when she sat down across from him. She prodded a slab of fish on her plate to show she was just making conversation and not being confrontational. She couldn’t afford to provoke him but at the same time she couldn’t just sit across from him in silence, pretending to be interested in her food. Her throat felt so constricted that if she took a sip of water she’d vomit it back out.

Nothing, he said flatly. She got an impression that he left unsaid yet.

Where are you from?

Here, he said, and picked up one of the three bottles of wine the maid brought as selection, leaving all three behind when the guest wasn’t able to make a decision. It’s rather un-patriotic to serve French wine in California. He held out the bottle of Medoc to her.

Maybe, she said carefully, unsure what to make of his comment. Isn’t one of the other two bottles a California vintage?

He shook his head. French, Spanish and Italian, he said.

She saw her opportunity to leave the table. I could go look in the wine cellar. I’m sure there would be a California label that would please you.

I’m not displeased, he said and raised his hand. It’s not a good idea to leave right now.

Why? she asked, stifling a moan and sitting back down.

A vehicle has just pulled into the driveway.

Where? How do you know? I don’t hear a thing. She dropped the fork on her plate. It was no use pretending she was eating.

Nine o’clock, he said, also putting down the eating utensils.

She looked down at her left wrist. Her Seiko said he was an hour ahead with his time report.

It’s just after eight o’clock, she said, looking up at him. He moved his mouth as if he had taken a sip of wine and was sloshing it around, and then pointed to the side.

To your left, on the wall, it says nine o’clock.

She turned her head and saw a large monitor screen inset in what she took to be a black polished wall unit. There had to be more than one security camera mounted outside because the image kept shifting to give the view of the dark van from all sides. Suddenly she heard a clatter and looked down to see a remote sliding down the table.

Annoyed he had time to acquaint himself not just with the external security features but how to access them, she picked it up. Where did you find this?

The maid gave it to me when I went upstairs to change out of my towel, he said in such an even tone of voice that for a moment she thought he was speaking through a mechanical device.

Did you threaten her into giving it to you?

I never threaten.

Did she then give it to you before or after you went down skinny-dipping in the sea? It occurred to her that she hadn’t considered the possibility that he had arrived at the villa ahead of her and could have threatened the staff into acting normally so he could set-up his Neptune-coming-ashore in the buff scenario, but for what purpose? That kind of elaborate staging was just not wholly characteristic of a psycho…military and otherwise.

The vehicle has been sitting in the driveway for one hundred and forty-eight seconds without anyone getting out. Don’t you find that strange? he asked, but wasn’t getting up.

It’s not a vehicle. It’s a van, all right?

He shook his head. It has steel panels in the doors, roll bars and sway bars. It’s an armored vehicle.

What are you, Superman with x-ray vision? she mumbled, irritated by his calm recital of specs that could prove to be true. Then again, he could prove to be a psycho of different caliber, eclipsing even Hannibal Lecter.

Pass me the remote, he said.

No.

Pass it please.

She flung it toward him, deriving a modicum of satisfaction from its frenzied clatter.

Look at the close-up of tires. He panned the camera to ground-level.

They’re big tires, she mumbled.

Yes, oversized, and the vehicle still sits low. Now look at the logo on its side. Once again he panned the camera higher to show the name: Windward Airways Customer Service.

I must have left something on the plane, she said, smiling because she was no longer alone with a very strange man who walked out of the sea naked. Somebody was outside, a delivery man. He’d hear her scream, maybe.

Didn’t you land in San Francisco and drive three hours to get here? He sounded bemused.

How do you know that?

How else would you get up here? he returned calmly. The answer confirmed her suspicion he had arrived at the villa way ahead of her and probably by the same route as she did. She hoped he had not stalked her all the way from Boston.

Doctor Severn, would an airline offer such platinum service as to have a delivery van drive one hundred and fifty miles up the California coast to deliver a forgotten item to a customer who’s not even a frequent flyer?

How do you know my name? How do you know I’m not a frequent flyer? How do you—?

He interrupted her. Your name’s on three tags attached to every piece of luggage you brought with you. Your Boston address likewise. Your luggage is stored upstairs. Your filled-but-not-filed questionnaire about the airline’s service was lying on the floor outside your bedroom. I picked it up, read it and put it on the dresser. You had not ticked off a box that asked whether you qualified for frequent flier discount.

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