by Lynn Viehl
He shrugged. “They had sacks over their heads. One was big, and the other had to be a woman. Even with the sheet wrapped around her, I could see she had a beautiful rack.”
“They were both unconscious?”
The old man nodded. “The big one was bleeding from the side. It was all over the sheet.”
Drew knew a little about Samuel’s condition, which had been slowly crippling him for years. Although the Takyn all had the ability to heal faster than normal humans, Samuel’s weakened state combined with an open wound might prove too much for the big man to survive. “Was that when you called the police?”
“Oh, I didn’t call them, son.”
Drew eyed him. “Why not?”
“No phone,” the old man said, gesturing below. “No desire to get my throat cut, either.”
Drew glanced out at the bay. “Did you see what direction he took the boat?”
“He’ll be heading south for Manzanillo, Mexico.” The old-timer grinned at him. “Howie stopped by last night to borrow some maps. He’s never been down that far south, so I plotted the course for him.”
Drew jotted down the name of the city. “Is there anything else you can think of?”
“You’d best get out of here before the real cops see you talking to me,” the old-timer said. “Or you’ll end up going downtown. I hope you find your friends.”
“So do I.” Drew smiled a little. “What gave me away?”
“Something only an old shoemaker like me would notice.” The old man nodded at the deck. “No FBI agent wears green sneakers, son.”
No drug, treatment, or therapy had ever succeeded in completely relieving the pain caused by Samuel Taske’s deteriorating spine. He had spent years learning how to rest through meditation and napping for an hour or two, usually in an upright position in one of his custom-built ergonomic chairs. To wake from a deep, satisfying sleep and find himself flat on his back in a real bed was not only a novelty but something of a precious gift.
One he would begin paying for immediately, he thought as he lay as still as possible. As soon as he moved he would likely be in agony. At least Morehouse would arrive shortly with his morning tea and paper, and after administering his injection he would help him get up and into the whirlpool… .
Two fingers pressed against a bone in his wrist while a warm hand settled on his brow. None of them belonged to his house manager.
“No fever, no rash, no arrhythmias,” a woman murmured. “So why don’t you wake up, mío?”
“It usually requires a pot of tea and the Wall Street Journal.” He looked up at Charlotte Marena’s face. Beyond her he could see bright colors and beautiful furnishings. “Hello again.”
“Hey.” Her smile lit up her tired face. “Welcome back. How are you feeling?”
“Puzzled.” Taske turned his head to the right and left to take in as much as he could, and made another discovery as he felt the smoothness of the linen pillowcase against his cheek. “Someone shaved off my beard.”
She nodded. “Wasn’t me.”
He didn’t see any medical equipment around the bed. “We’re not at a hospital, are we?”
“I don’t know where we are, Sam,” Charlotte admitted. “I was kind of hoping that you did.”
“I’ll have to disappoint you.” Luxurious and unique as it was, he didn’t recognize the room. “How did we come to be here?”
“The last thing I remember was passing out in the back of my rig.” She straightened. “Yesterday I woke up here with you. That’s all I know.”
“Yesterday.” He frowned. “I’ve been unconscious that long?”
“At least a day.” She made a helpless gesture. “Maybe two or three, or even a week.” She looked as if she wanted to say more, and then subsided.
“But you woke before me.” A vague memory of Charlotte’s urgent voice came back to him, and without thinking he reached across his abdomen to touch the wound in his side.
“It’s okay. It’s already healed.” She pulled down the sheet covering him to expose the unmarked skin over his ribs. “The stitches I put in popped out during the night. There isn’t even a scar. Maybe you can explain that to me?”
“I’ll try.” Taske had not enjoyed such a rapid recovery from a serious wound in years, but that was not the only revelation that stunned him. When he had moved, he had felt nothing.
“Problem?”
He frowned as he carefully drew his arm back and then moved his legs just enough to shift the lower half of his spine. “I don’t feel anything.”
Charlotte turned and touched his thigh. “You can’t feel my hand?”
“No, I have feeling in my legs.” Still not trusting his body, he bent his arm to prop his weight on his elbow and roll onto his side. His muscles felt stiff, but the searing coil of nerves around his spine didn’t offer even the slightest twinge. “Charlotte.” He stared at her. “I need you to tell me precisely what happened to me.”
“When I woke up yesterday I found you in shock from the blood loss. You were left here bleeding from a reopened wound.” She ducked her head. “Your heart stopped, and I had to perform CPR, but I got you back. I had to give you a vein-to-vein blood transfusion. Fortunately we have the same type. I’m also tested regularly for my job, so don’t worry about it. I know I’m clean.”
“I remember your asking me about my blood type.” She had given him her own blood; no wonder she looked so drawn and pale. “What did you do to my back?”
“Nothing.” She put her hand on his arm. “You probably wrenched it on the bridge. I’ll see if I can find something for the pain.”
“Pain. That is the problem. I’m not in pain. Any pain.” He laughed a little. “Charlotte, somehow you’ve healed me.”
“Jesus healed the lame, Sam. I just gave you some blood.” She looked uncertain. “You’re sure you don’t feel any pain at all? Maybe you’re just riding an adrenaline high.”
“After fifteen years of enduring it every day—lately every hour of every day—I know pain,” he assured her. “Not feeling it is incredible.” He frowned. “And impossible.”
“Sam, while I was working on you, you had some kind of seizure,” she told him. “It could have been a small stroke, and that can cause nerve damage.”
“Then I would have some paralysis as well, which I don’t.” He looked down at himself. “Everything seems to be working very well.”
“Yeah, but you were in shock, too. Sometimes a combination of these things can do some weird stuff to the body.” When he would have sat up the rest of the way she pressed his arm. “Take it slow. If you fall, I don’t think I’m going to be able to pick you up without help.” She put her arm around his back. “Anytime you want to stop, just tell me.”
As he moved into a sitting position, Taske’s head remained as clear as his sight. He felt no discomfort, numbness, or any sensation other than that of his muscles coiling and uncoiling to accommodate his movements. As Charlotte stood up and watched him he eased his legs over the side of the bed, and then slowly rose. Expecting his knees to buckle, he put a hand on her shoulder, but his legs remained strong and steady.
“I’ve walked with a limp since I was a teenager.” He took one step, and then another, and suddenly, effortlessly, he was moving across the room. It had been so long since he’d walked without using a cane that his hand and arm felt odd, but not once did he lose his balance or stagger. Joy rushed through him, a genie released after a thousand years bottled up who had granted his dearest wish without even asking him. He turned around and strode to Charlotte, seizing her by the waist and lifting her off her feet to twirl her around.
“Look at me.” He laughed. “Charlotte, I can walk. My God, I think I can even run.”
“That’s terrific, Sam.” Her hands clamped on his shoulders. “Would you put me down now?”
“Forgive me.” He laughed again as he lowered her back to her feet and pulled her against him in an affectionate hug. “You can’t know what this means
.” He cradled her face between his hands. “I thought I was a dead man—no, I knew I was—and now I wake up and I can walk.” He stroked a hand over her tousled hair before he kissed her pretty mouth.
The delight pouring through him grew heated as he tasted the sweetness of her lips, and suddenly his excitement became urgent and dark. He filled his hands with her hair and nudged her lips apart, inhaling her startled breath and tasting her with his tongue. Her hands slid up his chest, pressing for a moment before they curved around his neck. He wanted to laugh again as he splayed his hands over her back and worked them down to the luscious curves of her hips. Before this he could only look at her and wish, but now that he was healed, now that he was strong, he could be like any other man, and take her to his bed, and give her hours and hours of pleasure… .
His bed was in Tannerbridge, not here.
Taske lifted his mouth from hers. Charlotte stood very still, her eyes wide and fixed on his face, her cheeks rosy. She appeared as appalled as he was astonished. He intended to apologize, instantly and profusely, but the words he spoke had nothing to do with regret.
“I know you.” He lifted a length of her hair to his nose, breathing in before he let the gold-shot strands fall back into place. “Your scent, the feel of your skin, everything about you is new to me. We’ve never met before I saw you on the bridge; I’d swear to it. But … I know you.”
“I’m pretty sure I would remember meeting a guy your size.” She eased out of his arms and turned her face away. “Maybe in another life.”
“Reincarnation is a fantasy. This life is the only one we have.” He didn’t understand why she wouldn’t look at him, until he glanced down at his body. Not only was he stark naked; he sported a monumental erection. He pulled the sheet from the bed and wrapped it around his hips. “I do beg your pardon, Charlotte.” He wouldn’t apologize for kissing her, not with the taste of her still on his mouth.
“Not a problem. In my line of work, I see plenty of naked guys,” she advised him. “But if you really want my forgiveness, stop calling me Charlotte.”
“I’ll try.” By this time he couldn’t think of her as anything else, but he had no wish to antagonize her. “Charlotte is a lovely name. Why do you prefer Charlie?”
“Charlotte is too old-fashioned. Here.” She brought him a large gold velour robe. “I found a supply of men’s and women’s clothes. Mostly casual stuff, like this.” She tugged at the edge of the cloth wrapped around her breasts.
He studied the vivid orange sarong under the lacy white shrug she was wearing. Both made her look like a present waiting to be unwrapped, he thought, until the reason why she was wearing it dawned on him. “He took our clothes from us? He left us both here naked?” When she nodded, he felt a surge of violent anger. “Did he touch you?”
“I don’t think so.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “I checked myself thoroughly, and I didn’t find any bruises or other signs of an assault.”
What she didn’t say was that she still felt violated. Taske wanted to find their abductor and beat him senseless. Even better, now that his back had been healed, he could. “Where is this bastard?”
“I wish I knew.” Her expression turned grim. “I’ve looked through the entire place, and there’s no one here but us.” She pointed to a speaker set into the wall. “A man spoke to me through that yesterday, after I woke up. What he said repeated a couple of times, so it had to be a recording. He said this was our new home.” Again she looked as if she wanted to say more, but lapsed into silence.
Taske looked around the room. “Did you recognize any of the surrounding area outside the house?”
“I didn’t go out,” she admitted. “By the time I finished going through the house it was dark, and I really didn’t want to leave you alone for long.”
She averted her eyes, and a slight change in her stance suggested she wasn’t being entirely honest with him. “My dear, surely you know you can trust me.”
“Of course I do.” Now she turned around and brought her hand up to her chest, pointing with one finger to one side of the ceiling and then the other. “If you’re feeling all right, maybe we can take a walk down to the beach.”
Taske glanced up discreetly and saw the two security cameras mounted on swivel bases; she had turned her back on them to conceal her hand movements. As he deliberately walked back to the glass wall, he heard the faint whir of gears and confirmed with another glance that one of the cameras had followed his movements. Now he understood her odd silences; they were being actively monitored.
Taske hoped whoever was spying on them was close by. The fury streaming through his veins needed an outlet. “I’ll need to dress first.”
“The clothes are in here.” She gestured for him to follow her into a walk-in closet. Once they were both inside, she leaned close to whisper, “There are cameras in all the rooms and hallways. I don’t know if he can hear us, but still, watch what you say.” She reached for some clothes hangers and in a normal voice said, “These look like they’ll fit you.”
He pulled on the denim cutoff shorts and the thin, bright blue tank top, and surveyed himself. “I look like a Beach Boy.”
“Sorry there aren’t any Valentino suits.” She took the robe and hung it from a hook. “Ready?”
He nodded and followed her out. She picked up a short length of polished, carved teak propped beside the arched doorway and held it like a club. “Where did you find that?”
“It used to be part of a chair downstairs.” She gave it a test swing. In a lower voice she added, “I played softball in college. If he comes at us, just give me some room.”
“If he comes at us,” he countered, “hand it to me.”
She gave him a skeptical look. “You ever mix it up with anyone, rich man?”
“One can use a cane for more than walking, honey,” he assured her.
Charlotte guided him to a narrow, spiral staircase made of tiled steps and sided in glass panels suspended between bamboo supports. As they descended he noted the display of primitive animal masks inlaid with turquoise, gold, and bone.
“Mesoamerican,” he murmured, pausing beside one likeness of a snarling jaguar. “Not a relic, however. Quite new.” He reached out to touch it before he stopped and glanced at his bare hand. He had been bare-handed since waking up and somehow had not noticed. That discovery shook him down to his heels. “Charlotte, please lend me your bat for a moment, if you would?”
She handed it over, and Taske closed his eyes as he curled his fingers around it. Since childhood he’d never had to consciously use his ability; it manifested the moment he touched anything. Upon contact he could see the entire history of any object, from the moment it was created until the present date, no matter how old it was. His ability had enabled him to become one of the foremost experts on antiques in the world, but it had come with a heavy price. Just as King Midas had been cursed to turn anything he handled into gold, Taske saw the history of literally everything he touched.
Gradually an image came to him of Charlotte lifting a small chair and repeatedly striking it against a stone pillar until one of the legs snapped off. Beyond that he saw nothing, no image from the past, no vision of who had brought the chair to this place, or who had purchased it, upholstered it, carved or assembled it.
Taske opened his eyes, unsure of what to think as he handed it back to her. “Thank you.”
“Nice artwork,” she said, her eyes briefly shifting to the camera overhead watching them. “I can’t wait to see what’s outside.”
Another glassed-over water floor, this one stocked with circular green leaves and pale white lilies, led them to a wide entrance hall with towering walls. Taske noted the display of odd-looking weapons, hung far out of reach, which had the same ancient design yet new appearance as the masks by the staircase.
Charlotte inspected the teak door before she tried the ornate brass latch and slowly opened it. An exterior stepped platform led down to a walkway of shell-studded polished
coral, which wound around through tumbleweed-shaped agaves and billowing mounds of white sweet alyssum before it disappeared.
The area beyond the house stood lush, green, and entirely deserted.
Taske heard the sound of the sea clearly now. “Perhaps we’re somewhere on the coast.”
“This isn’t California.”
“How do you know that?”
“I just do.” She turned around, and for a moment the glory of her sun-gilded features took his breath away. “None of it rings a bell with you? Maybe it’s someplace you went to work on your tan?”
“I fear our whereabouts are a mystery,” he said, “and alas, the tan is congenital.”
“‘Alas’?” She shook her head. “No one says ‘alas’ anymore, Sam. Not for at least the last hundred years.”
“Another thing about the deterioration of the English language to mourn.” Again he detected the note of scorn in her tone. He wondered what he had done to earn it, and how quickly he might dispel it. For some reason Charlotte didn’t like him, and that would not do at all. “Let’s have a look at the beach. We might be able to see something from there.”
Charlotte silently accompanied him down the coral path and along a grassy trail through a dense thicket of banana trees. As they passed one ripe bunch she stopped and inspected them.
“These look okay.” She snapped off two, handing one to him, and proceeded to devour hers in a couple of bites before taking another and doing the same.
Her show of hunger worried him. “Isn’t there any food at the house?”
“Enough to feed an army, but after the way they drugged us, I’m not touching it.” She sighed and tossed the peels away. “Come on.”
Chapter 4
The two bananas helped settle Charlie’s empty, churning stomach, but every step she took away from the mansion made her anger burn brighter. Although Sam seemed as surprised as she was at waking up in this tropical paradise, she still couldn’t get rid of the suspicion that he knew more than he was telling her. He’d told her he was handicapped, which he was anything but, and then there was that business on the stairs with the mask and her club.
