Dawn in Eclipse Bay

would not lower herself to his level, she thought. She was a mature, sophisticated woman. More to the point, she was a Harte. Hartes did not engage in public scenes. That was more of a Madison thing.
    The only option to yelling at Gabe was to pretend he was not right here, shadowing her down the hall. It was not easy.
    Obviously she had pushed her luck with Private Arrangements, she thought morosely. She had waited a little too long to go out of business. If only she had stopped accepting clients the day before Gabe had walked into her office.
    She reached the door marked Dr. J. Anderson Flint , opened it and walked into the waiting room. Gabe flowed in behind her, Dracula in a very expensive black trench coat.
    The first clue that the situation had the potential to deteriorate further came when she noticed that Anderson’s secretary, Mrs. Collins, was not behind her desk. She realized that she had been counting on the woman’s presence to ensure that Gabe behaved himself.
    She glanced quickly around the serene, vaguely beige room, hoping to spot the secretary somewhere in the shadows. There was no one in sight.
    The muffled strains of some loud, hard-core, sixties-era rock music reverberated through the wooden panels of the closed door that separated Anderson’s inner office from the waiting room.
    Her sense of foreboding increased for some unaccountable reason.
    “It looks like Anderson’s secretary has gone home early today,” she said. “He’s probably working on his notes.”
    “Sounds like rock music.”
    “Anderson enjoys classic rock.”
    “You know him pretty well, huh?”
    “We met last month in the coffee shop downstairs.” She knocked lightly on the inner door. “We have a lot in common. Similar professional interests.”
    “Is that right?” Gabe said. “You know, I don’t think he can hear you above the music. He’s really got it cranked up in there.”
    The music was loud and getting louder and more intense by the second.
    She twisted the knob and opened the door.
    And stopped short at the sight of J. Anderson Flint stretched out on his office sofa. He was naked except for a pair of very small, very red bikini briefs that did nothing to conceal his erection. His hands were bound at the wrists above his head. A blindfold was secured around his eyes.
    A solidly built woman dressed in a skintight leather catsuit, long black leather gloves, and a pair of five-inch stiletto heels stood over him. She had one leg balanced on the back of the sofa, the other braced on the coffee table. Her back was to the door but Lillian could see that she held a small velvet whip in her right hand and a steel-studded dog collar in her left.
    Neither of the room’s occupants heard the door open because the music was building to its crashing finale.
    Lillian tried to move and could not. It was as if she had been frozen in place by some futuristic ray gun.
    “Similar professional interests, you say?” Gabe murmured into her left ear.
    His undisguised amusement freed her from the effects of the invisible force field that held her immobile. With a gasp, she managed to turn around. He blocked her path, his attention focused on the scene taking place on the sofa. He smiled.
    “Excuse me,” she croaked. She put both hands on his chest and shoved hard to get him out of the way.
    Gabe obligingly moved, stepping aside and simultaneously reaching around her to pull the door shut on the lurid scene.
    The music thundered to its rousing climax.
    Lillian fled through the tasteful waiting room out into the hallway. She did not look back.
    Gabe caught up with her at the elevator.
    An eerie silence gripped the corridor for the count of five.
    “Dr. Flint obviously believes in a hands-on approach to sex therapy,” Gabe remarked. “I wonder just how he plans to incorporate your computer program into his treatment plans.”
    This could not be happening, she thought. It was some kind of bizarre hallucination, the sort of thing that could turn a person into a full-blown conspiracy theorist. Maybe some secret government agency was conducting experiments with chemicals in the drinking water.
    Or maybe she was losing it. She’d been under a lot of stress lately, what with making the decision to close down Private Arrangements and change careers. Having Gabe as a client hadn’t helped matters, either.
    No doubt about it, stress combined with secret government drinking water experiments could account for what she had just seen