The naked edge

"DO YOU LIKE TO PLAY VIDEO GAMES, RAOUL?"
1

Oaxaca, Mexico.

The movie star surprised Dominic by being polite and compliant, not at all what he was used to when protecting celebrities. Her name was Shana Lane. Twenty-one, with a knock-'em-dead figure, she'd had five hit movies, one of them good enough to earn her an Oscar nomination. But then she disappeared for a long, hot summer. After police, private investigators, and the media looked everywhere, she finally turned up drugged out of her mind, staggering down the main drag of a small town in Nova Scotia, Canada, where she was on her way, she thought, to buy a race horse. Nobody, including herself, was ever able to figure that out. The authorities did some investigative backtracking and found the cottage where she was staying with her boyfriend.

A possessive boyfriend, who was also a crack addict. They returned to Los Angeles after paying fines and listening to a judge's lecture about the pointlessness of wasting a talented life. But despite Shana's determination to clean up her life and sever their relationship, the boyfriend persisted in wanting to see her. He showed his love and determination by burning her BMW and strangling her cat, then vanished and waited until the police became weary of guarding her.

That was where Dominic came in. For an enormous fee paid by a movie studio desperate to protect its investment, Dominic and five other protectors went to Shana's film location in Mexico. Working in shifts of two, they made sure the boyfriend didn't show up. They made sure of something else-that, in keeping with the plot line of a movie about drug smugglers, Shana didn't get tempted to go back to sampling the real stuff.

To Dominic's amazement, Shana behaved in an exemplary fashion, following instructions, arriving at the set on time, with her lines prepared, never once complaining about the twelve-hour shooting schedule and the rigid control of her time off the set. Sundays were her only free days, and she used them (accompanied by Dominic and another protector) to buy rugs, pottery, and carved animals from nearby towns or to visit Oaxaca's baroque cathedral, the vaulted interior of which had dazzling gold ornaments.

On this, his second-last evening of the assignment, Dominic and another protector stood separately at the shadowy sides of the Hotel Victoria's patio restaurant, watching the various approaches to it as Shana and the film's director ate dinner together. On a lower level, cast members splashed in a swimming pool.

Then dusk thickened. Dominic and his fellow protector escorted Shana to her room, one of a series in a long low building next to the restaurant. Pleasant-smelling flowers lined the softly lit walkway. While his partner watched the approaches to the building, Dominic unlocked and entered Shana's room, making certain that it was safe for her.

Only when they heard Shana secure the numerous locks on her door did the two protectors relax.

"After we escort her back to the States, do you have another assignment?" Dominic asked his partner.

"No. I'm thinking about coming back here with my wife. What are your plans?"

"New Orleans. I'm scheduled to be part of the security at the World Trade Organization conference. After the devastation from Hurricane Katrina, the WTO wants to show support for the New Orleans recovery effort by meeting there."

"The last time I worked at a World Trade conference, the protestors rioted and shut down the city. Talk about an elevated threat level. I was on Condition Orange for a week. Then I slept for a week."

They pulled out their room keys and unlocked the units that flanked Shana's. From there, they could easily get to her if she pressed a button linked to alarms in their rooms. When they opened their separate doors, they encountered the embodiment of a local proverb, You won't find a doctor to cure a bite from this snake, as a machete hissed toward each of them, slicing off their heads.