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  “You surprise me. I didn’t think you’d give up so easily.”

  She got to her feet. “I don’t mind wasting your time, but I’m not real keen on wasting my own.”

  “Sit down, Miss McIntyre.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I am, as the old saying goes, about to make you an offer you can’t refuse.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “I hope you won’t take it that way.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  He smiled. “You won’t.”

  “Why won’t I?”

  “Because I’m going to give you a shot at a real exclusive, the biggest story of your career.”

  “Sure.”

  “You don’t trust me, do you?”

  “No farther than I could throw you.”

  He watched her with a steady, unwavering look. “I’m dead serious.”

  It was the word dead that aroused all her new journalistic instincts. Okay, maybe he was serious.

  “This would be a Guild story?” she asked warily.

  “Yes.”

  “What, exactly, do I have to do to get this hot exclusive?”

  “Marry me.”

  Chapter 2

  SHE SAT DOWN AGAIN. HARD. SO HARD THAT THE DUST bunny on her shoulder bounced a little and had to scramble to hang on to his perch.

  The stunned, vaguely horrified expression on Sierra’s face would have been a lot more satisfying if it had not been elicited by the prospect of marrying him, Fontana thought. So what if they had only met forty-five—he glanced at his watch—make that forty-seven minutes ago? So what if she had made it crystal clear that she considered Guild bosses, as a class, to be legalized mobsters? The fact that she was literally shocked speechless by the notion of marrying him was proving a little hard on the ego, probably because when she had walked through his door forty-seven minutes ago, he’d been nearly floored by the rush.

  It had taken a great deal of willpower just to make normal conversation. He’d experienced his share of fast-acting attractions in the past. Hell, he liked women. But this all-consuming fascination with Sierra McIntyre was startlingly, disturbingly, intriguingly different.

  The effect had struck full force on both the normal and the paranormal plane, shaking him to the core. His psychic senses were as dazzled as his physical senses, and that was nothing short of unique in his experience. Always, always, he had been able to separate the two realms when it came to his relationships with women. But this time it was as if something deep inside him had instantly recognized and responded to Sierra McIntyre, as if he’d been waiting for her without having been consciously aware of it.

  It wasn’t just her looks. He’d seen any number of more beautiful women in his life. Which wasn’t to say that Sierra was not attractive, he thought. The appeal, however, was unconventional and wholly unexpected, at least for him. He usually went for the polished, sleek, sophisticated type, the kind of women who knew how to play the sexual game. He liked them tall. Sierra McIntyre was on the short side, even in her high-heeled pumps. He liked them willowy. Sierra had a definite tendency toward roundness. He liked blondes who wore their long hair in dramatic upswept styles.

  Sierra’s hair was the color of fall leaves. Wildly curly, it looked as if she had lost control somewhere along the line and had simply given up trying to tame it. Her face was intelligent. Her eyes were the alluring blue green of a tropical lagoon, very big and very knowing. They were framed by a pair of serious-looking glasses.

  Although this was the first time they had met in person, he knew a lot about Sierra McIntyre. As was his custom, he’d done his research before he’d plotted his strategy.

  It was Sierra’s gutsy determination that had first drawn his attention. There weren’t many people in Crystal, male or female, who were willing to criticize the Guild and its policies, let alone go after Brock Jenner. Two possible explanations had come to mind. Either Sierra’s obsession with exposing Guild secrets was driven by a personal vendetta or else she was one of those irritating, naive do-gooders bent on righting wrongs and speaking out for those who had no voice.

  Now that he had met her, he knew for certain that the latter was the answer. No wonder Jenner had been so annoyed with her. It was hard to crush do-gooders. You couldn’t buy them off, and overt threats were risky, especially for a man in Jenner’s position. It would not have looked good for a Guild boss to send a couple of goons to a lady journalist’s door, especially when it was a given that the journalist in question would go straight to the cops and then splash the story across the front page of a tabloid.

  Sierra finally got her mouth closed. “What did you say about marriage?” she asked very carefully.

  “This is going to take a little explaining,” he said.

  Her dark brows scrunched together above the frames of her serious glasses. “I think so, yes.”

  He went to stand at the window and looked out at the towering green wall that enclosed the ancient alien ruins of the Dead City. Traces of ambient energy whispered everywhere throughout the Old Quarter. He could feel them here in his office, and he knew that Sierra sensed them, too.

  Not that you had to be a high-level para-rez to respond to the stuff. Even those with average sensitivity picked up on the currents that leaked from the ruins and the tunnels below. Almost everyone got a little buzz from alien psi. For that reason the seedy Old Quarters in all of the city-states were popular with tourists and the nightclub crowd.

  Two hundred years earlier the colonists from Earth had established their first towns in the shadows of the ruins of the four Dead Cities that had been discovered on Harmony. Crystal was no exception. The two-hundred-year-old structures built by the humans appeared stolid and grimly functional compared to the ethereal spires and the fantastical domes that the aliens had left behind.

  But unlike the aliens, the colonists from Earth had been at home on Harmony right from the start. Even after the energy Curtain that had made travel between Earth and Harmony possible mysteriously closed, the settlers had not only survived but thrived.

  Things had evidently been much different for the aliens. The experts had come to the conclusion that something about the very atmosphere of the planet had been poisonous to the ancients. The long-vanished people had been forced to enclose their cities within towering green quartz walls that gave off the psi they must have needed to survive. Eventually they had retreated underground. In the end they had either abandoned the planet altogether or simply died out. No one knew for certain what had become of the Others. It was one of the many mysteries that surrounded them.

  “I’m waiting for your explanation, Mr. Fontana,” Sierra said.

  He could tell from the cool tone of her voice that she had herself back under control. He also sensed that her reporter’s curiosity had surfaced. That was good. His entire plan hinged on it.

  “What I’m going to tell you stays between us and is strictly off the record until I say otherwise,” he said. “Is that understood?”

  “I’m making no promises until I know what I’m getting into.”

  He turned around to face her. “You really don’t trust anyone connected to the Guild, do you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Because you are convinced that there is some conspiracy going on inside the organization.”

  “Yep.”

  He went back to the desk and picked up the copy of the Curtain. “A conspiracy to conceal the discovery of an alien lab somewhere in the rain forest.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Care to tell me why you’re so sure there’s been a discovery of such potentially monumental significance and why the Guild would want to conceal it?”

  “Gee, no, I don’t think so.”

  “Because it would mean revealing your sources?”

  She hesitated for a couple of beats before she answered. “That’s right.”

  Why the slight pause before what should have been a predictable professional response? he wonde
red. Maybe she didn’t have any solid sources, after all. If that was the case, his scheme was doomed.

  But that didn’t make sense. She had not merely reported vague rumors of the alien lab. She had linked it to the dealing of the illegal drug known as ghost juice, and she had documented the disappearance of a number of homeless men who had become addicts. She knew more about the damn conspiracy than he did. He needed her.

  He angled himself onto a corner of the desk, one foot on the floor.

  “You know,” he said, “this conversation probably isn’t going to go far unless one of us takes a flier and decides to trust the other person.”

  She raised her brows. And waited.

  “Guess that would be me,” he said finally. “Okay, here goes. I happen to agree with you, Miss McIntyre. There is a conspiracy going on. What’s more, my predecessor was involved in the cover-up.”

  Her eyes widened. “You’re admitting it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hang on.” She unzipped her purse and started to delve inside for her pen and notepad.

  He reached down and captured her hand. The bones of her wrist felt delicate and graceful.

  “No notes,” he said.

  Her mouth tightened. She looked pointedly at his fingers encircling her wrist.

  He realized that he did not want to let her go. Reluctantly, he released her.

  There was a moment of tense silence. Elvis, having evidently concluded that they weren’t leaving, after all, fluttered off Sierra’s shoulder and returned to the coffee mug on the desk.

  Reluctantly, Sierra sat back in her chair, drumming her fingers on the arms.

  “All right,” she said. “No notes. Tell me about the cover-up.”

  “Unfortunately, I don’t know much more than you do. Maybe less.”

  She acknowledged that with a small, disdainful sniff. “Try again, Mr. Fontana.”

  “A few months ago some of the other members of the Crystal Council and I began to suspect that Jenner was involved in the ghost juice business.”

  “The police think that the juice is being distributed by the Night Riders, a motorcycle gang,” she pointed out.

  “It is, but that doesn’t mean that Jenner wasn’t involved. He covered his tracks very well, but there were rumors. We hired an outside investigator to go undercover.”

  “You brought in a private investigator?” She was clearly intrigued.

  “A former hunter.”

  “What happened?”

  “Three weeks into the job, he turned up dead.”

  “Nathan Harder.” Sierra was suddenly very focused. “I wondered about that. The official story was that he got caught in a ghost river whirlpool, and when they finally pulled him out, he was brain-dead.”

  “Following Harder’s death, my associates and I decided that whatever was going on was more widespread and more dangerous than we had realized. We figured it was time for Jenner to retire.”

  “According to the press release, Jenner suffered a stroke and died. Is that the Guild’s idea of a golden parachute?”

  “We believe Jenner was murdered.”

  She sat very still in her chair. “By you?”

  He smiled his faint, dangerous smile. “I know this will come as a great disappointment to you, Miss McIntyre, but the answer to your question is no. I didn’t kill Jenner. I think someone put something lethal into his IV line.”

  “I see.” Well, you couldn’t expect the man to confess to a reporter.

  “The strategy the other Council members and I put together did not call for Jenner’s death,” Fontana added patiently. “We just wanted him out of this office. We thought that would be sufficient.”

  “What was your so-called strategy for getting rid of him?”

  “An old-fashioned one. I challenged him to a duel. He lost.”

  “Good grief. The Guilds still conduct ghost energy duels to determine the next chief?” Disgust dripped in every word. “I’ve heard rumors, but I assumed that sort of archaic approach to running the organizations had been halted long ago.”

  “Occasionally there’s something to be said for the old ways.”

  She raised her eyes to the ceiling. “Talk about primitive, testosterone-driven behavior.”

  “Within the Guild we prefer to call it tradition.”

  “Right. Tradition.”

  “Jenner wasn’t married. That made things easier.”

  “He was between Marriages of Convenience,” she said sharply. “Everyone said that he was shopping for his fifth wife.”

  “Like I said, that situation made things simpler.”

  “Why is that?” she asked, baffled.

  “Theoretically, anyone in the Guild can challenge the chief to a ghost light duel. If the Council approves, the duel takes place.”

  “Sounds like a Guild version of a vote of no confidence in the CEO.”

  He smiled humorlessly. “It is. But a Guild boss’s wife has certain privileges. She can go before the Council and demand that the challenger be denied. No one can override her. It’s another old tradition designed to stabilize the power structure of the Guilds and protect the chief from dealing with the distraction that would be caused by constant challenges.”

  Sierra whistled softly. “Well, that certainly explains why Guild bosses are almost always married.”

  “The tradition does tend to reinforce family values.”

  “Some family values. Jenner went through a lot of wives, but he never got involved in a Covenant Marriage. His relationships were always Marriages of Convenience.”

  Her disapproval amused him. Marriages of Convenience were legal, if short-term contracts, but a lot of well-bred, conservative-minded people tended to view them as nothing more than socially sanctioned affairs. There were major differences, however, and he was intimately aware of the high cost of those differences.

  When the First Generation colonists had found themselves cut off forever from Earth, they had understood that the survival of their small society depended on stability. Given that the basic building blocks of any civilization are families, the Founders had done everything in their power to make the ties that bind as strong as possible.

  They had set up two forms of marriage. Covenant Marriages were formal and intended to be permanent. Getting out of a CM was a legal and financial nightmare. If there were children involved, it was impossible to dissolve the contract until all of the offspring were eighteen years of age.

  The second form of marriage, the kind Jenner had favored, was known as a Marriage of Convenience. They were arrangements that, while offering all the legal protections of marriage, could be dissolved in a heartbeat by either party, unless there were offspring. The birth of a child immediately transformed an MC into a formal Covenant Marriage.

  The Founders had done their best, but all the legal and social engineering in the world could not prevent the occasional birth of someone like himself, Fontana thought. A bastard.

  “We believe that Jenner terminated his last marriage because he didn’t think he could count on his wife to defend him if there was a challenge,” Fontana said.

  Sierra’s eyes narrowed faintly. “There was gossip to the effect that he had abused her.”

  “As I recall, that gossip appeared only in the Curtain. One of your pieces, I believe.”

  She shrugged. “It was no secret.”

  “Actually, it was. No one on the Council was aware of the abuse until the story ran in your paper.”

  “Talk about willful ignorance. The former Mrs. Jenner spent several days recovering in a private hospital after her husband lost his temper and beat her up the last time. Evidently it was the final straw for her. She wanted to warn other women about him. That’s why she agreed to talk to me.”

  He shook his head, straightened away from the desk, and went back to the window. “You’re amazing, Miss McIntyre. How the devil did you find Alison in that private clinic? We all believed that she’d gone off to spend a week at a spa in Res
onance City. The next thing anyone knew, she had filed for divorce and disappeared.”

  “As a matter of fact, she contacted me.”

  “Probably because she knew you would be willing to print the story. I doubt if any other paper in town would have touched it.”

  “Probably. Why were you the one chosen to go against Jenner in a ghost duel?”

  He deliberated a few seconds, deciding how much to say. In the end he compromised. “Jenner was no ordinary hunter. He was extremely powerful. Everyone knew that there was no one else on the Council who stood a chance against him.”

  “Except you.”

  “Except me,” he agreed quietly.

  “What makes you so special?”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “In other words, you’re not going to tell me.”

  “No,” he said.

  “Just another Guild secret?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know, one of these days, someone really ought to introduce the concept of democracy to you guys. It’s this really cool way of running things. You get to elect your leaders.”

  He smiled. “Sounds inefficient.”

  “It’s messy, but it works, and it sure beats dueling with ghost light. Never mind, let’s get back to Jenner. You said you didn’t kill him?”

  “I won the duel, but Jenner didn’t die because of his injuries. He was temporarily brain-fried, but he would have recovered.” He paused. “Although his para-rez talents would never have been as strong as they were before the duel.” In fact, they would have been nonexistent, but he saw no reason to elaborate.

  “In other words, you really burned him.”

  He said nothing. The duel had been a hellish business that had almost cost him his life. Jenner had not only been a strong para-resonator, he’d worked deadly blue light, not regular green ghost energy. But there was no way to explain that to Sierra. The very existence of psi energy from the blue end of the spectrum was, like so many other things, a deep Guild secret.

  There was a small scurrying motion at his feet. He looked down and saw Elvis. The dust bunny hopped up onto the windowsill, cape flying.