Dark Light by Randy Wayne White Read Free Book Online Page A

He’s due back in about ten minutes.”
    â€œGood. When he returns, please tell him I want to see him immediately.”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    Fontana studied Dray’s ill-concealed astonishment. Rumors and gossip flowed rapidly through the Guild. The news of his marriage would be common knowledge within the organization in less than an hour. He smiled, satisfied.
    â€œMy work here is done,” he said.
    He closed the door, went back to his desk, and sat down. Dray wasn’t the only one who was still a little stunned.
    He had never intended to suggest a marriage contract to Sierra. The original plan had been to offer her a full-time bodyguard and around-the-clock protection until he had cleaned up the mess.
    But he had revised the strategy in a heartbeat when she walked through his door. The result was that at five o’clock today, he would have himself a bride.
    He’d never had one of those before. There had never been time for anything other than brief affairs. He’d been too busy. Surviving his career at the Bureau and the lightning-fast climb up through the ranks of the Crystal Guild that had followed had required his full attention.
    Tonight he would go to bed a married man. True, it was only a Marriage of Convenience, which was, admittedly, barely a step up from having an affair. He also knew that his new bride viewed the move as purely a business arrangement.
    Nevertheless, it felt real.

Chapter 3
    â€œWHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON, SIERRA?” IVOR RUNTLEY, better known to his staff, behind his back, as the Runt, flattened his big hands on Sierra’s desk and loomed over her. “And don’t try to tell me that you’ve been dating Fontana in secret for months, because I’m not buying it.”
    Sierra glanced quickly around. Fortunately, it was lunchtime. They had the newsroom to themselves.
    Runtley was anything but a runt. Sixty-one years old and as bald as a golf ball, he was built like a two-ton boulder. His sheer mass often caused people to make the mistake of thinking that he was as dumb as a rock. It was a serious misconception.
    Once upon a time Runtley had been an investigative journalist. He had worked for a mainstream paper, the Crystal Herald . But somewhere along the line he had become obsessed with the mysteries left behind by the aliens. Rumor had it that he had gotten badly fried by a ghost while investigating a story. He had blamed the Guild, claiming it had tried to silence him. Whatever the truth of the matter, the experience had left him with an illogical fixation that had led him to file increasingly bizarre and unsubstantiated stories at the Herald . He had eventually been fired.
    His response had been to scrape together enough money to buy the Curtain , a nearly moribund little weekly that had been about to go out of business altogether. Within months he had transformed it into a sensational, moneymaking tabloid that now published daily. Sierra knew he didn’t give a damn about the celebrity gossip or the scandals that were the lifeblood of the paper. All he cared about was having the opportunity to print what he considered the truth about alien and Guild secrets.
    Like everyone else at the Curtain , Sierra was pretty sure Runtley was crazy when it came to the subject of the long-vanished aliens, but she liked him, anyway. He had given her a job, after all, even though she’d come to him with absolutely no journalism credentials whatsoever. All she’d had six months ago was a growing conviction that something was very wrong on the streets of the city’s Old Quarter and that the Guild was involved. Runtley had hired her instantly. When it came to the subject of the Guild, they shared a mutual distrust that some felt bordered on paranoia.
    Her boss wasn’t the only person she liked here at the paper. After a depressingly checkered career in a variety of jobs, she was finally in a position that felt right; maybe not perfect but,