Jayne Castle - Dark Light

Fontana rezzed the intercom. "Harlan, would you come in here for a minute? I've got a question about the Foundation files."

"I'm sorry, sir, Mr. Ostendorf has gone to lunch," Dray Levine said. "Is there anything I can do?"

Fontana felt everything inside him turn stone cold. "Did Harlan go down to the cafeteria?"

"No, sir. He said something about going out to a restaurant."

"What restaurant?"

"He didn't say, sir."

Fontana reached for the phone and entered the number of the Curtain's newsroom. Matt answered on the second ring.

"This is Fontana. I want to talk to Sierra."

"Huh?" Matt sounded bewildered. "She left a few minutes ago to have lunch with you."

"The hell she did. Who picked her up?"

"She said you were sending a limo for her. She went downstairs, and that was the last we've seen of her. To tell you the truth, we were starting to get a little worried."

Gripping the phone very tightly, he got to his feet. "What was your first clue?"

"Elvis has left the building."

"Skip the Elvis jokes."

"I'm serious. He's gone. One minute he was in his balloon basket, and the next he just disappeared. The door was open, but no one saw him leave. What's wrong?"

"I think Sierra has just been kidnapped by my executive assistant."

"Shit," Matt whispered, stunned. "I told her you weren't going to propose a Covenant Marriage over lunch."

IT WAS MIDDAY, BUT THE COMBINATION OF THE DENSE fog and the heavily tinted car windows made the view so dark it might as well have been midnight. Sierra sat in the rear seat of the vehicle. The car doors had locked automatically as soon as she was inside.

She hadn't bothered with a seat belt. If she got an opportunity to make a break for it, she did not want to waste any time unbuckling.

They were headed deep into the neighborhood near the south wall of the Dead City, the most dilapidated section of the Quarter. Harlan was forced to drive slowly because of the dense mist and the narrow streets. She could see the back of his head, but there had been no conversation between them. Harlan had not lowered the window that separated the driver's seat from the passenger compartment.

He brought the limo to a halt in an alley and climbed out from behind the wheel. She heard the door to her left unlock. Harlan yanked it open.

"Get out," he ordered. He held the mag-rez steady, pointing it at her midsection. "Hurry."

"This is a Guild car," she said, sliding slowly across the seat. "Fontana probably has a way to track it."

"I'm not an idiot. This isn't from the Guild fleet. It's from a commercial limo service. Besides, Fontana has no idea that I'm here with you. As far as he's concerned, I'm his ever-faithful executive assistant, one of the few people he thinks he can trust in the organization. And he'll go on thinking that when I help him try to find you after you disappear."

Slowly she stood. "Why do I have to disappear?"

"Because you have been a great nuisance, and you are poised to become even more of a problem. I have no choice but to get rid of you. You have destroyed one of my enterprises. I will not allow you to destroy the other."

Shocked, she could only stare at him. "You were involved with the ghost juice business?"

"Yes, of course." He motioned her toward the entrance of a nearby building. "There were three of us all along. Jenner, Patterson, and myself." He motioned her forward with the nose of the gun. "But the other two were thick-headed hunters. They knew nothing about how to set up a profitable business enterprise. I was the one who was responsible for the pricing and marketing strategy. I'm the one who suggested we partner with the Riders to handle distribution and transportation. Jenner and Patterson took all the credit, but the truth is, they would have been nowhere without my genius."

"You built your business on slave labor."

"The least expensive kind." He herded her toward the entrance of a nearby building. "Jenner and Patterson needed me, but they never made me an equal partner."

"You mean they didn't give you your fair share?"

" Exactly ." Rage bubbled in the word. "They said that I was just their accountant. They said they were the ones taking all the risks. I only got a fraction of what I was worth, not the full one-third partnership I deserved."

"That all changed when Fontana and the other members of the Council decided to force Jenner to retire, didn't it?"

"I saw my opportunity at last. Patterson was equally happy to get rid of Jenner. We both knew that he had become a liability."

"Who murdered Jenner? You or Patterson?"

"I took care of the matter. No one took any notice of me in the hospital. Everyone assumed I was there to handle the insurance paperwork. Even Patterson believed that Jenner's death was from natural causes. I saw no reason to tell him the truth. He might have used the information against me."

"No one pays any attention to the accountant," she said quietly.

"And that is just the way I like it, Ms. McIntyre." He motioned with the gun again. "Open the door and go inside. Hurry. I'm on my lunch hour."

"What a coincidence. So am I. Guess this means that neither of us will be dining at the Amber Club today."

"Open the door."

There was a dangerous instability in Harlan's voice now. It occurred to her that he was almost as nervous as she. Sure, he had already murdered one person, but shooting a woman in cold blood was a little different from introducing a dose of poison into an IV. Harlan was an accountant, after all, not a professional hit man.

Maybe that was the good news, she thought. If he wasn't a pro, he might not be a good shot.

She took one last look around, but she knew it was futile to expect rescue. The alley was empty. She twisted the knob, pushed open the door, and moved into what looked like the back room of an old shop. No one had cleaned for years. Grime covered the windows. A dank, musty smell rolled toward her out of the darkness.

"The door to your right," Harlan said quickly. "There's a staircase that leads down to a hole-in-the-wall."

He wasn't planning to shoot her. Definitely a good news-bad news sort of day. She tightened her grip on her purse.

"You're going to abandon me in the catacombs?" she asked.

"Yes, Ms. McIntyre, you will disappear underground like so many other unfortunates. Sadly, that sort of thing happens when a person goes down below without tuned amber. A few steps into the maze, and you will be lost forever."

She opened the door of what looked like a storage closet and saw a well of darkness. The cloak of claustrophobia closed around her, threatening to choke her. This is your only chance. If you balk, he'll shoot you right here . Intuitively she knew that the tunnels were her best hope.

"Here, take this flashlight," Harlan said. He removed the device from his pocket and tossed it toward her.

She managed to catch it. It wasn't easy, because her hands were shaking, and she was trying to juggle her purse at the same time. She got the flashlight rezzed and aimed the narrow beam into the darkness.

The old metal staircase was a spiral design. It twisted down into endless night. She descended cautiously, one hand clutching the railing. Harlan followed.

"Hurry," he snapped. "We don't have much time."

"Yes, I know, you're on your lunch hour. Tell me, do you really believe that Fontana won't figure out that you're responsible for my disappearance?"

"As I explained a few minutes ago, he trusts me. He even turns a lot of his personal business over to me."

Understanding sliced through her.

"Oh, damn," she whispered. "Of course. You handled the purchase of the mansion for him, didn't you? That was when you discovered the journal in the gallery and found the chart for that sector of the tunnels."