The headline was accompanied by a photo of Fontana getting out of a sleek, black Raptor sports car. Phil Trager, the Curtain's, staff photographer, had grabbed the shot on the fly, but it was a good one. In the picture Fontana looked a lot like he did in person: dangerous. But the impression was not a function of his looks or size. Fontana dominated his environment with his seemingly effortless aura of controlled power.

Brock Jenner had been a big, thick man, both physically and, in Sierra's opinion, intellectually. There was no question that he'd wielded power. Self-control, however, had certainly not been his forte. He'd been a heartless womanizer, and his temper had been explosive. Although he had officially died of natural causes, Sierra suspected that the reason he was no longer around was directly related to his habit of stabbing his fellow associates in the back. She wondered if the last back he had taken aim at had been Fontana's. If so, he had miscalculated badly.

If Jenner had been a bull of a man, Fontana was a specter-cat. You wouldn't know he was hunting you until you saw the fangs, and by then it would be too late.

He was a couple of inches above average height; not so tall as to tower over everyone in the room, yet somehow you would always know that he was the man in charge. No one would ever call him handsome, Sierra thought, but that did not matter; not to her at any rate. What he was, was fascinating. As in, the most intriguing man she had ever met. No wonder the hair on the back of her neck refused to settle down. Her pulse had been skipping along at high speed from the moment she had walked into the room. She was intensely, intimately aware of him in a way she could not explain.

There was nothing nervous or fidgety about Fontana. You got the feeling that it would require, at the very minimum, a volcanic eruption right here in his office to catch him by surprise. Even then, you would probably discover that he had contingency plans for such an event.