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dead before you tell me what this is all about."
    He didn't like her caring for him wound. And he knew why. He tried not to think of Marcy, but he thought of her anyway, and those thoughts brought searing pain with them. Marcy, small and soft and fair. She used to touch him this way, her hands gentle. They might not have been in love, but they'd been lovers. He couldn't remember it, not the way he should. But he knew it had happened. Often. She'd squeeze scented o'tl onto her fingers and rub it all over his back at the end of a stressful day.
    Marcy. Gone now. Barely enough left of her to btmj. Nothing at all left of his sons. Their markers stood over empty graves. All because he'd failed.
    And him, here, studying the shape of some other woman's breasts. He closed his eyes as the pain intensified.
    Alexandra pulled her hand away.
    "Did I hurt you?" "No." His voice came out like tree bark.
    "Are you going to tell me? What this is about, I mean?"
    She was nearly finial led She'd get away from him in a minute, and he'd snap out of this morbid guilt-fest.
    When she did, he looked up.
    "You mean to say you really don't know?"
    She shook her head, her gaze pinned to his, too brown and too innocent.
    "Then why did you quit your job in the city and move out here with him?"
    She shrugged.
    "Father was determined, and I ... I couldn't very well let him come out here by himself. He was old, and..." She sighed.
    "His mind wasn't just right. He thought people were out to get him ...." She glanced through the open door, toward the stairs, and shuddered a little.
    "Yeah, well, your old man wasn't as crazy as you thought he was."
    She blinked at him, as if reaching the same conclusion. Then she turned to the basin, on the pretense of washing her hands. But he was too astute not to notice that she 'only turned on the cold tap, or that she held her wrists turned up to the flow to counteract the shock.
    "What was it my father was working on? What are all you people after?"
    He didn't like her lumping him in with all the others, and almost said so. But he stopped himself. He didn't give a damn what she thought of him.
      "I'm not at liberty to give you details. Suffice it to say that he created a formula that could be used as a weapon, and as a weapon it would be more devastating than the A-bomb."
    She shut the water off, dabbed her hands with a towel and lifted her face to the mirror in front of her, meeting his gaze there.
    "My father wouldn't be involved in anything like that."
    "Your father was involved in something just like that. When he realized what he had, he must have finally understood what the repercussions could be. He took all his notes, erased his files from' the computer and vanished from the face of the earth, for all intents and purposes.
    Problem was, he was sloppy. He left a page from a notebook. The formula wasn't on it, but there were enough hints to make it clear what he had.
    The information obviously leaked. Now every two-bit despot and terrorist leader in the world is itching to get his hands on him and his formula."
    Clutching the towel in her hands, she turned to face him. "And which two-bit despot or terrorist leader sent you?"
    He blinked. Her voice was a little stronger now, and her eyes had gone cold.
    "That's classified."
    "Then so is anything I might know."
    He rose slowly from the chair," recognizing a standoff when he saw one.
    He hadn't expected it. Not from a woman as easily frightened as this one was. Seemed there was a little toughness in there after all.
    Buried . deeply buried. But there. The path to her steel lay in her old man. Say something bad about the sainted Alexander Holt, and find his daughter's anger.
    But he couldn't tell her what she wanted to know. Hell, the very fact that I-CAT existed was top~ecret. And it had to stay that way.
    "I can't tell you."
    "Then you might as well leave."
    He smiled just a little, knowing he had her beat.
    "And what do you plan to do with those two downstairs,