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Alexandra or the backup crew who are probably on their way right now?"
    "Nothing. I'm leaving, too. If I didn't learn another thing from my father, I learned how to hide."
    Now that was more in keeping with his image of her. To scurry away into the woods. To burrow into a den somewhere in the forest with the other timid, wild things.
    "But I found you," he told her.
    "They found you.
    They'll find you again. "
    "And I'll run again."
    "That's no way to live."
    "That's my problem, isn't it?"
    She was tougher than she looked. Still shaking, shocked right to the core by what he'd accused her father of having done, scm~xl half out of her mind, but tough. She wouldn't tell him. The determination was right there in her fright He battled a grudging admiration for her.
    "All right," he said slowly.
    "I'll tell you this much. The people I work for want that formula, but not to use as a weapon. They want it so they can make sure every trace of it, and the research that led up to it, is destroyed."
    She stepped closer, her eyes narrowing, staring so deeply into his eyes that he felt their touch on his soul. She was trying to see inside him, he realized, trying to see if he was lying to her. She licked her lips, a quick, nervous dart of her pink tongue.
    "How do I know I can believe you?"
    "You don't."
    She stood there a moment, deep in thought. Finally she shook her head.
    "It's all a mistake. My father was a genius and a great man. He wouldn't have done this."
    "He did it."
    "No." She blinked, and he saw tears threatening to spill over.
    "I don't believe it. He'd have told me " She let her voice trail off, uncertainty clouding her eyes.
    "Would he?"
    Maggie Shayne Her chin came up, and her gaze met his.
    "He couldn't have done what you say he did."
    "Okay.
    I say he did it, and you say he didn't. There's only one way to prove which of us is right. "
    She closed her eyes, clenched her teeth.
    "I... I have to think" -- "There's no time to think, Alexandra. I'm not lying when I tell you more men like those two downstairs will be showing up soon. And they'll do everything they said they'd do to you... and then some."
    Her eyes opened and she faced him. He thought maybe she'd come. to a decision.
    "If I tell you ... where to find the papers ... will you leave me alone?"
    He was not going to leave her alone. She'd end up dead if he did.
    "Sure," he lied.
    She swallowed hard, nodding slightly.
    "After ... after my father died, I was go' rag through his things and.
    and there was a receipt. He'd paid for a safe-deposit box in a New York bank. If there is anything to be found, that's where it will be."
    "I want the name of the bank, hon. And then I want the key."
    She frowned, as if searching her mind again. Then she turned and left the room. Torch was on her heels. He followed her down the hall, into a bedroom that had to be hers. The rumpled bed attested to a sleepless night. That beast of a cat peered out from underneath it.
    When she yanked open a dresser drawer,-he half expected her to pull out a file containing all her father's secrets, and he allowed himself a sigh of relief. It was cut off when she only took out a pair of jeans and bent to step into them, tugging them on under the nightgown, snapping them around her narrow waist. Giving him a brief glimpse of supple skin and the dark well of her navel. Making him feel something he had no business feeling.
    "What the hell are you doing?"
      "Getting dressed. I'm going to give you the key and then I'm leaving.
    All right? " She didn't wait for an answer. She dug through the dresser again, emerging this time with a sweatshirt. Turning her back, she tugged the nightgown over her head.
    Torch stood motionless, staring at the length of her bare arms, the curve of her spine, the soft, smooth roundness of her shoulders. And for just an instant, he battled an overwhelming urge to run his hands over her silken skin. To turn her around and look at her breasts and her waist and. He averted his eyes,