Once outside the building she hurried to her car and only paused to take in full, mind-clearing breaths of fresh air. Her fingers trembled as she fumbled with her keys. She kept telling herself that her reactions were bordering on insanity. She had met a man, a very attractive and charismatic man, under tense circumstances. The feelings that had flooded through her were merely a release of that tension—that was all.

But the more she tried to convince herself that she was once again in command of her feelings, the more helpless and vulnerable she felt. Not since her marriage to Lee had she let any man come so close to her, and the powerful magnetism and raw energy that she felt when she met Kane frightened her. She couldn’t, wouldn’t, let her emotions get so out of hand. She had to avoid being alone with him, for she couldn’t trust herself around him. In the past she had always scoffed at the kind of chemical attraction that had received so much public acceptance. Now she wasn’t so sure.

She started the engine and roared out of the parking lot, all the while mumbling to herself that she was acting irrationally.

Kane sat at his desk long after Erin had made her hasty departure. He had waited by the window until he had seen her actually leave the building and drive away. Now that she was safely gone, he lifted the long manila envelope from his briefcase.

The ordinary printouts that had seemed so dull yesterday had taken on a new luster and significance today. The desk chair groaned as he settled into it and pulled out the neatly typed report marked O’TOOLE, ERIN. He reread the information on its pages, slowly turning the facts over in his mind.

One piece of information leaped out at him. It seemed that Miss O’Toole had for a while been Mrs. Lee Sinclair before reassuming her maiden name after her divorce. Kane frowned deeply and inexplicably to himself. Erin had been employed by the bank for over ten years. In the past eight, with the aid of Mitchell Cameron, she had been rapidly promoted until she had reached her present position as second in command of the legal department. Quite an accomplishment for a thirty-two-year-old woman.

Kane rubbed his chin thoughtfully as he continued to study the file on Erin. It seemed that she had purchased a building a couple of years ago—with the help of an employee loan granted, of course, by Cameron. And just recently she had again applied for more funds, to renovate the building.

Several items didn’t add up in Kane’s mind. Erin seemed forever in need of money, but she had loaned her ex-husband a tidy sum about a year ago. A copy of the canceled check made payable to Lee Sinclair had been included in her file; Jim Haney had done his research well. The fact that she seemed always in debt was a bad sign. Also, for such a young woman, she had been promoted rapidly—too rapidly. Bad sign number two. And, from Cameron’s comments on her personnel evaluation reports, Mitchell Cameron had trusted her completely. Bad sign number three.