You've Got Male

“She’s putting together another one,” he told his boss.

The other man’s eyebrows shot up at that. “She’s what?”

“She’s building another virus,” Dixon said. “I saw part of it myself when I made contact last night. And just that little glimpse told me that it’s ten times worse than the one she sent out ten years ago. With technology being what it is now and with a million times more people being connected to the Internet than there were ten years ago…”

He left the comment unfinished, knowing his boss would comprehend the massive repercussions.

“We’ve got to stop her,” the other man said. “We still get calls from the Vatican. Not to mention Greenland.”

“Then we better hurry,” Dixon said. “Because she could be finished with this thing anytime.”

“I’ll take care of the paperwork right now,” his boss told him. “Get your temporary partner…what’s his name?”

“Gillespie,” Dixon said. “Tanner Gillespie. Code name Cowboy.”

“When’s She-Wolf due back?” his boss asked.

“She’s had to take an indefinite leave of absence,” Dixon said. “Her mother passed away and she has some family matters to see to.”

“Right,” the other man said. “We’ll give her all the time she needs, of course.”

Dixon couldn’t imagine her needing much. One thing about She-Wolf—she never let life get in the way of her job, never let the personal overshadow the professional. She was a lot like him in that regard.

“Collect Cowboy,” his boss told him again, “and bring in Avery Nesbitt today.”

“You sure we have enough on her?”

“We don’t need much.”

Which was true. Even before 9/11, OPUS had operated outside the rules set up for other government agencies. Since then, they’d been moved under the jurisdiction of Homeland Security, their worth reevaluated, their mission refined, their rules of operation revised. Dixon’s boss, he knew, wouldn’t have any trouble getting papers signed that would bring Avery Nesbitt to heel.

“Bring her in,” the man told him. “Now. We’ll have a room waiting for her when you get back.”

TWENTY-FOUR HOURS AFTER deciding to send Andrew a farewell gift—not that she wanted him to fare well, of course, hence the farewell gift—things weren’t working out the way Avery had hoped. She’d been so sure she could create a virus that would turn his hard drive into tapioca—radioactive tapioca at that—but she’d hit a snag. And snags just didn’t happen to her. Well, not since the one that had sent her to prison ten years ago, which, granted, had been a pret-ty ma-jor snag. She’d been extremely careful since then not to set herself up for another one. Then again, being genuinely phobic about leaving one’s home did rather hinder one in getting oneself into trouble.

And that one major snag ten years ago had only come about because she’d been driven by her emotions instead of her intellect. She’d just been too ambitious with this particular project, that was all. Vengefulness did that to a person sometimes—made them too ambitious. Now she’d have to go back and start over with a virus that was less damaging.

Though this one was very intriguing….

Still, it wasn’t as if she could send this thing out anyway. Just building another virus would get her in big trouble. If she actually sent it to Andrew, they’d toss her keister back in the slammer and throw away the key for good. Which was why Avery was building it on this particular laptop—it had no communication function whatsoever. It was the laptop she used for off-line gaming. Which was what building this virus was to her—a game. It was physically impossible for her to send it anywhere beyond her hard drive. Unless, you know, she moved it to another computer. Which, of course, she would never do.

But she’d needed to do something to exorcise Andrew from her system—to serve him his just desserts, if only in her own mental bakery. And building him a virus, even one that would never go anywhere, made her feel vindicated. She was a woman scorned and all that, and you should never underestimate the power of one of those. Even the ones who had been effectively spayed in the ol’ revenge department.

She studied the lines of code again, backtracking to see where she might have gone wrong. She didn’t want to abandon the project completely, because it really was a brilliant bit of work, if she did say so herself. But it wasn’t going to function properly the way she had it set up, theoretically or realistically.

Let’s see…. If she dropped this command and added a different one instead…Or if she clarified that command a little better…Hmm…

What had she done wrong?

She squinted at the numbers and letters and symbols again, then removed her glasses to rub her eyes. She’d been up for thirty-six hours straight now, her mind completely engaged during the majority of them. She hadn’t even stopped working long enough to eat anything since that last bowl of Cajun popcorn. Maybe she needed to take a break for a little while. Clear her head with a nice Starbucks double shot.

Yeah, that’s the ticket.

She tossed her glasses onto the table and stood, reaching as high as she could above her head, arching her back to relieve the kinks that had set in. Oh, man, that felt good. The sudden activity stirred her cat, Skittles, who had curled herself into a meatloaf shape on one of the other dining room chairs. After mimicking Avery’s stretch with one of her own, she leaped down, curling her lithe silver-and-black-striped body around and between Avery’s calves. Avery smiled and bent to pick up the cat, cuddling her under her chin and calming immediately at the soft hum of the animal’s contented purr.

It was always good to have someone in your life you could count on, no matter what. Skittles was that for Avery. She’d shown up as a stray kitten outside the gates of the Rupert Halloran Women’s Correctional Facility during the final month of Avery’s term, and after much urging and cajoling from the inmates, one of the guards had brought the scrawny little thing inside for the women to fuss over. They’d decided whoever was the next released would take the kitten with her. Avery had been the winner. In more ways than one. Skittles had been with her ever since.

She strode, cradling Skittles, into the kitchen. It was still a mess, unfortunately. No friendly little house-cleaning brownies had come by while she’d been working to clean the place up. Dang. Although, speaking of brownies, hadn’t she put some Sara Lee brownies on her grocery list? she recalled now. She put down Skittles and padded in sock feet over to the counter, where she had at least cleared a place for the two sacks of groceries, even if she hadn’t quite gotten around to unpacking them all yet. Well, she’d needed the space on the dining room table to work and then she’d been too preoccupied by that work to worry about putting away anything but the stuff that needed to be refrigerated.

She had dug out the brownie tin and peeled back the paper lid from the foil—oh, boy, just the sight of all that icing was enough to send her into spasms of orgasmic chocolaty euphoria—when there was a knock at her front door. She jerked up her head upon hearing it. Two visitors within a matter of hours was extraordinary. It was also very suspicious.

As quietly as she could, she made her way to the front door and leaned forward to peer through the peephole. When she saw who stood on the other side, her heart kicked up a ragged rhythm and heat flooded her belly. Because it was the delivery guy from Eastern Star Earth-friendly Market again, only this time he wasn’t carrying groceries.

She told herself to ask him what he wanted but feared she already knew. Hey, a scrawny, ill-favored woman living all alone? Avery knew what an easy mark she was to creeps. Look at what had happened with Andrew. Even if this guy was here for a legitimate reason, Avery didn’t feel like answering the door. She had everything she needed, thanks, and preferred to be left alone. She didn’t like talking to strangers. She didn’t like talking to anybody. She liked keeping to herself and hoping the world—and the grocery delivery guy it rode in on—stayed away.

She started to move away from the peephole, pretending she wasn’t home so he’d leave. But he called out through the door, his words stopping her cold.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, Ms. Nesbitt.”

It didn’t surprise her that he knew her name. Mohammed would have told him who the delivery was for. But the very nature of her in-home business was to create online security systems for other people and businesses. She’d learned her trade by making her own system—her own life—secure. She’d done everything she knew to do to keep herself safe. It always creeped her out whenever she was identified, regardless of how innocently that identification came. And the fact that the identifier now was standing on the other side of her front door, which was the only way in—or out—of her apartment, made her feel more than a little nauseous.

Pressing her eye to the peephole again, she asked, “What do you want?”

“I want you to open the door, Ms. Nesbitt.”

Yeah, she’d just bet he did. “Why?”

“Just open the door, please.”

Oh, right. She’d just invite a sexual predator right into her home.

“Not without a good reason,” she told him, wondering why she was even bothering. She should be heading for the phone right now to call the cops. Still, she was safe enough behind the four dead bolts and chain. And there might be a chance the guy had come here for a perfectly legitimate reason. Maybe. Possibly. In an alternate universe someplace where women didn’t have to be on guard about their personal safety twenty-four hours a day.

“Because you and I need to have a little chat,” he said.

Okay, so much for the Clever Banter portion of their program, Avery thought. Now it was time to move along to the ever-popular Alert the Authorities segment.

“That’s not going to happen,” she said. “And if you don’t leave right now, I’ll call the police.”

“Peaches, I am the police,” he said.

Oh. Well. That made a difference. Or rather, it would have made a difference. If he hadn’t been lying through his teeth. And if he hadn’t just called her Peaches, something that made her want to open the door just so she could smack him upside the head.

Just to be sure, though, she pressed her eye to the peephole again to see if maybe he was displaying a badge. He wasn’t. He was just standing out there wearing the same clothes he’d had on the last time she’d seen him…how many hours ago? She performed some quick mental math…six minus four…drop the three, make it a two…carry the one…and that would be—oh, bugger it, she was too tired for this—last night. His driving cap was still turned backward, his leather bomber jacket was still hanging open over a heavy sweater and blue jeans, and his hands were still stuffed into pockets that could hold anything from chloroform to an automatic weapon.

“Policemen identify themselves right away,” she said, still gazing through the peephole. “And they carry badges. And ID. Now go away. Or I’ll call the cops. The real cops.”

His shoulders rose and fell then, as if he were sighing deeply, and he pulled one hand out of one pocket to flip something open. Whatever kind of identification he was trying to show her, it was in a folding case, with some kind of photo and writing on the left side and some kind of badgish-looking thing on the right. She’d have to open the door to get a better look at it. But she wasn’t going to do that. Because even through the fish-eye she could tell it was phony as hell. She’d seen police ID before. Hell, she’d seen federal ID before. Up close and personal, too, as a matter of fact. And whatever this guy was holding, it wasn’t an ID for New York’s finest or the feds.