You've Got Male

“That virus on your laptop,” he said.

Her stomach pitched. “What virus?”

“The one you’re building,” he said. “The one I saw when I was here before. It could send you right back to the slammer, Peaches. Not to mention it’s powerful enough to take out half the galaxy.”

Avery didn’t know whether to feel relieved or more terrified. Maybe he wasn’t here to physically assault her. But how did he know about her time in prison? And how did he know what she’d been doing on her laptop unless he had some familiarity with computer viruses himself? And if he had that much familiarity with computer viruses, why was he working as a delivery guy for the Eastern Star Market?

Unless, gee, maybe he wasn’t a delivery guy for the Eastern Star Earth-friendly Market at all. And if that was the case, then who the hell was he? Could his ID have actually been legit? Before Avery had a chance to ask him anything more, he began to speak again, saying things that made her even more confused.

“And that bastard, Andrew Paddington?” he added, sending more fire spilling through her belly. “He’s not worth it, Avery. Trust me. That guy is a class-A prick who preys on people like you. Don’t get involved in his schemes. Because you’ll end up right back in the Rupert Halloran Women’s Correctional Facility. And next time not only will you do the full time, you’ll earn yourself a bonus stay. And Lana and Petrovsky and Mouse and all those other friends you had inside? They’re not there anymore. You’ll have to start from square one again, building your posse. And with your lack of people skills, Peaches, I don’t think you want to have to do that.”

With every new word he spoke Avery felt her panic rise, and it was through no small effort that she managed to tamp it back down again. The last thing she needed right now was to have a panic attack. God, she hadn’t had one for months—not since that last time she took Skittles to the vet. She’d begun to think maybe she was coming out of all that. Even in this situation tonight, where panic would have been a perfectly logical and understandable response, she’d managed to hang on and not succumb to an attack. And she wouldn’t succumb now, she told herself. She wouldn’t. She closed her eyes and inhaled a deep breath, holding it until the fear began to ease.

But how did he know all that stuff about her? she wondered as she opened her eyes again…and immediately began to drown in the frozen green depths of his eyes. Certainly the news of her arrest and conviction was a matter of public record. Hell, it’d been a media circus at the time. But that had been ten years ago. Few people talked about any of that anymore. Fewer still remembered her name. Virtually none of them knew how her life had been in prison or even to which facility she’d been sent. Certainly none knew the names of her closest friends inside, as this man did. And how did he know about Andrew? She’d told no one about him. She’d had no one to tell about him.

“Who are you?” she asked again.

He smiled that sinister smile of his. “Well, now, Peaches, if you’d looked at my ID, you wouldn’t have to ask that question.”

“Your ID looks like something that came out of a box of Cap’n Crunch,” she told him, ignoring the nickname.

“Oh, and you’d know, since you pretty much live on stuff like Cap’n Crunch.”

“Who the hell are you?” she demanded for a third time, more forcefully now. Her fear for her personal safety was quickly being usurped by her indignation at having her privacy—and her person—violated. If it turned out this guy wasn’t an actual threat to her physical well-being, she was going to bitch-slap him up one side of Park Avenue and down the other.

He eyed her thoughtfully for a moment, as if he were weighing several possible outcomes to the situation. As he did, Avery weighed an outcome he couldn’t possibly be anticipating, no matter how much he thought he knew about her. And she was reasonably certain it would be the one outcome that ultimately occurred. For now, though, she contented herself in simply lying limp beneath him, hoping it might lull him into a false sense of security.

It did.

Because he told her, “I’m going to let you up, okay? And I’m going to show you my ID again, and you’re going to look at it. And then we’re going to have a little chat and then we’re going to take a little drive someplace, where you can chat with a few more people, too.”

Oh, yeah. No worries here. Whoever this guy was, he’d driven way past a false sense of security and was now touring the state of delusion. This was going to work even better than Avery had planned.

She nodded slowly and said, “Okay.”

Still obviously wary—he wasn’t stupid, after all—the guy began to push himself off and away from her. She waited until he was seated beside her on the sofa, then carefully maneuvered herself into a sitting position, too, at the opposite end. She inhaled another deep breath and pushed both braids over her shoulders.

“Okay,” she said again. “Let me see your ID.”

He lifted his hands up in front of himself, palms out, keeping one that way while the other dipped beneath his open jacket to extract the leather case he’d held up to the peephole. Gingerly he extended it toward her, and just as gingerly Avery accepted it, opening it to study the information inside.

The badgish-looking thing on the right was a rendition of a badge with a symbol on it, if not an actual badge itself, though it was one Avery had never seen before. And since her incarceration she’d done a lot of research into the various law-enforcement fields of the American justice system. Hey, she’d had some time on her hands. And she’d figured then—just as she did now—that it was always good for one to know everything one could about one’s enemies. As a result, she was familiar with some pretty obscure tactical outfits and task forces about which other people had heard very little, if anything at all.

But this badge and its symbol were like nothing she’d ever seen. Although it had the traditional shield shape, there were few identifying marks on it. No numbers or letters at all. A border that resembled a heavy chain wound around the outer edge, surrounding what looked like a lance and a smaller shield at its center.

The left side of the case was considerably more revealing. Or it would have been had Avery believed a single word of the information recorded there. Which she didn’t. According to this man’s identification, his name was Santiago Dixon and he worked for something called the Office of Political Unity and Security, a bogus-sounding operation if ever there was one. Unless he’d just sauntered shaken-not-stirred out of an Ian Fleming novel, she wasn’t buying the name of him or his employer any more than she bought the part where it said his city of birth was Macon, Georgia.

She glanced up from his identification and smiled blandly. “And the reason I should believe this is a legitimate document is because…?”

He smiled blandly back. “Because it’s a legitimate document,” he told her. “Except for my name and birthplace, naturally. They never put any personal identification on our ID.”

“Then what’s your real name?” she asked.

He smiled his benign smile again. “If I told you that, Peaches, I’d have to kill you.”

“Right.”

“No, really,” he said. In a way that made her think he wasn’t kidding.

“So I’m supposed to believe that this—” she glanced at the ID again “—Office of Political Unity and Security is legitimate?”

“Doesn’t matter if you believe it,” he replied. “It’s legit.”

“How come I’ve never heard of it?”

“Peaches, I’ve never heard of jalape?o-and-Gorgonzola ice cream. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”

Well, gosh, who could argue with reasoning like that?

“Look, Santiago,” she said.

“Please, call me Dixon,” he told her in a voice that was the picture of politeness. “Everyone does. Well, for this assignment anyway.”

Avery refrained from commenting on that. And before her life had a chance to slip any further into the surreal than it already had, she said, “What do you want? Why are you here?”

“I’ll be happy to answer both of those questions,” he told her.

“Good.”

“Once you and I are in a secure environment.”

“Meaning?” she asked.

“Meaning someplace other than here,” he told her. Then, very graciously, he further offered, “I’ll drive.”

She’d really been afraid he was going to say something like that at some point. It was what had caused her to picture the outcome to this situation that he couldn’t be anticipating himself, what was going to ruin her day and her week and her month worse than anything else that had already happened tonight would. The only consolation she found in the realization was that it would ruin his day and his week and his month even more.

She folded his ID case and handed it back to him. “I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” she told him.

He accepted the case graciously and returned it to the inside pocket of his jacket. “I can’t wait to hear why.”

“Because I’m not going anywhere with you,” she said simply.

He expelled a sound that was a mixture of intention and resolution. “Actually you are,” he told her. “I was hoping you’d come along peacefully, but…” He shrugged. “Guess it’ll just have to be against your will now, that’s all.”

“That’s all?” she echoed incredulously. “You’re going to make me go with you? Against my will? Even though it will be a direct violation of my basic human rights, not to mention my civil rights, not to mention illegal?”

“It won’t be illegal,” he assured her with total confidence.