You've Got Male

Upon her release, though, once she returned to “acceptable” society, she discovered that where before she had felt uncomfortable, now she was genuinely frightened. In fact, she was terrified of acceptable society. Not just of all the rules, but of all the people, too. There were so many people on the outside, and there were so many different ways to go and be and live. Too many expectations on her. Too many societal dictates to follow. Too many choices. Too much freedom. Too much everything.

And Avery was completely alone in the world once she left prison. Her family had stopped speaking to her the minute they learned of her arrest, had turned their backs on her throughout her trial and incarceration. They’d made it clear—through their attorneys—that she would never, ever, have contact with them again. She was still entitled to her trust fund—alas, there was nothing they could do about that, since Great-Grandfather Nesbitt had set it up in a way that no one but Avery could touch it after she turned eighteen. But she must take her money and run, her family’s attorneys told her, and never return to her family. Because they’d made clear, too, that they weren’t her family anymore.

So she took her money—all fifteen million dollars of it—and ran to a condo on Central Park West. There, she could look out her window at society and observe it from a distance, where it was safe, and never have to be a part of it. Little by little, over the years that followed, Avery stopped leaving her apartment. Whenever she needed something, she shopped online and had things delivered. She called Eastern Star Earth-friendly Market, who happily brought her groceries to her front door. The only time she ventured out was if she or Skittles needed to see a doctor. But on those occasions, she began steeling herself for the torment days, even weeks, in advance, shoring herself up to face a ruthless, unforgiving populace, even if only for an hour or two. And then, just to be on the safe side, she got completely snookered before heading out the door. Because the outside world was much too scary, much too menacing. It wasn’t safe, the way prison was.

“You’re joking.”

When she first heard him speak, Avery thought Dixon was reading her mind. Then she realized what he didn’t believe was that she couldn’t leave home without being incapacitated by fear. This from a man who sported an abraded cheek—never mind who had just released her from leather restraints—after trying to take her for a little ride.

Now, she thought, might be a good time to change the subject.

“Why am I here?” she asked.

Dixon studied Avery Nesbitt in silence, wondering whether or not he should believe her about being terrified of reality. On one hand, she was just flaky enough that he could buy it. On the other hand, she had been corresponding with Sorcerer for a month, and God knew what he’d put her up to.

Still, it was hard to fake the kind of mania that had consumed her when he’d tried to carry her out of her apartment. Dixon was pissed off at himself for how he’d handled that. Or rather, how he hadn’t handled it. Not just that he hadn’t tried any harder to talk to her and explain the situation before resorting to physical removal, but that he’d been so unprepared when she’d gone off the way she had.

But she’d gone off so suddenly and so quickly and with such a powerful detonation, he hadn’t known what to do. Nowhere in his investigation of her had he seen any evidence of her having been formally trained in martial arts. Even her prison file had no record of her ever having participated in any kind of altercation. But the minute he’d tried to remove her from her home, she’d attacked. Viciously.

And damn, she fought dirty.

Of course, he’d eventually realized that she was too sloppy, chaotic and desperate to be trained in martial arts. But he hadn’t been able to figure out what exactly she was doing. When Cowboy heard the commotion coming over his headset, he’d responded to render aid. Between the two of them, they’d managed to wrestle her into a service elevator and then the surveillance van, which Cowboy had parked in the alley behind the building.

But no sooner had they slammed the door shut behind themselves than did Avery go limp in Dixon’s arms. Her eyes had remained open and she had been breathing—though rapidly enough that he’d worried she might hyperventilate—but mentally she’d completely checked out. It was spooky how she shut down the way she did.

She’d begun fighting again when he’d tried to remove her from the van. Ultimately it had taken a half hour—and a half dozen orderlies and nurses—to get her into the restraints. They’d said it was for her own safety, but Dixon suspected it was more for theirs. He hadn’t left her side once since then. He’d been worried about her, something that frankly had surprised him. He’d wanted to be sure she was okay. That had surprised him, too. Now evidently she was okay. So why wasn’t he relaxing?

Maybe, he thought, because he was beginning to realize that okay for Avery Nesbitt wasn’t in any way okay.

He marveled at how anyone who’d just kicked the shit out of him could look so fragile and reserved. Were it not for her ridiculous outfit, she’d even look prim. But what amazed him even more was that he actually found her kind of attractive. In a weird, bohemian, I-really-need-to-be-evaluated kind of way. Though it wasn’t necessarily Avery he was thinking needed the evaluation.

Nevertheless, even after all she’d been through in the past few hours, she was surprisingly pretty. That first night he’d been in her apartment, Dixon had thought her eyes only looked enormous because of her glasses. Nobody, he’d thought, could have eyes that big or lashes that thick. But without the glasses her eyes were even larger. There had been times tonight when he’d nearly lost himself in their bottomless blue depths. And when he’d seen how that one braid had come unbound to leave her hair flowing over one shoulder like a shimmering, inky river, he’d found himself wanting to touch it, to see if it was as silky as it looked. Now that she’d rewoven her hair the way it belonged, he felt like a child denied his favorite plaything.

But Avery Nesbitt wasn’t a plaything. Quite the contrary. If things turned out the way they were planning, she might be the most powerful weapon OPUS had at its disposal.

“Judging by the restraints,” she said, “I’m assuming that I’m under arrest now.”

She was perched on the very edge of the cot, her right hand massaging her left wrist where the restraints had been. A pang of guilt shot through Dixon. Seeing her like this, the thought of restraining her seemed silly. She looked like a delicate bird who’d injured its wing, and he couldn’t quite jibe the wounded chick with the raging terminator of a little while ago.

Agoraphobia. That’s what she said she had. Yet nowhere in his research of her had there been any mention of her suffering from such a condition. Not in her prison records, not in her medical records, nowhere. Either she was lying about it or else she was lying about it. Because OPUS didn’t miss things like that. But if she was lying about being agoraphobic, then what had caused her to go off the way she had back at her place? And if she wasn’t lying about being agoraphobic, why was she suddenly feeling okay again, even though she wasn’t at home? Why wasn’t she still throwing a fit or being catatonic or something?

Just what was the deal with Avery Nesbitt?

He waggled his head back and forth a little. “Well, you are under arrest and you aren’t,” he told her evasively.

She stopped rubbing her wrist and let both hands fall into her lap. “If I’m not under arrest, then I demand to be released immediately,” she said levelly. “And if I am under arrest, you’ll never make it stick, so I demand to be released immediately.”

“What makes you think we won’t make it stick?” he asked. Mostly because he was sure that whatever her argument was, it was bound to be entertaining.

“You didn’t read me my rights,” she told him.

“I don’t have to,” he told her right back.

“Says who?”

“Says the agency I work for.”

“Which, as I’ve said—several times, in fact—I’m still not convinced exists anywhere outside your own delusions.”

“Look around you, Peaches,” Dixon said. “If OPUS doesn’t exist, then where do you think you are?”

“I have no idea,” she replied. “Could be the renovated garage of some psychopath for all I know. Some psychopath like—oh, gee, who could I be thinking of?—you.”

He didn’t rise to the bait. “If you’d studied my ID more closely, you’d have realized it’s totally genuine.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You didn’t give me much of a chance to make up my mind about it. You were too busy tackling, harassing and groping me.”

“Well, if you’d been a better hostess, I wouldn’t have had to tackle or harass you. The groping probably would have happened at some point, though,” he added, trying not to sound too smug. “Somehow it almost always comes to that. Whether I’m working or not.”

“You searched me illegally,” she continued, obviously thinking it best to not dwell on that groping business.

“But it was fun, wasn’t it?” Dixon said. He rather liked the idea of keeping the groping topic alive. Though he hated to think why.

“It was illegal,” she said again.

“Actually it wasn’t,” he assured her. “Our rules of operation fall outside the traditional channels for most law-enforcement agencies. Probably because technically we’re not a law-enforcement agency.”

“You gained entry into my apartment unlawfully,” she pointed out.

“It’s not unlawful when OPUS is doing it,” Dixon told her. “Those untraditional channels again.”

She eyed him narrowly. “Does the Libertarian Party know about your agency?”

He shook his head. “Only the people OPUS wants to know about it know about OPUS. Anyone else finds out, they don’t live long enough to talk about it.”

“I’m going to talk about it,” she told him. “I’m going to tell everyone. Starting with the Libertarian Party.”

“You go ahead and do that,” Dixon told her. “And we’ll make you look like a raving lunatic who doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”

“That won’t be a problem for the Libertarian Party.”

“We’ll make it a problem for them.”

“Is that a threat?”

“Yep.”

“You can’t threaten the Libertarian Party.”

“Peaches, we can threaten any party we like, be it Libertarian, Birthday, Tupperware or Slumber. And they all forget all about us when we do.”

Her jaw set tight, she hissed, “Fascist.”

He smiled. “You’re cute when you’re angry, you know that?”

This time her reply was a snarl. And he hated to say it, but she was even cuter when she did that.

A soft knock on the door made him turn around, and through the wire-reinforced window he saw the round, bland face of Mr. No-Name. Behind him was Tanner Gillespie, who still looked a little shaken from this evening’s encounter.

The boss man pushed a series of numbers on a keypad below the doorknob, and the lock released with a soft click. The already small room shrank to microscopic when the two men entered, making Dixon feel crowded and uncomfortable. Avery seemed not to be bothered at all.

Agoraphobia. Right.

“Ms. Nesbitt,” Dixon’s boss said without awaiting an introduction.

She didn’t reply at first, her attention flickering to Dixon instead. He wasn’t sure what she wanted from him, so he only met her gaze in return. After a moment, she looked at No-Name again.

“Do I know you?” she asked.

“No,” he replied immediately.

“You sure? You look familiar.”

“I’m not.”

“But—”

Before she could say more, he hurried on, “You’re a difficult woman to pin down, Ms. Nesbitt.”

“Not really,” she said, still eyeing him with wary interest. “I never go anywhere. Well, not usually,” she added with a meaningful glance at Dixon. Then to his employer she continued, “I do my best to keep a low profile, but anyone who really wants to find me can.”

“Is that why Adrian Padgett was able to find you?”

Her expression turned puzzled at the question. Convincingly so, Dixon had to admit. His boss, on the other hand, looked convincingly skeptical.

“Who’s Adrian Padgett?” she asked.

“You might know him better as Andrew Paddington,” No-Name said.

Avery glanced at Dixon again, obviously remembering that he had mentioned her online boyfriend earlier tonight, too. “What’s Andrew got to do with any of this?” she asked.

Now his boss turned to Dixon, too, giving him a look that let Dixon know the other man was deferring to him. But only because Dixon was more familiar with the particulars of the case. Under no other circumstances would his superior actually defer to anyone.

Dixon looked back at Avery. “Where did you meet Andrew Paddington?”

Of course, he already knew the answer to that question, but he wanted to see how honestly she would answer it.

“Online,” she told him, surprising him. He had been ready for her to challenge him again and not give him any information at all. “In a Henry James chat room. Why?”

So far, so good, Dixon thought. “And how long have you been corresponding with him?”

She hesitated. “What business is that of yours?”

Dixon ignored the question. Thanks to the OPUS techies at her apartment, who were currently combing through every computer she owned, it wouldn’t be long before they knew every detail of her correspondence with and relationship to Sorcerer anyway. But he wanted her to talk about it, too, to see if her version corresponded to what the techies discovered.

He tried a different tack. “Why were you building that virus?”

Had it not been for the two bright spots of pink that appeared on her cheeks, Dixon would have thought she hadn’t heard the question. “That’s none of your business, either,” she said softly.

“It could send you back to prison, Peaches,” he said. “It’s highly illegal. That makes it my business.”

“No, that makes it a matter for the feds,” she said. She hesitated only a moment before adding, “And stop calling me ‘Peaches.’”

He bit back a smile. He honestly hadn’t been aware he was calling her that. “When it’s a matter of national security, it becomes a matter for OPUS, too.”

“That virus wasn’t a matter of national security,” she said.

“It was last time you built one,” Dixon reminded her. “Hell, it was a matter of international security then. We still get calls from the Vatican.”

“Not to mention Greenland,” his boss added.

Avery expelled a soft sound of capitulation and closed her eyes. Then she lifted a hand to her forehead and rubbed hard at a place just above her right eyebrow. Very wearily, very quietly, she said, “If you want me to explain this, it’s going to take a while.”

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