You've Got Male (10 page)

“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
inter
national 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.”

“Peaches,” Dixon said—he’d call her that if he wanted to, dammit—“we got no place else to be.”

A
VERY’S EXPLANATION, WHICH
came out over hours of interrogation, corresponded exactly to what Dixon already knew and what the techies found at her apartment. That was his first clue that maybe they’d been wrong in assuming she was working with Sorcerer. His second clue came with the discovery of tons of information on her hard drive about agoraphobia that she’d downloaded from the Net. Evidently Avery was one for self-analysis, self-diagnosis and self-treatment. Except that her self-professed self-treatment on those occasions when she had to leave her apartment seemed to involve large quantities of scotch. Call him an alarmist, but Dixon wondered if maybe it was time to call in an expert. Besides Johnnie Walker, he meant.

Evidently she’d even been telling the truth about not sending out the virus, too, since it existed only on a laptop that had no communication capacity. It would have been impossible for her to send it anywhere from there, and she hadn’t saved it to anything but her hard drive. Not to mention the virus itself wouldn’t work the way she had it set up. Maybe with a few modifications it would, but Dixon didn’t see any way to make it work unless she started over again.

In other words, Avery had built a dud. But that was appropriate, since her boyfriend turned out to be a dud, too.

What ultimately pushed Dixon off the fence and into her camp was the way Avery looked when she talked about that dud, Andrew Paddington. She seemed genuinely hurt by the guy’s betrayal. And she seemed genuinely shocked that he hadn’t been who he claimed to be. This from a woman who lived her life on the Internet and should know better than anyone how people misrepresented themselves there. That was when Dixon decided Avery was innocent. In more ways than one.

Unfortunately she was OPUS’s only tie to Sorcerer, public enemy number one. Which made her their best chance to catch him. Whether she liked it or not. For now, though, Dixon played along with the laughable suggestion that she had a choice in the matter.

So he listened silently as No-Name explained it to Avery. How her beloved Andrew was actually an evildoer named Adrian Padgett who was wanted by OPUS for a variety of crimes. How she was the only known person to currently have a solid, credible, workable connection to said evildoer. How they’d deduced from their investigation that Adrian had deliberately sought her out after stumbling onto her file while working for CompuPax in Indianapolis, a company to whom Avery had sold a software design at the tender age of fourteen. How he was up to no good and needed a computer genius like Avery to help him achieve it. How he was trying to win her over to his way of thinking by luring her into a romantic relationship where he could manipulate her and use her, because that was what Adrian did with every woman he met.

And then more. About how Adrian thought her weak and gullible and completely enamored of him. How he had no idea that she was on to him now, knew who he was and what he had done and that she was cooperating with OPUS. How her relationship with the criminal formerly known as Andrew was OPUS’s only hope,
America’s
only hope—yeah, play that patriotism card, Big Guy—to prevent the man from committing who knew what kind of international crimes. How it was Avery’s civic duty to work with OPUS to bring the son of a bitch to heel.

How in building her virus, however inoperative, they could have her tossed right back into jail. And how OPUS might be persuaded to never mention it to anyone and bury the evidence if she helped them out in this endeavor.

What a guy.

Six hours after Dixon had yanked Avery Nesbitt from her home, her reality, her safety and her life, his boss asked her a question that would change all of it.

“What do you say, Ms. Nesbitt? Will you help us catch him?”

To her credit, Avery didn’t even flinch. But it wasn’t Dixon’s boss she looked at when she replied to the question. It was at Dixon himself. “Yes,” she said evenly. “I’ll help you. Like I really have a choice.” But she added a caveat of her own. “And after you’ve put this guy away,” she said softly, firmly, “I want you people to promise me that for the rest of my life I will be left alone.”

“Done,” Dixon’s boss agreed without hesitation.

And Dixon could see by her expression that, incredibly, Avery actually believed him.

“Can I go home now?” she asked.

“Soon,” No-Name told her. “After we figure out our plan of attack. But if you’d like, we can find you a room more comfortable than this one for the time being.”

Slowly she pushed herself up from the cot, but when she looked at the door, she went a little pale and sat back down. “I’ll just stay here for now,” she said. “But I might as well start preparing for the trip home.” Again she looked at Dixon. “I’ll need a glass, a bottle of Black Label, a bucket of ice and a lemon. I prefer my scotch on the rocks with a twist.”

A
S
D
IXON WAITED FOR
A
VERY
to order last call on her own personal happy hour a floor below the one where he and his employer had found a room to chat, he leaned against a wall and silently willed the Big Guy to hurry up and conclude a conversation on his cell phone which seemed—from this end anyway—to consist largely of affirmative grunting. Eventually his superior oinked out a goodbye and disconnected, turning his attention to Dixon.

“Here’s how it’s going to play out,” he said.

Ooh, Dixon was on pins and needles.

“You’re going to take Avery Nesbitt back to her place long enough for her to pack some clothes and make any necessary arrangements for leaving town.”

Dixon narrowed his eyes at the other man. “Leave town? Why? I figured Cowboy and I would just keep tabs on her at her place.”

His boss shook his head. “Too risky for what we have planned. She has too many neighbors in that building and she’s in the heart of the biggest city in the country. We still don’t know what Sorcerer is up to, and if we can avoid having her in such a densely populated area, then we need to do that. So Avery Nesbitt’s going home.”

“Home?” Dixon echoed. “You just said you want her
out
of her apartment.”

“No, I mean she’s going
home
home,” his boss told him. “To her parents’ estate in East Hampton.”

Okay, now Dixon was really confused. He’d learned from his investigation into Avery’s background—and she had confirmed it herself during their recently concluded interview—that she was estranged from her family. More than estranged, actually. The other Nesbitts had severed all ties to her when she was arrested, and she’d had no personal contact with a single member of her family since she was taken into custody. She wasn’t welcome at her parents’ estate. She didn’t want to go there. It made no sense to send her. And Dixon said so.

“It’s safer for her,” the other man said. “If Sorcerer discovers she’s cooperating with us, he’ll know where to find her in Manhattan, and I wouldn’t put it past him to come after her.”

“Oh, and he won’t know where to look for her in East Hampton?” Dixon asked. “You can bet he knows as much about Avery as we do. Except for us having found her, too, and having exposed him to her. And even that might not take long for him to discover.”

“Which means he also knows that she has no contact with her family,” his superior pointed out. “He won’t have any reason to think she’s staying with them. He won’t have any reason to think she’s not home. And even if he does find her there, the place is a fortress. Desmond Nesbitt is one of the wealthiest men in the country. He’s an even bigger security freak than his daughter is. She’ll be safer if she’s there,” he repeated. “And so will the city of New York.”

Dixon didn’t buy it. She’d be safest at her apartment with him, since he’d planned to move in with her until they caught Sorcerer. There were too many things that could go wrong by removing her from her natural habitat, not the least of which was another one of those nuclear-holocaust panic attacks. He told his boss that, too.

“She’ll be fine,” the other man said simply.

She’d be a reeking distillery was what she’d be, Dixon thought. Aloud, however, he only reiterated, “It’s too dangerous for her to leave her home, and it makes no sense to insist she do it.”

“She’s going to East Hampton,” his boss stated again in the sort of voice Dixon knew better than to argue with. And before Dixon had a chance to say anything more—not that he planned to say anything more, not with that voice coming at him with both barrels—the other man continued, “Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to go home right now and pack a bag for yourself for a week. And you’re going to tell whatshisname…your partner now…”

“Cowboy,” Dixon supplied.

“Right. Cowboy. You’re going to tell him to go home and pack for a week, too. Then you, Dixon, will come back here and get Avery, take her to her apartment and tell her to pack for a week, too.”

Oh, that ought to be entertaining, he thought.

“Then you two will rendezvous with Cowboy at the Nesbitt estate in East Hampton. He’ll brief the family before your arrival. We’ll arrange to have all the necessary equipment sent up, and once you’re all settled—”

Like anyone could
settle
Avery, Dixon thought.

“—then you’re going to plug her in and watch her go.”

Dixon wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that. “Sir?” he asked.

“The techs are finished with her computers. Have her take whatever she needs to East Hampton and get her all set up so that she can establish contact with Sorcerer again as soon as possible. Tell her to pick up with him where the two of them left off and draw him out. Literally. She’s to arrange a meeting with him somewhere in the city. In person. And then she’s to go in to meet him. In person. That’s when we’ll nab the son of a bitch.”

“Now wait a minute,” Dixon interrupted. “You never said anything about this. We can’t let her meet Sorcerer face-to-face. You yourself just said she’s not safe in the city. And that the city isn’t safe with her in it. You add a meeting with Sorcerer to the mix, and we’re going to have a disaster on our hands.”

What the hell was going on? Dixon wondered. He’d been under the impression that yes, they were going to use Avery to lure Sorcerer out from whatever rock he was hiding under, but there was no reason for her to be there for the meeting. That was his job. His and Cowboy’s. Or his and She-Wolf’s, if she ever got back from Vegas.

His boss frowned at him. “Sorcerer’s not going to come out of the woodwork unless he sees her standing somewhere, Dixon. He’s too smart for that.”

“But Avery’s not a trained operative. She’s a civilian.”

Now his boss looked at him as if he were nuts. Which, considering the words that had just come out of his mouth, Dixon supposed he was.

His boss met his gaze steadily. “And the fact that she’s a civilian should concern me because…?”

Right, Dixon thought. Silly him. Far be it from OPUS to let a little thing like an innocent human being stand in the way of getting their man. That was on page one of the official rules. Screw anybody or anything that might potentially obstruct the mission. You learned that the first day of spy school.

“Sorry,” Dixon apologized dryly. “Guess I forgot myself.”

There was something else going on here, he thought, and his name obviously wasn’t on the need-to-know list this time. He knew better than to question his boss’s instructions any further. For now. He hadn’t gotten as far as he had at OPUS by breaking the rules. Twisting them into an unrecognizable mess had suited him just fine. So far. But there
was
something else going on here. And as long as he didn’t forget that, he should be fine.

Avery, though…

Well. Dixon just made a mental note to pack an ice chest and plenty of lemons for the road.

I
T WAS LATE AFTERNOON
by the time Tanner Gillespie, code name Cowboy, real name secret, arrived at the Nesbitt estate. But he knew Dixon was still hours behind him, because his partner had been assigned the unenviable task of rounding up and battening down Avery Nesbitt. Which meant if Dixon was lucky, he’d arrive sometime before the end of the year. If he was really lucky, he wouldn’t be maimed or dismembered when he did. And if he was really,
really
lucky, he wouldn’t be a yammering, drooling lunatic, either. Tanner was just grateful it hadn’t fallen to the newbie agent to tame the Nesbitt shrew. Because not only was he tired of being treated like an amateur, but the Nesbitt shrew was one scary dame. That chick was totally whack.

Although he was a native New Yorker, Tanner had never visited the Hamptons before. Folks from his neighborhood—Queens—just didn’t get out this way very much. Go figure. Naturally, though, he’d heard stories of the fabled Hamptons. And he’d seen movies filmed here. And once, in college, when he was working as a bartender in a SoHo club, he’d fixed a Cosmopolitan for a girl who told him she was from East Hampton. Then she’d stiffed him on the tip.

But stiffing people on their tips evidently netted the residents of the Hamptons a tidy income. Because the Nesbitts—like everyone else out here—lived in one big-ass house, to be sure. Tanner rolled his government-issue sedan to a stop in front of it, glancing around to look for a sign that said something about servants using the rear entrance. When astonishingly he didn’t see one, he unfolded himself from the car and strode up the half-dozen steps to the front door. But something made him hesitate before ringing the bell. Probably the same something that made him run a quick hand through his blond hair and brush off the front of his charcoal suit. It was the same something that made him also straighten his sapphire-blue necktie and shrug until he was satisfied with the lines of his gray wool overcoat.

Dammit, he wasn’t a servant, he reminded himself with a grimace when he realized what he was doing. Not only was he better dressed, but he worked for the United States government, the most powerful employer in the world. Hell, he didn’t care how wealthy the Nesbitts were. His Uncle Sam had tons more money than they did. No need to dwell on that pesky trillion-dollar-debt business. No one was perfect.

Still, with a place like this, old man Nesbitt could probably house the entire population of the country. Tanner shook his head as he made a visual sweep of the big-ass mansion, from one end to the other, from bottom to top, as much as he could take in from this angle. He couldn’t imagine one family occupying such a dwelling. And the Nesbitts had only raised three kids here, he knew. There had been six growing up in the house Tanner had called home—half of them still lived there—a domicile of only three bedrooms. And only one bathroom until Tanner was fourteen, when he and his father and his uncle Leo installed a second one in the basement.

Since Tanner was the oldest, he’d been awarded the sleeper sofa in the living room when he turned thirteen. He’d happily traded his privacy for a double bed, turning a corner of the family garage into his personal haven, where he could tinker with the cars he loved so much and practice his guitar. He hadn’t minded leaving his three brothers to share the “big” bedroom at the back of the house. His two sisters had claimed another, and Tanner’s parents had kept the last—and smallest—room for themselves. They’d figured their kids needed more space. And they’d been right. But that was how his folks had always done things. They’d always put their kids’ needs ahead of their own.

Which was why Tanner had been perfectly content to take on three jobs after graduating from high school, to put himself through four years at SUNY. He figured his parents had done their jobs by him by the time he left home, had fed and clothed and housed him without ever asking for a nickel in return. And they’d still had five left at home to do the same for. He wasn’t afraid of hard work, and sharing a tiny dorm with another guy had been like living in a palace as far as he was concerned.

For seven years now he’d been on his own. And at the age of twenty-four, when a lot of guys were still fumbling their way through college or the want ads, he was in total control of his life. He was more self-aware, more self-assured and more self-reliable than a lot of guys twice his age. He had money in the bank—maybe not a lot, but it was there. And he had a place of his own—maybe just a loft in the Village, but it was his. And he had a very promising future at OPUS—provided the old-timers stopped doing stuff just to hear the newbie shriek. Who needed a palace when you had all that?

He was lifting a hand toward the Nesbitt’s doorbell when he heard the sound of another car roaring up the drive and spun around in time to see a sporty little red Jaguar roadster taking the final turn of the drive with far more speed than was prudent. It spewed a few loose stones as it careened around the circle, then came to a screeching halt behind his boxy black sedan, leaving barely an inch, if that, between the bumpers.

Tanner frowned. It didn’t matter if the sedan wasn’t his. It didn’t matter that the Jag had stopped in time. It didn’t matter if it would have cost the driver of the Jag a lot more to fix his car than it would Tanner his. What mattered was that the driver of the Jag had driven that recklessly and edged that close to Tanner’s car on purpose. And what mattered was that he had done it with Tanner standing right there watching and with the clear intention of pissing him off.

What mattered was that it had worked.

So Tanner, who’d gone way too long without sleep and who hadn’t exactly had a great day to begin with—what with starting it last night being smacked around by the Nesbitt shrew—stepped away from the front door and moved to the place where the porch connected with the top step. He pushed back his overcoat to hook both hands on his hips in challenge and waited for the guy to get out of his car so that the two of them could exchange, if not the phone numbers for their respective insurance agents, which wouldn’t be necessary, then a couple of choice epithets, which would.

But it wasn’t a guy driving the Jag.

Tanner realized that the minute the driver pushed the door open, because from his higher vantage point he could see a small, black-leather-clad hand doing the pushing, its wrist encircled by a chunky red bracelet. The slender leg encased in smoky black silk that extended from the driver’s side was also clearly female. And also long. And slender. Had he mentioned it was long and slender? And on the foot of that long, slender leg was a screaming-red, pointy-toed, spike-heel shoe, which Tanner, ever the astute agent, also concluded was a sign of the driver’s gender. As was the black leather miniskirt and red leather motorcycle jacket that also emerged from the car. Not to mention the riot of jet-black curls that topped them all.

He had one brief but
extremely
satisfying glimpse of the woman’s backside before she spun around and slammed the car door shut. And then he got an even more satisfying glimpse of her front side. Because the motorcycle jacket hung open over a skintight black top that scooped low enough to reveal…

Well. Suffice it to say maybe he wouldn’t have minded so much if her bumper had rammed him after all. Not that that let her off the hook. It just made him turn the reel of his rod more slowly, that was all.

Black wraparound sunglasses obscured the woman’s eyes, even though it was cloudy and the accessory was unnecessary. Her mouth, though, was in plain sight, and it was wide and full and really, really red. She smiled when she saw Tanner gazing at her, a dazzling display of white she could have only achieved through a dental professional. Then she slung a little black purse over one shoulder, its handle hooked over a crooked index finger. A shake of her head sent the black curls flying and long, dangly red earrings dancing. But only when he saw the rest of her body get into the act did Tanner’s motor well and truly begin to rev.

Carly Nesbitt, he deduced as he watched her stride toward him. Thanks to his file on the family, Tanner knew Avery had two older siblings—a brother named Desmond Jr., age thirty-five, and a sister named Carly, age thirty-nine. Unlike her sister and brother, Carly still lived at home. And unlike her self-employed and quite successful sister and her brother who was second in command under his father at the Nesbitt Corporation, Carly didn’t have a job. According to his file, she was active in a number of charities. But her activity seemed to consist mostly of dressing up in brief cocktail dresses and seducing old men into writing fat checks at various society fund-raisers throughout the year. Still, according to one source, Carly Nesbitt had single-handedly raised close to a half billion dollars for various charities in the past ten years.

Judging by the way she looked and the way she dressed and the way she moved, Tanner considered the figure to be a bit low.

Damn,
he thought as he watched her approach. A walk like that could stop traffic and start fights. No way would he put her age at pushing forty.
Hel-lo, Mrs. Robinson.

“Well, aren’t you cute,” she cooed when she stood at the foot of the steps looking up at him. “And whose little boy are you?”

Tanner frowned. Okay, so maybe there was more than one Nesbitt shrew. Not that he had any intention of taming this one, either. But it was good information to have.

“I’m here to see Avery Nesbitt,” he told her without preamble.

The woman’s playful smile went bitter cold. “You have the wrong address,” she said in a clipped voice. Clipped, too, were her steps as she ascended the stairs and breezed past him toward the front door, never once faltering in the ridiculously high heels.

“This isn’t the Nesbitt residence?” Tanner asked coolly.

“This is the Nesbitt residence,” she confirmed as she rifled through her tiny purse for her key. “But there’s no one by that name living here.”

Wow, he thought. The Nesbitts really had turned their backs on their youngest daughter. They couldn’t even say her name aloud, as if saying
Avery
would invoke a curse on them forever. Which was weird, because all of them had obviously already turned to stone, so what could be the harm?

“She may not live here anymore,” he said, “but she’s expected for a visit. Today.”

That made Carly Nesbitt’s head snap up, and Tanner thought her gaze connected with his. Hard to tell with those dark glasses of hers.

“She’s what?” she asked.

“Expected,” Tanner repeated. “Here. Today.”

“Says who?”

It was as good an opening as any, he thought. Reaching inside his overcoat, he withdrew his OPUS ID from his inside pocket and flipped it open, holding it at arm’s length for Carly Nesbitt to read. It was probably best not to get within more than arm’s length of her, since he was already detecting a family nature for crabbiness. But instead of looking at the ID, she continued to gaze at Tanner’s face. She did at least reach up to remove her sunglasses, something for which he was grateful, since it was easier to gauge when a pit bull was about to strike by watching its eyes. But one look at Carly’s eyes nearly made him keel over.

Never in his life had Tanner seen eyes that color before, a mixture of blue and green that defied description. He’d seen a photograph in a magazine once of some Caribbean beach with incredibly blue water surrounding it. Her eyes were kind of like that color. But where the picture of the island had made Tanner feel relaxed and peaceful, looking at Carly made him want to commit mayhem. Preferably while naked.

Her eyes stayed fastened on his as she plucked his ID from his fingers. Normally Tanner hated it when people took his ID from him to inspect it. When Carly did it, though…well, he hated it even more than usual. His fingers itched to snatch it back, but he halted himself, not wanting her to know how much she bothered him. Instead he only watched as her amazing eyes scanned the information on his card.

“Office of Political Unity and Security?” she read aloud. “What the hell is that? I’ve never heard of it.”

“We’re a small group,” Tanner told her.

“Law enforcement or intelligence?” she asked.

“Yes,” he told her.

She narrowed her eyes at him again. “Domestic or international?”

“Yes.”

“Hunter or gatherer?”

“Yes.”

Now she grinned. “Shaken or stirred?”

He grinned back. “Straight up, baby.”

Hoping he looked relaxed—and still wondering why he wasn’t—Tanner reached for his ID to reclaim it. But Carly pulled it closer to herself and continued to study it. Without realizing he was doing it, Tanner curled the fingers of both hands into loose fists. Immediately he forced himself to relax, but not before Carly noted his discomfort. And ignored it.

“Tanner Gillespie,” she read. “Is that really your name?”

“Any reason why it shouldn’t be?” he asked, doing his best—honest, he did—to keep the edge out of his voice.

“I don’t know,” she said, glancing up again. She smiled at him in the same way she might have smiled at an irritating little terrier who was so overcome with joy to see her that he’d just peed on the floor. “Is this Office of Political Unity and Security one of those agencies where people are assigned code names and have tiny cameras hidden in their tie tacks and carry around disguises in their briefcases?”

“Do you see me carrying around a briefcase full of disguises?” he asked. Probably it wasn’t necessary to mention that he did in fact have a code name. Nor did she really need to know about the tiny camera hidden in his tie tack.