LITMIR.BIZ

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      “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 jalapeño-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.

      “It will be if you don’t have an arrest warrant.”

      “An arrest warrant isn’t necessary in these circumstances.”

      “So then I’m not under arrest?”

      “Not exactly.”

      “Then what exactly are the circumstances?”

      “Well, for starters, it’s a matter of national security.”

      She almost laughed out loud at that. Almost. Until she got a good look at his expression and realized he was serious. In spite of that, she said softly, “You’re joking.”

      “Actually I’m not.”

      She gaped at him. “What right do you have to take me anywhere?” she demanded. “I’m still not convinced that this organization you claim to work for even exists.”

      “You’re just going to have to trust me on this one, Peaches. I have the jurisdiction and I’m not afraid to use it.”

      “You wouldn’t dare,” she said. But her actions belied her defiant words, because to punctuate the statement she dug her

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