You've Got Male by Elizabeth Bevarly

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.
    Obviously thinking she’d fall for it, however, he repeated crisply, “Ms. Nesbitt, open the door.”
    How had he even gotten into the building? she wondered. Billy the doorman must be sleeping on the job. She made a mental note to ask him about it the next time she saw him, then, as quietly as she could, she pushed herself away from the door and took a giant step backward.
    Only to hear the man on the other side of her door say, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
    For