dark ops 3 - Renegade (12 page)

“You sound like some of the people I work with.”

“Must come from living here so long.”

Jill ducked her head between them. “Hey, Uncle Phil, is your shift over or not?”

“I’m a volunteer. There’s no punch card now that I’m not a cop anymore.”

The older man snapped his fingers to snag the attention of a college-aged girl wearing her tour guide name tag. “Alexus, can you take it from here and make sure they’re all picked up by parents?” He pressed a hand to his lower back. “My sciatica’s acting up again.” He turned to the kids. “Old back injury from chasing a truck full of drug runners across the desert. Would have caught them, too, if they hadn’t shot out my front tire and sent me crashing into a Joshua tree.”

Alexus’s eyes went saucer wide. “Really?”

“Hell no. Even the kids don’t fall for that one.” Yost shook his head. “My back does ache, but that has more to do with the fall I took that time I hydroplaned on a surprise puddle of puppy pee.”

Mason chuckled. “Definitely not as cool a story.”

Jill bumped her shoulder against Phil’s. “You men can be so juvenile sometimes.”

“It’s in the DNA,” Phil said as he walked Jill toward the exit and opened the door. “Everything boils down to protecting the cave, kiddo.”

She glanced back over her shoulder. “You’re joking again, right?”

Mason stepped into the parking lot, lights flickering off and on in a fickle fight with the sinking sun. “My pal Jimmy dislocated his jaw playing volleyball. By sundown, rumor going round the base was that he’d taken a rifle butt to the face dealing with insurgents at the gate.”

Yost shrugged into a jacket. “I sure as shit have some better stories than that for real. Just can’t share them because they’re still classified.” He stopped by his beat-up Mustang. “Although if you get enough drinks in me tonight, boy, you’ll learn what desert secrets are really all about.”

Sitting in Uncle Phil’s car outside the Little A’Le Inn, Jill watched Mason park his truck four spaces down. She had half expected him to be a no-show back at the museum, and now here they were, at Uncle Phil’s favorite local hangout. She felt more than a bit juvenile insisting they take different vehicles.

Now that she had ditched her annoying defensiveness, she realized if they’d ridden together, she could have used the time to question Mason. She couldn’t keep her thoughts from running full force into lip-lock with the sexy loadmaster when she needed to focus on discovering how to stop a twisted bastard from taking more lives. A sicko who could be anywhere, even here. Given all the victims’ ties to the military, the killer could be drawn to a place like this simple corrugated building, a popular hangout for base personnel as well as tourists.

Jill slammed the passenger door. As Uncle Phil ambled over to Mason, she scanned each face heading in and out. Uncle Phil swore by the food at this small but packed hangout in the middle of nowhere, technically listed as the tiny town of Rachel, Nevada, near Las Vegas. Cars filled the lot, angling willy-nilly, a nearby patch set aside for RVs parked and plugged in.

Shivering, she pulled her skimpy jacket closer, mentally kicking herself for choosing her wardrobe tonight for looks rather than practicality. Her toes numbing in her pumps, she joined Mason and Phil, already gabbing away about constellations visible this time of year. She trailed a step behind as they brushed past a woman who was overdressed in comparison to the casual campers and military-looking personnel in civilian clothes.

Jill resisted the urge to compare her jacket with the woman’s wardrobe. The confident female had the kind of look Jill had ached to have back during her chunky high school days. No carroty red hair for this lady. Her sleek brown mane was clasped back in a classic, chic ponytail, and she wore black leather knee boots with a red skirt.

The woman nodded toward Mason, recognition flickering through her golden brown eyes. “Sergeant.”

Mason nodded back. “Good evening, Dr. Drummond.”

Jill looked back over her shoulder at the retreating woman, then back at Mason. “She’s a doctor?” The woman was chic
and
smart? Some people sure got lucky in the genetics sweepstakes. “Is she one of your flight surgeons?”

His boat shoes crunched against gravel. “Actually no, she’s a civilian contractor who, uh,” his gaze darted away for an evasive second before he continued, “she works for our testing unit.”

“Doing what?”

“She’s an engineer.”

Uncle Phil whistled low, rubbernecking to catch another peek. “She sure doesn’t look like any engineer I’ve ever seen. The ones I’ve met all have their heads in the clouds and wear pocket protectors.”

Jill swatted his arm, nudging him along. “You should know better than to have preconceived notions about people.”

Her conscience pinched, and she glanced at Mason. Hadn’t she made snap judgments about him based on his looks and what others had to say about him?

Phil tore his eyes away from the doctor. “I would have thought she was a coed.”

Mason paused at the glass door, his breath fogging into the cold air. “Word has it, she was a wonder kid genius who went to college before the rest of us had finished junior high. She’s been working for the air force since she was about twenty, which I guess must make her around thirty.”

He guessed? Mason hadn’t thought about Dr. Drummond’s age? It didn’t seem he’d thought much about the woman at all, regardless of how attractive she was. And that little realization had absolutely nothing to do with finding a serial killer. So much for getting her head back in the game.

Phil waggled his eyebrows. “It’s those hot leather boots that make her look like a sorority girl. Don’t you think, Mason?”

“No comment, sir.” Mason shoved open the bar door, holding it for Jill and Uncle Phil.

Voices, laughter, clanking bottles, and the low bass thrum of the jukebox swelled out and wrapped around her, sucking her into another world. Jill stepped over the threshold into the muggy room. No matter how many times she came here, she was always reminded of that bar from the first
Star Wars
movie, the place where Han Solo hung out drinking with all the aliens while funky music twanged around them. This place was definitely a universe away from the rest of the planet.

Jill tucked into the line waiting for a table. Off to the side, the bartender, who looked more like ZZ Top turned surfer, leaned toward a tourist with a camera around his neck. “You’ve got your grays and the greens. The grays are your most common breed of aliens. About seventy-five percent of the ones we’ve seen out here fall into that category.”

The elderly tourist angled forward with avid eyes while his wife clicked cell phone pictures of Area 51 memorabilia on the wall. “Gray, as in the short, androgynous-looking ones? Sort of like a washed-out Teletubby, right? My grandkids watch those things. They love ’em.”

The seasoned bartender—Aaron—sketched on a napkin, while the other guy setting up drinks raced to and fro behind him. “I guess you could put it that way. But they’re not to be confused with the short, nongrays that are more white and childlike looking.”

“What about the greens?” the wife asked, capturing an image of an alien mannequin in the corner.

Aaron took another napkin to continue his “artist” renderings. “Reptilian like, but not totally, though. The grays, now, they’re humanoid. Then there are the Nordics, which are quite intriguing, since they look human, too. It sure lends credence to the possibility that our form isn’t from Earth. Or maybe they interbred with us somewhere along the line.”

Uncle Phil snorted and mumbled, “
Rosemary’s Baby.
”

Aaron glanced up. “I heard that, you old desert rat.”

“Sorry.” Phil inched toward the bar. “But you know I’m a cynic.”

“We’re used to unbelievers around here.” He passed Phil a longneck bottle of beer.

Mason stepped ahead of Phil, only favoring his injured ankle slightly now. “Aaron, I’ll get him to stop that kind of talk if you’ll move us up in line.”

“Consider it done, my friend. Hey, Gina? Some help here, please.” He snapped for a waitress’s attention before shifting back to his tourist audience. “You got a whole bunch of other sightings that are robotic or even mistlike. Nothing’s beyond the realm of possibility. It’s a big universe out there . . .”

No doubt Aaron would earn some extra bills stuffed in his tip jar, not that any of these folks were about the money. It was all about the thrill, the buzz, being a part of something that never grew boring.

While Phil sidled to the jukebox, Jill followed the waitress through the press of bodies toward their table in back. She glanced over her shoulder at Mason. “You know Aaron?”

“We’re kindred spirits of sorts.”

Jill looked back and forth between the aging surfer with a questionable floral fashion sense and the smoothly handsome Mason. “You’ll have to pardon me if I miss the connection.”

“You really need to stop thinking so literally. The guy’s got an interesting life story. He bucked the family landscaping business, bought an RV, and headed for the West Coast. He ran out of money here, got this job, and twenty years later, he still lives in that same RV with his surfboard strapped to the top.”

“Sounds like a real character.”

Mason held out Jill’s chair for her with more of those old-school manners she found oddly charming.

“He’s happy, meeting his bills while doing something he enjoys. That’s the measure of success in my book.”

A middle-aged waitress with a six-month-old fried perm stopped at their table. “Hey there, Sergeant.”

“Hi, Gina.” Mason took his seat under a poster print advertising a 1950s flick called
Cat-Women of the Moon
. “How’d your daughter do on her science project?”

“She got an A and an invitation to participate in the science fair.” She cocked a hand on her hip, her T-shirt hitching up to display her pierced belly button above her low-rise jeans. “She’s already written you the cutest little note to say thanks. We both really appreciate it. I know next to nothing about junior high-level thermodynamics.”

“No problem. I enjoyed it.” He smiled nicely, not flirtatiously at all, as Jill would have expected. His eyes even stayed firmly off the patch of bare stomach. “She really didn’t need much help, just some pointing in the right direction.”

“Thanks all the same.” Gina pulled a pencil and order pad from her jeans pocket. “I assume you want the usual?”

“That would be great. Thanks.”

Jill set aside her menu, not having a clue what she wanted on any front tonight. “I’ll have whatever he’s having, and get the same for Phil.”

The blaring song from an old Kiss album faded, a Willie Nelson tune cranking to life. Phil settled into a seat with a slow creak of his cowboy boots, his chair closer to a movie poster for
Devil Girl from Mars
. “What did you just order for us?”

Mason passed the menus to the waitress. “An avocado and tomato sandwich on foccacia bread.”

Phil’s eyes went wide. “You’re fucking with me, right? That isn’t even on the menu.”

“They make it up special for me here. If you hurry, you can catch Gina before she places the order.”

“Nah, not worth the effort.” Phil grabbed a fistful of peanuts from a bucket in the middle of the table. “Are you gay?”

Jill gasped. “Uncle Phil!”

Mason tipped back his chair. “What if I were?”

Could the whole player act have been a smoke screen? She assessed him across the table and . . . Nope, that was one hundred percent heterosexual interest in his eyes as he stared back at her.

Jill swallowed hard. “If you were? I wouldn’t have to worry about you hitting on me.”

Mason winked, nudging her foot with his. “Keep worrying, gorgeous.”

Phil pitched the peanut hulls onto the floor under his chair, as was standard protocol in the joint. “I’ve never met a guy who would admit to eating a froufrou sandwich like that, much less do it in front of a female.”

Mason rocked back in his chair beside her, and damn, he made boat shoes with no socks look hot. Then she saw the bruise on his ankle and remembered how he’d run full out on that sore foot to save a toddler. “I like what I like. If we’re lucky, they’ll add papaya slices to our order.”

“I’ll pass on that. It might mess with the bouquet of my beer.” He lifted his longneck. “I might give these guys a hard time, but we all ought to thank these folks for keeping the alien buzz going. Some people are so willing to believe the hype, they’ll attribute anything to an ET sighting. At the museum today, I even heard a tourist vowing he saw some freaky fast spaceship that night my Jill landed in the hospital.” His squinty old eyes narrowed tighter. “Now, that wouldn’t have anything to do with what the two of you were doing out there in the desert, would it?”

Mason tugged out a napkin from the metal dispenser. “I believe people see what they expect to see. I also think folks are in a frenzy with this latest killing I heard about on the radio.”

Phil drained a quarter of his beer. “Since you’re both sitting here, I’ll take it then that you and Jill weren’t sucked up into an alien craft and tortured?”

“Do we look traumatized?” Mason waved between himself and Jill. “Although you may want to check out the cow population, just to be sure. I hear they’re chewing the grass in a labyrinth pattern.”

She went still. He wasn’t the killer. She’d determined that much. But why the reference to alien markings when that had been kept secret from the public? Coincidental given that patterns in the grass were also generalized folklore for aliens? Probably, but still eerie in light of those very real file photos she’d seen. They’d been able to keep the dirt pattern out of the news again, but for how much longer? “You know, boys, I understand your macho need to make light of serious things so you feel more invincible, but quite frankly, I find these jokes of questionable taste, given those poor dead people.”