Renegade

by Catherine Mann

  She stepped closer. “I didn’t want to interrupt.”

  Her eavesdropping hadn’t told her much anyway, and neither man relayed anything telling with his body language. The colonel couched everything with curt professionalism, and the playboy here covered his emotions with charm. Did he realize she’d been listening out of more than curiosity?

  Mason turned to face her with a megawatt smile. “How come you get pants and booties? Did you bat those pretty eyelashes at somebody around here?”

  Pretty? Would he have flirted with her so outrageously back during her overweight high school days? “Are you up to date on your political correctness training, Sergeant?”

  “I’ll trade with you. My dress for those pants. You don’t even have to give me the shirt.”

  “Not a chance. Get your own.” She couldn’t resist glancing down at his legs, dusted with dark hair and . . . holy crap! “What happened to your leg?”

  She stared at the bruise wrapping around his ankle and up his calf in all the colors of the rainbow.

  He hefted himself up onto the gurney, somehow managing not to expose anything embarrassing. “That little mark is just a by-product of my parachuting screw-up. It’s only a sprain. The flight doc said he’ll wrap it later when he finishes up with a page to the ER. I’m damn lucky this bruise is all I have.”

  “Doesn’t it hurt?” The wound at least backed up his story about being sucked out of a plane, which would mean the “surprise on the horizon” had been what? Someone else in the desert? Or a sick joke to land her in the path of a blister agent? “Can’t they give you something for the pain?”

  “Painkillers are for sissies.”

  “What a load of macho bull.” She hopped onto the edge of her gurney, hitching one leg up to cuff the scrub pants so they wouldn’t drag the floor.

  He nodded toward her. “I think they sent us into the wrong bathrooms. Those scrubs are so loose on you they must have been meant for me.”

  “Or maybe you pissed off one of the nurses around here.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “What a tool,” she muttered.

  “So you’ve said.”

  A door hissed open, and a nurse wearing a surgical mask over her mouth and sterile white clothing entered. With brisk efficiency, she took Jill’s vitals, then Mason’s, making notations on the charts, then rehanging the info on the beds. Mason grinned at her. The woman’s blue eyes twinkled over her mask.

  Jill fisted the paper covering until it crackled in her grip.

  Once the door swished shut behind the nurse, Mason eased off the gurney and started limping around the room. “I applaud your dedication to your job.”

  “Pardon me?” She smoothed the paper, inspected the pillow and blanket, and wondered if they actually expected her to sleep in here with him tonight.

  Mason stopped by the table of instruments and picked up that thing doctors used to look inside ears. He brought it to his eyes and inspected the room. “Following me all the way in here to keep watch.”

  “Not funny. Put down that, uh, thing. You’re going to get us in trouble.” Great one, Jill. Like a serial killer would be concerned about censure over playing with the hospital equipment.

  Wait. She stiffened. Were there scalpels in here? She glanced through the window to check, and yes a nurse stayed parked at the observation station. Not that Mason actually fit the profiler’s pysch report, something she would be reviewing again the minute she got back into her office.

  “It’s an otoscope.”

  “Thanks, Dr. Randolph.”

  “I’m most definitely not a doctor.” His jaw tight, he set the otoscope back on the tray, picked up a tongue depressor, and flicked it into the trash can in a perfect two-point shot. “I bet you didn’t chew gum in school when you were a kid.”

  “And I bet you stuck it under the desk.”

  “Guilty as charged.” He punched the light controls, adjusting the levels from dim to bright again and again. “You don’t have to worry about me running away.” He plucked at the hospital gown. “The breeze on my backside is a serious deterrent.”

  “I’ll have to remember that next time I’m trying to detain someone.” She grabbed her blanket and pondered the best way to pump him for information about the flight.

  He abandoned the buttons, leaving the lights on dim as he limped toward her. “You should have listened to me when I told you there was no reason to worry about me being there. We could have left right after you found me. Then we might not have ended up here.”

  “Remind me again what you were doing?”

  His face blanked for a flash before he turned his back on her to tinker with the blood pressure machine. “I told you already. My flight went bad, and I had to parachute out. I can’t say more than that until the incident investigation is complete. You should know that, Nancy Drew, from your snooping around during my conversation with my boss.”

  All right then. He wouldn’t be talking. She would simply have to use the time to study him and hope to get a read off him from more subtle clues that would be valuable later. If he wasn’t involved in anything, maybe he’d seen something on his way down. “Sit, before you hurt yourself worse.”

  He leaned on the edge of her gurney. “Why don’t you like me?”

  “Who says I don’t like you?” She forced herself not to inch away and most definitely not to look overlong at the cowlick along his forehead. He definitely wouldn’t have given her a second glance in high school, back before she’d found her mentor and her mission in training to be a cop. “I don’t even know you well enough to form any kind of opinion one way or another.”

  “Come on. It’s obvious you’ve got something against me.”

  She sat upright again. “The prospect of spontaneously combusting into flesh-scarring blisters makes me a tad cranky.”

  “At least it’s not boring in here.”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  “Fair enough.” He punched her pillow back to fluffy status. “Having you here keeps this from being a snooze fest for me. But I’ll leave you alone so you can get your beauty sleep. Not that you need it.”

  “Save your charm for the nursing staff. I’m not tired.” She pointed up to the small TV screen mounted on the wall. “Maybe we should just watch television.”

  “Talking to you is more fun.” He hitched up onto her gurney. “So you’re actually a camo dude. Or would that be dudette?”

  “I thought you were going to let me sleep? I’m a security cop”—who just happened to be tasked with the special duty of protecting the highly sensitive boundaries of Area 51—“and you have absolutely no respect for personal boundaries.”

  “Sorry. You said you weren’t sleepy.” He stood again. “Back to my question. You’re a security cop who happens to work around—”

  “Nowhere.” Damn, he was pushy. Was he just curious, or did he have a darker motive?

  “I’ve just never seen a woman in that, uh, job that doesn’t exist guarding nowhere.”

  She pulled her blanket over her legs and flattened her pillow again. Silence swelled, broken only by the shoosh of the air purification system. “I guess that makes me all the less conspicuous then, if you’re not expecting me. If that were my job, which it isn’t.” She tucked her damp hair behind her ears. “How about let’s discuss your job for a while?”

  “Touché.” He commandeered the remote control and settled back on his gurney five feet away. He swung his swollen ankle up, propping it on a wadded blanket.

  “So, is that a ‘no’ to discussions about why you were parachuting into the middle of nowhere and what you may have seen on your way down?”

  His smile faded. “It was dark, and I was more concerned about not shattering my legs when I landed.”

  “Sucks to be you.” Sucked to be her, too, since she obviously wasn’t going to learn squat about what really happened. The military was so uptight about this whole incident they weren’t even letting her use a phone until morn
ing.

  “I don’t know. The day turned out not so bad after all.” He fluffed his pillow and leaned back on his side, propped on one elbow. “You’re entertaining.”

  “You sure do know how to charm a woman.”

  “I never could charm you in the dining hall.”

  What? “So you do remember.”

  “You thought I didn’t?”

  “You didn’t say anything.”

  “Neither did you. But honestly, how could I forget the way you savored the yakasoba special and soft-serve ice cream while looking down your nose at me?”

  She really hated it when people commented on her eating. Not that she intended to clue him in on how to push her buttons. “About your flight—”

  “Shhhh . . .” He pressed a finger to his mouth, his lips the perfect balance of fullness without being girly. “Remember the little green men. The walls have ears. If we’re not careful, they might beam in and abduct you for their medical experiments.”

  Her fist twisted in the blanket. Could his mention of alien killings be coincidental? She forced her voice to stay level and opted to shoot straight for the pink elephant in the room. “Don’t you think that remark is in bad taste, given the recent Killer Alien scare?”

  “You’re right,” he conceded without a blink. “I must have lost sight of how much fear it’s stirred around here, since I was half a world away for all of November and December.”

  She stored away that nugget of information to confirm later. If he’d truly been out of the United States for that time frame, then he had an unbreakable alibi for two of the murders. It wasn’t like he could just jet back to Vegas from across the world in a couple of hours.

  The kick of relief she felt over the possibility of his innocence unsettled her. She should be disappointed to learn the lead may have taken her in the wrong direction yet again. She reached to punch the light control down another dimmer notch and lay back on her pillow.

  “Jill?” Mason’s voice slid across the room like a smooth shot of good liquor over her tongue that made a person close their eyes to savor it all the more. “Thanks for not blowing my head off back there in the desert last night.”

  “You’re welcome, Maso—” She stopped short, her nerves going on high alert. “How did you find out my name?”

  He jabbed a thumb toward the end of her gurney. “I peeked at your chart while you were in the bathroom.” He sprawled onto his back, adjusted the blanket, and turned on the tiny TV before she could even think of a comeback.

  Why would he bother nosing around in her chart? He could have just been obnoxiously curious in the same way he’d played with the otoscope, and honestly there wasn’t any harm in him knowing her name. The camo dudes preferred anonymity, but it wasn’t required. Nothing would stop her from her mission, a deeper job than cruising the perimeter of Dreamland for overzealous tourists who’d attempted to sneak into restricted territory.

  She was out to catch a serial killer, someone they suspected hid in the bowels of the most secret military facility in the world.

  FOUR

  It was his twentieth wedding anniversary, but Lieutenant Colonel Rex Scanlon didn’t need to worry about remembering to buy his wife her favorite candy or cologne. He’d already purchased the flowers, and tonight after work, he would deliver them to her grave.

  Rex stepped out of the military hospital elevator and followed the numbers and arrows printed on the wall, leading him toward Chuck Tanaka’s room. The flowers for Heather should stay fresh in his car. He’d picked up the bouquet of her favorite daisies from the grocery store on his way to the hospital. It was all too easy to remember exactly when she died, since it had happened on their anniversary. How damned ironic the number of times he’d forgotten the date while they were married. Now there wasn’t a chance in hell the day would go by unrecognized.

  But first, he had another member of his squadron to visit now that he’d finished up with Sergeant Randolph.

  A young airman in fatigues pushed a cart full of half-empty food trays past, the rank smell of mass-produced meals clogging the air. God, he hated hospitals and the memories they kicked up. Heather may have gone quickly, but the short time he’d spent outside her room in the ER felt like a lifetime as he’d waited to hear why his wife, forty-one years young, had suffered a heart attack. He’d expected the doctor to come out and explain that they needed to be more careful, eat better, exercise more, reduce stress.

  Instead, the ER physician informed him they were very sorry. Heather had died. They’d tried to bring her back but weren’t successful. Blah, blah, blah. The rest had blurred in his mind as he struggled to face a future without his wife. A future as a single father of twin boys just finishing up high school.

  Rex stopped in front of Tanaka’s room number and swiped his arm under his nose in hopes of diluting the antiseptic smell.

  A chaplain in fatigues stepped out and pulled up short, holding the door half-open. “Oh, excuse me, Colonel. Captain Tanaka is a popular fella right now.”

  “He already has another visitor, Chaplain”—he glanced at the name on the uniform to refresh his memory—“Hatch.”

  Yeah, he would have remembered the guy’s name if he didn’t spend so much time hiding from him.

  The chaplain tucked his day planner under his arm. “He’s allowed two visitors at a time. They probably wouldn’t even complain if he had more. Everyone likes Captain Tanaka.”

  Rex’s neck itched. He considered leaving and going straight to Heather’s grave, but he would only have to come back here again, which would mean wasted time when he had a suspicious in-flight incident to deal with. “Tanaka’s a good guy. Have a nice evening, Chaplain.”

  He cut the conversation short. Chaplain Hatch probably had a busy schedule, too.

  All about efficiency, he could hear Heather’s laughing voice in his head. He could imagine her lifting his glasses off and leaning to kiss him, hear her whispering, I like that best how particularly efficient you are in the bedroom . . .

  He cleared his throat and thoughts. Time to focus on Captain Tanaka and the airman’s recovery. Rex tapped on the door, the light pressure nudging the already cracked door open wider.

  Tanaka had a lady visitor.

  Good. The guy deserved some female TLC. The women had always gone for the Hawaiian’s charm and what Heather had called Tanaka’s exotic appeal.

  Tanaka lay in bed, the head of the mattress upright, his leg in a cast from the latest surgery. Nearly every bone in Tanaka’s body had been broken while he was held captive in Turkey last spring by a sadistic bitch bent on torturing military secrets out of service members. He faced a long road to recovery, but thank God he was still alive to recover.

  Doctors couldn’t predict how much mobility he would regain. This could be it for him, but he was alive, and he had all his limbs and his brain, when too many others weren’t as lucky. Still, standing here seeing one of his people suffer, feeling like he’d failed this young man, Rex didn’t much see the luck.

  Tanaka looked up sharply, then smiled. “Hello, sir, come on in. You remember Livia.”

  Livia? Livia Cicero? No way in hell.

  She turned from the edge of the bed to smile.

  Oh shit. It most certainly was.

  “Well, hello, Colonel.”

  There was no mistaking her sultry beauty, made all the more striking by her dusky Italian complexion. Her shoulder-length black hair, sleek and straight, brushed her shoulders. But her mouth, that he remembered most. Who could forget her temperamental, diva, pain-in-the-ass mouth?

  He stepped deeper into the private room. “I hadn’t realized that you two know each other.” Tanaka had been a captive when Livia started the tour. “Italy is a long way from Las Vegas.”

  He’d met the Italian pop star when he’d been transporting USO performers overseas. The diva had been a regular thorn in his side the whole time, although no amount of prima donna behavior warranted being caught in the crossfire of an attack la
unched on the USO group. All that aside, what the hell was she doing here, dolled up in her low-cut spangly tank top and overlong peasant skirt belted with some kind of absurd wrestling champion-style knockoff?

  Her smile flashed as bright as the rhinestones cinching around her waist. “Nowhere is too far away to visit this special hero.”

  Tanaka elbowed up higher, his sweatsuit rather than pj’s attesting to how the hospital had become a home for him. “After Livia recovered from her injuries from the attack on the USO group, she stopped by to see me in one of those ‘rock star visits the troops’ moments.”

  Rex felt a stab of guilt at the mention of that explosion in Turkey where people like Livia had been injured. “That’s nice of Ms. Cicero to take time out of her busy career.”

  Her glistening red mouth curved into a practiced smile, lips that had blown a pouty kiss for her first album cover. “I did not get to finish my tour with the USO troupe, so I am here to spread goodwill,” she said, her voice throatier than he remembered. She adjusted the flow of her skirt over her legs. “I was actually already coming to this area next week with a British general.”

  Next week’s gathering of foreign ally military leaders? The general should have notified them of his Italian “guest.” Bringing someone from a country not on the list raised a red flag in his head. “You’re dating a British general?”

  She shrugged. “He’s a friend of the family. It’s nice publicity for both of us to be seen together. And the visit gave me the perfect opportunity to look in on another dear friend while I am at a loose end—”

  “Loose ends,” Rex corrected automatically, even though she possessed an overall fluency in English. Only through idioms and her sexy accent did her nationality show.

  “Yes, yes, loose ends.” She nodded, fluttering her perfectly manicured nails through the air.

  Tanaka scratched his knee just above his cast. “She’s looking into performance options in Las Vegas.”

  “Shhhh.” She tapped her full lips. “My agent says that is a secret.”

  Laughing, he winked at her. “Sorry about that, but if it’s such a secret, why did you tell me?”