dark ops 3 - Renegade (9 page)

Rex had already reviewed the footage in his office, but even so, seeing Mason lose it when he’d thought his crew died hit him in the gut all over again. Even stalwart Jimmy Gage cleared his throat.

Vince leaned over and gave Mason an exaggerated goofy-ass hug. “Love you, too, my brother.”

Low laughter eased the tension. Rex fast-forwarded to footage of Mason and the lady cop getting hosed down by the hazmat team, which, as expected, stirred the laughter louder.

Werewolf clutched his gut, chuckling. “Nice boxers, dude.”

Jimmy leaned toward Mason. “When does she get to meet your parents?”

Mason stayed quiet for once.

Vince popped the last of his doughnut into his mouth. “Sheesh, somebody is touchy.”

Rex let their ribbing play out for a few minutes, a part of the whole squadron unity he used to be a part of before rank and position separated him. “Nice to know you take your work so seriously, gentlemen—and ma’am.”

Gucci held up her hands in self-defense. “Don’t lump me with these bozos, sir.”

“Understood.” Rex shut down the video feed and wrapped up the meeting. As the aviators filed out, he gestured for Mason to stay behind. “How are you doing physically?

“Not too bad sir.” Mason subtly shifted his weight to one foot. “Sore, but otherwise okay.”

“How’s your cranium? You want to talk to someone?” This kind of near death experience could mess with a flier’s head long-term if they didn’t sort it out up front. The air force had first-rate shrinks on staff with specialized training. “I’ll set that up. I think in your position, I might want to hash through a few things with a neutral third party. Get away from all this macho bullshit and spill it.”

Mason’s jaw jutted. “Is this because of what I said about the bull’s-eye?”

“I would say the same to anyone.” True enough.

“I think it’s all good with me. I may be checking my six o’clock a bit more often, but I’m not ready for a straitjacket yet.”

“All right, but I will ask again.” No doubt Mason was worried about admitting any perceived weakness impacting his career. It would take a while for all the new views on the acceptability of getting help to soak through the ranks. “You can be sure there is no foul from my view if you take me up on that offer.”

“Thanks sir, I appreciate the concern, but that kind of help is for people who’ve been through something like Chuck.” Mason shifted the weight off his injured ankle. “I tried to stop by and see him before I left the hospital, but I heard he checked out. How did he seem when you saw him?”

“He seemed good. He said something about his physical therapist being a real sadist, but apparently the guy worked a miracle, since Chuck is out of the hospital.”

“That’s great. Really great. Hopefully you won’t have any of us to visit at the hospital again.”

God, he hoped that was true. “And this camo dude cop you spent the past couple of days with in there, what’s your take on her?”

“Tough, professional . . . prickly.”

“Guards from her unit are supposed to patrol the border of Area 51 and stop overeager tourists from trying to sneak in. You were well past the border.”

“She
said
she saw me parachute in and came to help.”

Mason’s recounting sounded logical. Still, something seemed off. “It was mighty damn dark, which makes me think she must have been close to see you. What do you think could have been her real motive?”

“My guess? She’s pulling extra duty like most cops around the base, tightening up security before next week’s big show. Then there’s the serial killer scare.”

Or she could have been snooping. “It’s tough to tell sometimes if we’re following an instinct or paranoia. It’s best to err on the side of our intuition.” Something he’d learned the hard way when he hadn’t listened to his gut a year ago when they’d shouted at him to spend time with his wife. “You’re the logical choice to check out a bit more information on Jill Walczak.”

Lee Drummond charged down the main hallway in Mason Randolph’s test squadron, rounded a corner, and slammed smack into someone stupid enough to try to juggle coffee and a BlackBerry. Scalding-hot java splashed from Gucci’s paper cup onto Lee’s blouse.

Gucci jumped back to avoid getting burned. Lee wasn’t so lucky. Pain fired deep.

“Oh God, Dr. Drummond, I am really sorry.” Gucci tucked aside her BlackBerry and pulled three neatly folded tissues from the sleeve pocket on her flight suit. “I would dab it for you, but that would be, uh, rather awkward.” Gucci waved toward Lee’s shirt.

Damn it. Lee plucked at the fabric, rage steaming hotter than the drink. This was her favorite silk blouse, and now it was likely ruined. Just because she was a PhD engineer didn’t mean she had to dress like a nerd. She spent a lot of time and money on her clothes.

Of course, she’d learned to expect the misconceptions. When most people read her byline on scholarly pieces—Dr. Lee Drummond—they assumed she was a man. It wouldn’t have occurred to anyone that the young genius PhD who’d written groundbreaking papers pioneering new ideas in explosives could actually be a female—Ashlee, actually.

Lee took the tissues and blotted the pink silk. “I can take care of it myself. Thank you.”

“I’ll have it dry-cleaned for you.” Gucci threw away her cup in an industrial bin. “That looks like an Ann Taylor.”

“It is.” Lee sniffed back some of her anger. At least somebody had noticed her clothes. Anger cooling faster than her stinging skin, Lee reminded herself why she was here in the first place—because of Gucci.

The rumor mill had it that Werewolf and Gucci had been called into a closed-door briefing. No such invitation came Lee’s way when they should all be desperate for her opinions about the incident two days ago. Her ire heated up a notch again.

She might not be an active duty aviator in this squadron, but by God, she was a civilian contractor for them, with the highest level of security clearance. They
needed
her. “How did the meeting with Colonel Scanlon go?”

Gucci blinked fast, tucking to the side to let other foot traffic in the hall pass by. She ducked her head and lowered her voice. “You know about the meeting?”

“I was consulted beforehand. It’s my equipment, after all, but I had a prior appointment and couldn’t make it over until now.”

“Oh, right, of course you’re in the loop. We weren’t able to add anything new, though. The whole in-flight incident really has them stumped.”

Good. Lee suppressed a smile. “That’s too bad.”

Mason didn’t have a clue, and he wouldn’t, right up to the time she ruined his career in the middle of next week’s high-profile gathering. She hadn’t gotten this much satisfaction since she was nine years old in high school and realized she could pay back the girl who’d beaten her in the race for class president.

Lee wadded the tissues in her hand. “Is there any fallout from local authorities?”

“There doesn’t appear to be a problem, although I think the colonel’s a little concerned about why that camo dude was so deep in the testing range.”

A simple phone call with an anonymous—and false—tip about the serial killer had sent Jill Walczak running. “Security’s not something to mess with around here, that’s for sure.”

“Amen, sister.” Gucci pulled out her BlackBerry and glanced down, reading. “Hmmm . . . Gotta run. Hey, if the coffee stain doesn’t come out, let me know, and I’ll get you a new shirt. Ann Taylor’s even having a sale right now, so I could buy you two for the price of one.” Gucci smiled apologetically. Genuinely.

“Not necessary. It was an accident.”

And lucky for Gucci, she’d taken the time to be sincerely nice. Not that an apology would have saved the high school class president from her injuries. Lee had been too young back then to understand the difference between good people and bad people when she’d rigged a science experiment to bubble acid out of a test tube, scarring the pretty new class president’s arm.

Things were different now. She was wiser, more mature. She had a code. She lived by logic these days. Only those in the wrong deserved punishment. If ever someone deserved to pay, it was Mason Randolph.

And Jill Walczak? The lady cop had proved useful once. Perhaps she could be useful again for dealing with another increasingly infuriating problem.

Sitting at her corner desk in the trailer offices, Jill opened a fifth computer file to go along with the four other records on victims of the serial killer—one woman attacked, three people murdered in the past year—outside of Las Vegas. All mutilated. Sometimes she wondered why she’d decided to go into law enforcement. She’d expected less gore and more intrigue in switching from the police department to contracting with the company that hired camo dudes.

So much for expectations. She shoved aside the half-eaten bag of baked barbecue chips.

This latest murder had only been discovered an hour ago. The press hadn’t even caught wind of it. Yet. So far the media coverage had been mostly local. This latest killing would send the whole thing national, inviting copycats from all over everywhere.

She scrubbed a hand over her gritty eyes, not that she expected to wipe away the image or feel any better rested. Body number four had been discovered while she was in the hospital. The murdered female had been dead for less than two hours when discovered just before sunup, when she and Mason Randolph had been pretending not to know the other was still awake in quarantine.

Now she wouldn’t even need to check his flight log. He couldn’t be the perp, since she could attest personally to his location during this new, fourth killing. She tamped down twinges of relief over his innocence. She needed to get her priorities in order. A woman was dead, a military wife and mother of a young child.

Her boss had alerted her to the file on victim number five the minute she’d walked through the door. Now Thomas Gallardo paced around the double-wide trailer that housed their main office deep in the desert. They had smaller, single-wide outposts for housing surveillance equipment and space for an occasional coffee break, since they were so far removed from any fast-food row. She ate most meals in the truck, however. As the only female in a so far predominantly male profession, she didn’t want to be seen as slacking off.

Thomas paused by the table with a coffeepot and two microwaves. He’d trimmed his hair into a super-short buzz cut as his hairline started its journey backward. The overall effect was of a man confident in himself, no hiding behind a comb-over. “The freak is really ramping up on the violence.”

Jill clicked through the file to the first photo, even though she’d already studied it so hard she’d burned the image into her brain. A dark-haired woman in her late twenties lay in her backyard, eyes wide in a death stare. Her sleek pink workout suit was slashed, her wounds administered post mortem just like the others. “She also had the same nail-sized fatal wound penetrating her temple.”

That detail had not been released to the public.

“That’s the only consolation I can find in a case like this. At least the victims die fast before he mutilates them.”

Her finger circled the photo on the screen, along a pattern in the desert backyard where landscaping rocks had been swept away to create the signature swirls around her corpse. Only by the third killing had they made the connection with those rings. They’d gone back and reviewed photos from the earlier crime scenes, and sure enough, the round pattern had been left every time, growing larger. “How many tips have we received on her murder?”

“We stopped counting an hour ago. I moved Rhonda to one of the outlying trailers and transferred all calls to that number. The nonstop ringing was driving me batty. I hear that downtown they’re getting ten times as many.”

Just what this area needed. A killer on the loose who seemed determined to stir up every alien conspiracy loon, which left authorities wading through an astronomical amount of crap looking for a lead. “There’s no way we have enough manpower to investigate all of them in any timely fashion.”

“We’ll pass everything along to the local sheriff’s department like I did with the other three killings, and keep an eye out for what we can.”

She minimized the file, her screen saver rippling with the ocean waves of an island paradise she’d never seen in person. “I want to see copies of the notes on all the calls.”

“Sure. It’ll be your lost sleep, not mine. Actually, you’ll have the afternoon free, since I don’t have a vehicle for you yet. The truck you were driving when you stumbled on that flier has been repoed by the air force. They said once they’re sure it’s been decontaminated, we can have it back.”

“I’m sorry for the inconvenience. I know we’re already short of vehicles this month.” They seemed to be suffering from an outbreak of mechanical issues, so much so that their in-house mechanic was being quizzed.

“We’re pulling some of the older Jeeps out of retirement. We should be fine as long as there aren’t any high-speed chases.” He held up a set of keys. “Have a nice evening shift.”