dark ops 3 - Renegade by Catherine Mann Page A

percent innocent.

    The next evening, Mason pressed the brake on his truck as he pulled into an empty parking spot outside the Atomic Testing Museum. Not what he’d expected when Jill gave him her uncle’s work address.
    Hopefully tonight would be more fruitful than his frustrating day at the squadron with no answers to what caused the in-flight debacle. They had checked and rechecked data and flight tapes and any damn thing they could think of. The contractor couldn’t find a mechanical malfunction either. Without answers, they were faced with two options.
    One, fly the final two test runs with an additional loadmaster on board for more observations. If those flights went flawlessly, chances increased that somehow he’d simply fucked up. They would cross their fingers and continue with their demonstration next week.
    Or two, they could just scrap the drop altogether and simply show off the plane and its speed. Certainly it was impressive enough on its own, but without the proven ability to off-load goods, a big part of the oomph would be lost in their part of the presentation. Years of work wouldn’t mean dick.
    Slamming his truck door closed, he spotted Jill a couple of car rows down. Leggy and curvy, she was serious pinup material in her jeans and a turquoise fitted jacket.
    Her silver studded heels surprised him. He’d pegged her for a more earthy type. Not that he was arguing with a woman in heels and pouty, slicked lips.
    He was so screwed. Maybe it was a good thing after all that her uncle was coming along for dinner.
    Mason pulled his focus back in tight on his reason for being here. To find out more about a certain sexy camo cop.
    Mason stepped ahead to hold open the door to the museum. Jill gave him a passing half smile as she walked by. “Glad you could make it, Sergeant.”
    She strutted away, long legs eating up space. Maybe this was just her personality—brusque. That fit with what he’d observed of her in the mess hall. His eyes dropped to her heels again.
    Unzipping his leather flight jacket, he followed her into the Today and Tomorrow Gallery toward a clump of elementary school-aged kids with happy birthday goody bags dangling from their fists. Phillip Yost stood by a piece of the Berlin Wall serving as a tour guide—or a docent, as his mother would have said.
    A dozen or so kids with birthday party name tags stickered to their shirts were listening to his story about watching the wall fall. To hear the guy tell it, he’d actually been there.
    Yost clapped his hands together. “Well, kiddos, that concludes our party tour. Now make sure to ask your moms and dads to come back here so you can take a longer look around.”
    “Hey, Uncle Phil, over here.” Jill waved to catch his attention.
    Yost pulled his volunteer ID lanyard with the museum logo from around his neck and angled through the crush of kids ripping into goody bags full of candy. “Thank goodness you’re on time. I’m starving to death.” He stopped short when he saw Mason and cocked his head to the side. “You brought company.”
    “Hope it’s okay if I butt into your plans.”
    “Completely okay. In fact”—Yost clapped him on the shoulder—“I’ll gladly pick up the tab for your meal. You and Gingersnap here are bonded through a near death experience.”
    Mason kept his face blank. The old guy shouldn’t know about the desert incident. Between her job and his, what happened was classified.
    Come to think of it, what had Jill told him about why she needed to be picked up at the hospital?
    Yost kept nodding. “Yeah, you did a damn fine job at keeping Jill from being flattened by the Casper mobile.”
    Ah. Mason gave himself a mental head thunk. “No need to buy my meal for that. All I did was shout. She took care of herself just fine.”
    Yost hooked his thumbs in his pockets and rocked back on the heels of his rattlesnake skin boots. “I taught her everything she knows about self-defense. Glad you noticed. We can argue