dark ops 3 - Renegade by Catherine Mann Page B

about the tab later over dinner.”
    Mason jabbed a thumb toward the museum sign. “Cool way to spend your retirement.”
    “Honest to Pete, these kids are tougher to corral than any crooks I used to chase. Did she tell you I used to be a cop, too? She takes after her uncle,” he rushed on before Mason could answer. “I taught her everything I know. She’s carrying the torch, and I’m keeping busy here and with my dogs.”
    Yost had been a cop? Interesting.
    The older guy jabbed a thumb at an image from the first nuclear bomb test. A mushroom cloud formed in the desert, shock waves rippling away in circles propelling sand outward. “This is what the future is about. Who controls it? Will they harness it or exploit it? This could be an answer or an end.”
    “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.”

EIGHT
    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