Publicly and permanently.
“Please remove your clothes and toss them onto the ground.”
Stepping back out of the truck, Mason heard the “get naked” order from the man in the hazmat suit, the mask muffling the voice Darth Vader style. While stripping down in the January-cold desert night sounded crappy, he had a serious issue with launching his own radioactive fashion line for the new year. Given the heightened security because of that killer on the loose, he suspected this might take longer than normal. He just wanted to clean off whatever he’d been exposed to and get back to work figuring out what the hell went wrong on tonight’s flight before next week’s high-profile gathering.
His job was everything to him. In fact, he’d been forced to sacrifice everything for it—his family, an inheritance, and finally, his wife. Hopefully tonight he wouldn’t be giving his life.
The pair of hazmat workers in white suits opened a side panel on their van. The high-speed ride with the lady cop had been silent and tense. She’d parked him in the backseat, with his hands still cuffed, and peeled rubber in the abandoned desert, nothing but cacti, scrub brush, and a big fat moon. He probably had a concussion now, too, after slamming his head against the roof from all the ruts and holes she’d four-wheeled over until they met up with the hazmat van hauling ass toward them.
“Hey, ma’am,” he shot over his shoulder to the camo cop, “it’s kinda tough for me to get undressed with the cuffs on. Wanna take care of these?”
“Of course.” She tucked behind him as one of the hazmat workers began unrolling a water hose. “But realize these guys change nothing for you. If you make a move for my gun, you will be shot.”
“Got it. The guys in the space suits will not save me. Although I have to admit I think we have bigger concerns right now.”
“Ya think?” The keys jingled as she worked the lock, and then his hands were free.
He shook the circulation back into his fingers. “Time to boogie.”
The large van idled behind the lady cop, with an isolation chamber waiting to swallow them up for transportation to a hospital. Mason untied both his boots and kicked them free. His survival vest went next, landing on the ground with a puff of sand. He’d been this route once before over in Afghanistan, when a suspicious canister exploded in the middle of their compound courtyard. The event had been blood pressure spiking for him—not to mention for his ex-wife, who’d been talking to him on the phone when the Klaxon had blared. The Afghan instance had been a false alarm.
This time, they already knew chemicals were most definitely involved.
Mason yanked down the long zipper on his flight suit, shrugging his shoulders free one after the other. He should be freaking out right about now for fear of his balls perpetually glowing in the dark, but he was too caught up in the relief from learning his crew hadn’t crashed. He’d survived a hellish plummet to earth. And as a bonus, the cop had apparently decided against popping a bullet through his skull.
A hose-down sounded like small potatoes.
He shucked his flight suit in what had to be record time and jerked his T-shirt over his head as he toed off his socks. Wearing nothing but his boxers, he kicked the rest to the side to be collected and burned.
He thumbed the waistband of his shorts and turned, just as icy spray from a water hose slammed into his chest. He stumbled back a step before planting his heels in the gritty earth. His teeth chattered twice before he could steel himself to the cold. Oooh-kay, apparently the boxers stayed.
One of the spacemen directed the nozzle, while the other guy worked the controls on the side of the truck. The dude with the hose swished the spray back and forth between him and the cop. The water battered his skin, the bitter night air turning downright frigid. No worries about his balls glowing just yet, because he was pretty damn sure they’d retreated deep inside his body in search of warmer territory.
“Turn,” the spaceman ordered.
Mason pivoted on his heel. The shower pummeled his back, and he dug his toes deeper into the sand, a shallow pool swelling around his feet. He glanced to the side to check on Madame Cop.
He forgot all about anchoring himself in place and stumbled forward a step. Holy Venus de Milo in a sports bra. The woman beside him had a smoking-hot body. Thank goodness for the cool spray of water, or he would be one embarrassed hombre.
She danced in the shower of water, long legs graceful even under the force of a power hose. She raised her arms overhead for a more thorough sluice. Her full breasts shifted ever so slightly under the stretch of green spandex.
Water glistened on her skin, refracting from the truck lights. She might be busty, but she was also lean and toned, which made sense, given her job. She had to pin guys his size, after all.
She pivoted and faced him full-on for the first time since she’d stepped from her vehicle, not that he’d been able to see her then because of the way she’d blinded him with her flashlight. Something about her seemed familiar, but he couldn’t place where with her face still cast in shadows.
Turning her back to him, she presented a pert butt in green cotton hipster panties. Her deep red hair turned nearly black with saturation as the water worked it loose to stream down her back.
Now was definitely not the time to think of how good her curves had felt against him when they’d tangled up together in his parachute.
The spray from the hose dwindled, and the second spaceman opened the back of the truck. Mason tore his eyes off the woman before she caught him gawking like an adolescent nube. They had bigger concerns, for God’s sake,
Shaking water from his arms, he sprinted toward the sanitized vehicle. He heard splashes behind him and realized his cop companion was a step away. He stopped short to let her enter first.
“Th-th-thanks.” Her teeth chattered. “Nice to see your mama taught you some manners.”
His Junior League mother had been big on manners. His smile went tight. “Just checking out your rear view.”
“What a tool,” she muttered as she grabbed a rail to pull herself up and into the silver metal cavern.
He followed, keeping his eyes off her underwear and perfect backside, because in spite of his own ribbing, he had been taught better by his socialite mother. Mason sat on the metal bench across from the lady cop. The door slammed shut and hissed with a decontaminating seal, leaving them alone together in a cavern bathed in the glow of the red lights lining the ceiling. He snagged one of the thin, metallic space blankets to pass her and draped another over his shoulders. Slowly, his skin stopped burning from the cold.
How flipping ironic to be so cold his skin felt like it was being stabbed everywhere by fiery needles. Or could that be the effect of the chemicals? He shoved the fear away to be dealt with later, since there wasn’t a thing more he could do about it now.
But what about her? Should he prep himself for a hysterical meltdown now that the initial crisis had passed?
She’d seemed tough enough while grinding his nose into the dirt. Still, she had to be scared shitless right about now. He tried to search her face, but the dim red lights still made seeing her face difficult. Although he couldn’t miss the way she shivered inside her blanket, from cold or fear or going into shock he couldn’t know for sure, but better to err on the side of caution.
He’d always found distraction to be the best cure for the shakes in a crisis, and she’d already shown her vulnerability. “So, do you come here often?”
She hugged her blanket tighter. “Pardon me?”
“What’s your sign? What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this? I’m new in town, could you give me directions to your place?” He rambled through the cheesy pickup lines as the truck jolted forward, waiting until . . . yeah, he could already sense the fire crackling back to life inside her.
“How juvenile, like your underwear,” she muttered softly, although she must not have said it too softly to have been heard over the revving engine.
“Apparently you di
dn’t think much of my cartoon boxers. Damn shame. Valentine’s Day is what? Only a few weeks away?”
“Six weeks.”
Like he couldn’t count. But hallelujah, he had her talking. “What’s wrong with a man wearing some cupids and hearts in preparatory celebration of the holiday of love? I thought your gender longed for males who won’t forget Valentine’s Day.”
She snorted, but at least her teeth had stopped chattering. Irritation was better than fear or hypothermia. Hopefully he could keep her distracted long enough for them to find out whether or not that toxic explosion had wrecked their DNA for life.
“Ah, you prefer your pickups to be more straightforward.” He thrust out his hand. “Hi, I’m Mason.”
“You told me earlier.” She ignored his hand while keeping her own buried in the folds of her blanket.
“And you are?”
“Not interested in chitchat or pretend pickup games to pass the time.”
“I guess that’s a big fat nope to telling me your name.”
Camo dudes were notoriously closemouthed. They even went to extreme lengths to avoid having their photos taken by tourists or the press. But it wasn’t like he wouldn’t find out her name eventually.
She leaned back against the metal seat, eying him suspiciously as the truck jostled along the desert, siren wailing. “How can you be so oblivious to what’s going on around us? To what just happened with that toxic explosion? At this very minute our insides could be festering into a genetic cesspool.”
“Lady, twenty minutes ago I thought my crew had crashed.” The hell of that moment rolled over him with a fresh wave of nausea that outweighed even the prospect of his own personal DNA septic tank. He knew they would have been every bit as upset in his position. In fact, his squadron buds were the only ones who would give a shit if something happened to him. His ex-wife, Kim, had already remarried, and he barely spoke with his parents since turning his back on the family legacy at eighteen. “Everything else pales in comparison.”
Surprise glinted in her eyes, then something nice and soft. He wished he could tell their color, but the red light messed with everything.
“I’m sorry, Sergeant. That must have been terrible for you.”
“Damn straight.” He’d been sure Vapor and Hotwire had crashed and died, and that somehow it was his fault because he’d screwed up with that airdrop. He still couldn’t figure out what had gone wrong with the pallets, and if he didn’t uncover the flaw or mistake, he risked worse happening next go round. Talk about a downer notion.
Lighthearted beat serious any day of the week. He eyed the prickly woman across from him, a mega-hot, prickly woman. “Do you know karate? Because damn, your body kicks butt.”
Any signs of sympathy faded from her eyes, and she shot him a withering look. “No, I do not. And no, you may not have a quarter to call your mother since you promised to tell her when you met the woman of your dreams.”
His mother likely wouldn’t answer a call from him anyway, but no need to wade in those stagnant waters of how he’d disappointed his family.
Mason clapped a hand over his heart, foil blanket crackling. “Somebody bring me a bandage. I just scraped my knees falling for this lady.”
“Sergeant Smart-Ass.”
“So they tell me.” Yeah, he knew himself pretty well, the good and the bad. However, he still didn’t have a clue where he’d met that sexy voice before, but he intended to find out.
Right after he figured out why his test flight had gone to shit just in time to land him in the middle of an explosive situation.
THREE
Jill towel-dried her hair in the Nellis Air Force Base hospital bathroom while mentally listing all the ways she could find out more about Tech Sergeant Mason Randolph and what he was really doing in that specific restricted portion of Area 51 last night. Could he really be the Killer Alien? Her skin burned until she could almost feel the steam rising from her wet hair. She certainly had plenty of time to interrogate him covertly, since they were stuck in quarantine together.
After arriving at the base just at sunup, she’d been transferred by a female tech into a glistening white chamber, where she’d ditched her blanket and underwear in a toxic waste bin. The tech had hosed her down again then handed her a paper robe. Jill then gave what felt like gallons of blood before going into a larger quarantine room with two gurney beds. She hadn’t expected to want another shower, but something about the whole scary night left her needing some good old-fashioned hydrotherapy.
In the bathroom connected to the sterile chamber, Jill reached for the pile of surgical scrubs and tugged the green shirt over her head, itchy to finish here and get somewhere she could access her work computer. She needed to check in, but she was denied visitors until the military gave the okay.
She stepped into the drawstring pants and started combing through her wet hair. So far no big chunks fell out, thank goodness.
No one had told her what she’d been exposed to and likely never would, given the secrecy level of Area 51. She understood the risks that came with her job and gladly accepted them, now more than ever, as she had been drawn into the local police investigation to find the serial killer. Most thought she’d dug in for the career advancement, and that was okay by her. She needed to downplay how much she burned to avenge her friend’s death. Personal connections to victims were frowned upon.
Jill slipped her feet into the flimsy plastic flip-flops and opened the steel door. Voices flooded through, and she stopped half-in, half-out. Apparently her quarantine mate, Tech Sergeant Mason Randolph, could have visitors—as long as that person stayed on the other side of the large glass window.
Mason stood barefoot in a hospital gown in front of the framed pane, pressing the Talk button on the small speaker box. Behind him were two stretchers and a wall of medical gear for dispensing oxygen and taking vitals. Other than that, the space was an empty, sterile wash of white and silver. She couldn’t hold back a grin at the incongruous image of such an obviously virile man in a wraparound gown and spiky wet hair, the whole getup giving him a Peter Pan appeal.
“God, Colonel Scanlon,” Mason said to the older man on the other side of the window, “things just went to shit up there. I honestly thought I’d checked the weight balance on the casters, but apparently not. No excuses.”
She tucked more covertly against the half-open door to listen. No need to feel guilty. Her job presented her conscience with a free pass on eavesdropping while Mason chatted with a lieutenant colonel wearing a flight suit and Buddy Holly glasses. Right now, she was flying solo. She was learning what she could about an unscheduled parachute into the middle of an already suspicious toxic test. That also made her wonder again who’d given her the tip to look there in the first place.
“We’re just in the early stages of investigating the incident,” the colonel answered cryptically, “but I expect we’ll have everything cleared up by next week’s shindig.”
“What do Vapor and Hotwire have to say?” Mason clasped his hands behind his back, keeping the hospital gown closed and somehow managing to still look macho.
The gaunt colonel, silver flecking his temples, leaned against the wall. “You know I have the utmost faith in you, but I can’t give you the details of their individual versions just yet. We have to keep everything separate for a while at least. Not knowing protects you.”
“Of course. Protocol and all.”
“Don’t worry about the flight for now.” Scanlon smiled, more of a grimace really, but it crinkled the corners of his eyes. “Just enjoy your time lounging around here. We’ll spring you from this place and get you back to work before you know it.”
“I hope so.”
“I’ve got some feelers out for more info on that explosion. So far, it’s sounding like a straight-up blister agent test.”
Only a blister agent? Her skin started tingling at just the thought.
Mason didn’t appear fazed in the least. “I appreciate your help.”
“No problem. It’s what we do for our people.” The colonel checked his watch. “I need to head out. I’m visiting Captain Tanaka, too, while I’m here. Everyone at work sends their best.”
Mason plucked at the hospital gown. “I’ll bet they’re just sorry to miss the opportunity to see me in a dress.”
“They already offered me tickets to a hot new show at the Bellagio if I snap a photo with my cell phone.”
“I’ll bet they did,” Mason quipped. “And hey, Colonel Scanlon, I appreciate your coming by.”
“No problem,” Lieutenant Colonel Scanlon answered as he backed a step away. “I’m just glad you’re all right. Take care now.”
Scanlon pulled his hand off the speaker button and turned to leave.
Jill gripped the door. How Mason could take this all so lightly blew her mind. Could that be a sign of a darker disdain for human life?
Even though one of the victims had been male, they still suspected the killer was targeting women. It appeared the man might have been a boyfriend who got in the way.
Mason had lady-killer—the Romeo kind, anyway—written all over him. The times they’d crossed paths in the area mess hall, he’d tried to pick up her female friends and workmates. Never her though. When she’d watched his act for the third time, she’d made a point of broadcasting off-limits vibes.
Now she had to get close to him.
Mason shifted from one bare foot to the other but didn’t turn around. “You can come out now.”
Jill winced, releasing the bathroom door to hiss closed. “You knew I was here that whole time?”
He pointed to the glass window. “I can see your reflection.”
Damn it, she should be more careful. The people back at headquarters were counting on her. The families of those victims—Lara in particular—counted on her. Her boss had to already know what had shaken down in the desert, and he would expect some concrete info from her once she got the all clear from the doctors.
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