Read dark ops 3 - Renegade for Free Online

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.
    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