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around—”
    “Nowhere.” Damn, he was pushy. Was he just curious, or did he have a darker motive?
    “I’ve just never seen a woman in that, uh, job that doesn’t exist guarding nowhere.”
    She pulled her blanket over her legs and flattened her pillow again. Silence swelled, broken only by the shoosh of the air purification system. “I guess that makes me all the less conspicuous then, if you’re not expecting me. If that were my job, which it isn’t.” She tucked her damp hair behind her ears. “How about let’s discuss your job for a while?”
    “Touché.” He commandeered the remote control and settled back on his gurney five feet away. He swung his swollen ankle up, propping it on a wadded blanket.
    “So, is that a ‘no’ to discussions about why you were parachuting into the middle of nowhere and what you may have seen on your way down?”
    His smile faded. “It was dark, and I was more concerned about not shattering my legs when I landed.”
    “Sucks to be you.” Sucked to be her, too, since she obviously wasn’t going to learn squat about what really happened. The military was so uptight about this whole incident they weren’t even letting her use a phone until morning.
    “I don’t know. The day turned out not so bad after all.” He fluffed his pillow and leaned back on his side, propped on one elbow. “You’re entertaining.”
    “You sure do know how to charm a woman.”
    “I never could charm you in the dining hall.”
    What? “So you do remember.”
    “You thought I didn’t?”
    “You didn’t say anything.”
    “Neither did you. But honestly, how could I forget the way you savored the yakasoba special and soft-serve ice cream while looking down your nose at me?”
    She really hated it when people commented on her eating. Not that she intended to clue him in on how to push her buttons. “About your flight—”
    “Shhhh . . .” He pressed a finger to his mouth, his lips the perfect balance of fullness without being girly. “Remember the little green men. The walls have ears. If we’re not careful, they might beam in and abduct you for their medical experiments.”
    Her fist twisted in the blanket. Could his mention of alien killings be coincidental? She forced her voice to stay level and opted to shoot straight for the pink elephant in the room. “Don’t you think that remark is in bad taste, given the recent Killer Alien scare?”
    “You’re right,” he conceded without a blink. “I must have lost sight of how much fear it’s stirred around here, since I was half a world away for all of November and December.”
    She stored away that nugget of information to confirm later. If he’d truly been out of the United States for that time frame, then he had an unbreakable alibi for two of the murders. It wasn’t like he could just jet back to Vegas from across the world in a couple of hours.
    The kick of relief she felt over the possibility of his innocence unsettled her. She should be disappointed to learn the lead may have taken her in the wrong direction yet again. She reached to punch the light control down another dimmer notch and lay back on her pillow.
    “Jill?” Mason’s voice slid across the room like a smooth shot of good liquor over her tongue that made a person close their eyes to savor it all the more. “Thanks for not blowing my head off back there in the desert last night.”
    “You’re welcome, Maso—” She stopped short, her nerves going on high alert. “How did you find out my name?”
    He jabbed a thumb toward the end of her gurney. “I peeked at your chart while you were in the bathroom.” He sprawled onto his back, adjusted the blanket, and turned on the tiny TV before she could even think of a comeback.
    Why would he bother nosing around in her chart? He could have just been obnoxiously curious in the same way he’d played with the otoscope, and honestly there wasn’t any harm in him knowing her name. The camo dudes preferred anonymity, but