“Find out what?” I gasped.

He sagged, his forehead rested against my chest, and the feeling that something was not just wrong, but horribly wrong descended on me like a sheet thrown over a bed. It was not heavy enough to take my breath, but light enough to give me goosebumps. I sat there like a statue, my hands gripping the table edge, the now-familiar whisper of the fire in the wood stove loud in the strange silence.

Then came the sound of men’s voices. They stopped outside. They were waiting. But for what? Kit? Who were they and why was he not going outside?

I touched his face. “What’s going on Kit?” I begged, there was more than an edge of panic in my voice.

“I have to go,” he said.

“Go? Go where?”

“I can’t leave you here on your own, not with that sorry son of a bitch running loose, so I’m going to take you back to your house.”

“Kit, first tell me what the heck is going on? You’re scaring me. Who are those men outside?”

There was a firm knock on the front door.

“I’ll explain it all when I get back in two, maximum three days.”

I grabbed his shirt. “No, I can’t wait. You have to tell me now.”

The knocking got louder. “Kit,” someone called.

“Let me go answer that fucking door,” he said.

I let go of his shirt and tuned out everything but what was going on at the front door. The door swung open on its well-oiled hinges, and the man spoke in a low voice. I strained to catch what he was saying, but I couldn’t make anything out. I stood up and walked to the corridor.

“Take her to her house? What the fuck? She’ll see us, man!”

“She’s blind,” Kit said.

“How far away is the town?”

“Half an hour.”

“Can’t you just leave her here?”

“No fucking way. You have three choices. I take her home and meet you back here, we drop her off and go on from there, or I don’t come at all.”

The man sighed. “I’ll have to call it in, but I guess it’ll be easier if we drop her off.”

The door closed. I heard the man walk away. Then I heard Kit run up the stairs, taking them two, or three at a time.

In a confused daze, I stood up and walked to the living room. Unthinkingly, I sat on the armchair by the fire. The spring jagged into my flesh and I remembered that first morning I came here. How much my life had changed since then. My heart was racing and my mind was trying to figure out what the conversation with the man had been about. Who was that man? Where were they going? Why did it matter that I did not see them?

Whatever it was, I was going to be dropped off home. I stood up and walked towards the stairs. I went upstairs to the bedroom.

“Get dressed,” he said. “We’ll drop you off at your house.”

It was Kit, but it wasn’t my Kit … not exactly. This man had the gruff edge, the steel-hard undertone that I had heard when he spoke to me on the telephone that first time. This was what everybody else got. Not me. He’d never been like this with me.

I stood there in a state of shock. He was like a stranger. I wanted to cry. His steps came toward me.

He was wearing heavy boots, different than his usual ones. He even smelled different, a blend of sandalwood, and metal and something else, something I couldn’t put my finger on. His clothing rustled in a way that I hadn’t heard before. The moment he was close enough I reached out to touch him.

The fabric was rough. My hand went over his heart, to my favorite place in this world, and there was an even rougher spot. A patch? I dug my nails into it. It pulled off with the ripping sound of Velcro.

“What’s going on, Kit?” My heart was pounding so hard that I could feel it from head to toe.

“Honey, get ready. Please,” he said, his voice full of regret.

“What is this?” I demanded, holding out the patch. “Is this a name tag?”

Kit paused. “Yes.”

“Are you in uniform?”

“Yes.”

“Why are you in uniform?” I was genuinely confused. He had never mentioned a uniform, never said anything about it. If his voice hadn’t held that edge … if there hadn’t been such regret in it now … maybe I could have believed he was wearing it for old time’s sake.

But he wasn’t, and I knew it.

“Sit down for a minute,” he said, taking my free hand, and pulling me toward the bed. I went willingly, sinking down onto the crisply folded blankets and perfectly tucked sheets. My brain processed that information. He’d made the beds. What the hell? Why would he do that if he was in a hurry? Was it for the same reason that people worry about having clean underwear if they met with an accident? My mind went blank.

“What is going on?” I sat there, clutching his hand, willing myself to hear everything, even the things he couldn’t, or wouldn’t say. I was scared, and I didn’t know why.

Kit sighed. “I was going to explain all of this to you, but the time was never right,” he said. “After what you told me about your brother and your dad, I realized that I might have waited too long already. Then we just kept getting closer, and closer and I didn’t want to spoil that.” He cleared his throat. “I knew telling you would spoil it.”

“Spell this out for me, Kit,” I whispered. “The suspense is killing me.”

He paused for a long moment. When he next spoke, his voice was thick with tears. “I’m in uniform because I’m a covert operative, Lara,” he said.

I couldn’t breathe. The air wouldn’t come. I stood up, and the motion somehow jolted my body into doing what it should do. I took a deep breath as the disbelief set in.

I sat back down like a robot. “Say that again.” I hoped I had heard him wrong.

“I’m what is known in the business, Lara, as sheep dipped.”