“Do you know anyone who is against the idea of you being with me?” he asked suddenly.
“Everybody, I would have thought,” I said slowly. I couldn’t tell him the truth. As much as I hated to admit it, Sheriff Bradley was right. I could make things a lot worse. I needed to talk to Sawyer myself first.
I felt him shift and lean forward. “No, someone who is angry about it. Someone who feels the need to take revenge. But a coward. A man. A man who feels something for you.”
I bent towards my mug so he wouldn’t be able to see the expression on my face. “Maybe it is a good idea to let Sheriff Bradley investigate first.”
He stood up and paced the floor. “He’s not going to do anything, Lara. His job is not to uphold law and order. His real purpose is to protect the rich. He’s their attack dog.”
“But he can’t just not do anything. He has to investigate.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen sham investigations before. I know exactly what his investigations will turn up. Nothing.”
“At least give him a chance,” I said, and hated the way I sounded even as I made the pathetic suggestion.
“I can’t sit here while out there roams a man who can shoot my wolves anytime he pleases. He could be out there right now, Lara. Just waiting for the lights to go off so he can fire another arrow.”
I covered my face with my hands. I felt so guilty. If not for me Chepi would not be dead. Even now I couldn’t tell him what I knew, because I was afraid he would do something crazy, and end up behind bars. Everybody in this town was just waiting for him to put a foot wrong.
He strode towards me and crouched in front of me. Gently he grasped my hands with his and removed them from my face. “You know something, don’t you?”
“I can’t tell you yet,” I whispered. “Please don’t ask me to tell you.”
“Are you protecting someone?” he asked in a shocked voice.
“Yes. I’m protecting you,” I sobbed.
“Me? It’s not your job to protect me, Lara. I’m here to protect you.”
“If you approach him it will only make things worse. Let me talk to him first.”
“What?” he exploded. “No fucking way. It’ll be a cold day in hell before I let my woman be in the same room as a coward who has to make his point with a crossbow from sixty yards away.”
“I won’t talk to him,” I said immediately. “I’ll talk to someone he respects. Someone he’ll never dare go against.”
“Lara, I don’t know how your brain works, but no, that is not an acceptable solution. You have to trust me. I’m not a fool. I won’t go crazy. I won’t hurt anyone, but I need you to tell me so I can sort this out. My wolves are sitting ducks out there while this maniac is allowed to run free.”
“It’s not so simple.”
“No?”
I shake my head.
“Explain it to me.” He sounded like he was losing his patience.
“He’s in love with me, but he’s marrying another woman for her money. He thought no one else would want me, and that in two years he would have made a pile of money using her father’s contacts, and then he would be able to divorce her and marry me.”
“Fuck, what a sick piece of shit,” he spat.
“So you see, I don’t want to spoil it for him, because then it will be worse for us. I just want to warn him to stay away because I’m with you and he’s with her. I think I can convince him that I love you, and he might as well stick with her as there is no hope for him and me.”
“You’ll do no such thing. The man is dangerous and-.” He broke off mid-sentence and froze. “Someone’s coming. Stay here. Don’t move,” he ordered, and I could hear his footsteps running to get his weapon. Then, to my astonishment, he stopped running, and paused for a second before he started walking back towards me. He stood in front of me, and all the anger and tension had drained out him.
Suddenly, he seemed like a beaten man.
“What?” I whispered, more frightened than I had ever been in my life.
He knelt beside me, and I reached out a trembling hand to touch his face. His eyes were closed with regret or sorrow. I could hear a vehicle coming up the road.
“Who is coming?” I asked, my voice shaking
“Oh, Lara. I never meant for you to find out like this.”
Lara
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3wKzyIN1yk
“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.”
Lara
“Sheep dipped?” I repeated. I actually felt dizzy with confusion. My life felt like it had been turned upside down. “For Pete’s sake, Kit, stop talking in damn riddles. What the heck is sheep dipped?” I lashed out.
“It’s someone who gives every impression of being a civilian, or one of the sheep, but in fact, is in deep cover. We carry out the operations that our government does in secret.”
“You can’t be,” I gasped. I ran both my hands through my hair. My whole life was turning out to be a bizarre, unbelievable nightmare. First, Sawyer told me he was secretly in love with me, then the man that Sheriff Bradley said wouldn’t kill a fly that was shitting on his face came around and killed an innocent wolf, now Kit was telling me he was some sort of black operative in the military.
How could this have happened to me? I didn’t even want a soldier, and I get a Delta Force, or Navy SEALs, or whatever the hell his squad was called.
“I am, Lara. That’s what I do. I’m part of a special forces team. I was recruited into it seven years ago. Me and my battle buddies were chosen because of our skill sets, our lack of family, our mental make-up, and our dedication to our units. Whenever a job comes up that our government cannot be seen to be involved in, they come and get me.”
“A job?” I whispered.
“They are jobs. In and out, short and sweet, one and done. When they are done, I come back here and become the guy who was discharged from the army and is suffering from a mild form of PTSD again …”
I felt sick to the core. “This has to be a joke.”
His voice was filled with regret. “I wish it were.”
“You said you used to be in the military. Not that you were neck deep in it!” I accused.
“I never said that. I never said I was done. I would never do that, because that would be lying … to you, my angel.”
“And lying by omission is okay?” I screeched.
My voice was so loud it echoed around the room. I couldn’t breathe properly. I wanted to lay down on his bed, crawl into a fetal position, and cry until there was no pain left and the awful thoughts going through my head were dead. But I was stronger than that. Wasn’t I?
“Fine, tell me everything now then. I want to know,” I demanded. The voice that came out of me was so intense it was almost foreign.
“I can’t tell you anything. You shouldn’t even know what you already do. We’re not even allowed to reveal our true status to anyone, not even our families. For most part the families of black operatives think their loved ones are either discharged because of injury, sickness or mental problems.”
“Am I allowed to know where you are going tonight?”
“I don’t know yet. I’ll be briefed once I get to the base.”
“What will you be doing?”
“Even if I knew, I couldn’t tell you.”
“But they are all dangerous assignments?”
“Some are more dangerous than others.”
“Oh my God! You could die tonight, couldn’t you?” I gasped.
“Yes.” The word was spoken quietly, but it hit my heart like a bullet.
“I can’t believe this. No way. This is not happening to me again. You’re calmly telling me you could walk out of that door and never come back! Like my brother and my father.” My voice was shrill with the hysteria of thinking he could die.
“What does black ops mean? Are you doing illegal things?”
“Often, that is the reason we are used.”
“Why?”
“Because the end justifies the means.”
“If you’re doing illegal things it means what you are doing is wrong.”
“There is a big difference between what is legal and what is morally right and wrong. What is legal changes with time. Once it was legal to hunt wolves. Now it isn’t. Once it was legal to buy and sell black people. Now it isn’t. I’m doing the right thing. Someone has to stop the horrible things that happen in this world. Someone has to step up and do the right thing.”
By then I was crying, but my voice was steady. “Why does that someone have to be you?”
“If everybody thought that about their loved ones then there would be no one left to step up to the job.”
“I have given up my dad, my brother, and my mother for my country. Are you asking me to give up the man I love for this country as well?”
“Can we talk about this when I get back?”
“What is there to talk about?” I asked bitterly. “Not only are you a soldier, you’re part of a unit that undertakes the most dangerous missions.” I stopped. “Do you kill people in these secret missions?”
“Sometimes.”
I covered my mouth with my hands. “Who are you?”
“I’m the man who never thought he’d find a woman again. I’m the guy who’d given up hope. I’m the man who loves you.”
If he had said those words a few hours back I would have been the happiest woman on earth, but now, they rung hollow. Love? This was not love. He tricked me. He knew I never wanted to be with a man in the army and he let me fall in love with him. “If something happens to you this time, and you don’t come back, will I even know about it?”
The silence was like a knife in my chest.
“I won’t even be told, will I?” I croaked in disbelief.
“Probably not. You’ll just read in the paper that a veteran died in an automobile crash on one of the roads nearby, or something like that.”
Lara
I shook my head in astonishment. “Oh, Jesus! Can you hear yourself? Do you even understand what you’re asking of me?”
He didn’t reply and I wanted to shake him with frustration and rage.
“What if it was me? What if it was me bei
ng called out in the middle of the night, and there was a better-than-great chance that you’d never see me again?”
I heard him take a shuddering breath.
“Answer me!” I shouted.
“No, I wouldn’t allow you to go.”
“So how can you ask that of me?” I cried.
“There is a big difference between us. I’m not a novice. I’m a highly trained soldier. There are not many men who are better at what I do than me. I’m good at this, Lara. It’s why I was recruited.”
“Is that why you nearly got blown to smithereens before?”
He sighed heavily. “If I am meant to die, Lara, I will. I could slip in the snow and fall while I’m carrying you to our front door and go that way.”
“Is that meant to be your idea of a joke?” I gasped.
“I have to go now, but I’ll be back in three days. Please don’t try to contact that sorry son of a bitch until I return.”
I nodded automatically and heard the clink of something, an out of context sound, but one that I had heard before. Then it finally registered – that smell I couldn’t put my finger on, that strangely familiar scent. It was gun oil. Suddenly, I knew. I took a deep breath. It hurt me to my very core.
“I promised myself I would never go through what my mother went through,” I said. “I didn’t tell you what happened after my father’s funeral, did I? My mother held it together through all of that, through the damn flag folding, and the salute; and all the fine-standing men in uniform saying they were so sorry. She made it back home and smiled bravely at the reception, but when everyone was gone, she collapsed on the floor in her bedroom and screamed. She screamed, and screamed, and … I … I … couldn’t make her stop.” My voice had risen to a hysterical pitch.
“Don’t. Don’t, Lara. Don’t do this,” he begged, holding me tightly.
I was crying so hard I could barely breathe. “She was never the same after that. Never. I won’t go down that path. I can’t. I don’t want to. Please don’t ask me to.”
His Frozen Heart: A Mountain Man Romance Page 29
