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with him.” She glanced at the note, brain spinning.
    She knew Romo, knew what he’d been through as a child, and how those experiences had shaped the man he’d become. That, more than anything, told her logic favored the undercover theory. The Romo she’d known had been all about justice, sometimes to the exclusion of all other, softer emotions. She had to believe he’d been working for the good guys. That didn’t explain why he wanted to stay in hiding, but it did suggest that if the wrong people found out he was still alive, he could be in very real danger.
    Which, if she followed that line of thought to its conclusion, explained why he’d come to her if he felt he couldn’t go to whoever he’d been working for. She’d had her full medical training before deciding to specialize in pathology, and kept a small set of supplies on hand in case of emergencies. He would’ve known that, would’ve known she could patch him up. And, damn him, he would’ve known that she’d be unable to turn him away.
    Shaking her head, Sara stared down at him. “You’re really a bastard, you know that?”
    He didn’t answer. Didn’t even twitch. Which was so not helpful.
    She could call an ambulance, then dragoon one of her trusted cop friends to watch over him. There might be suspicions of complicity within the BCCPD and local FBI field office, but she knew for a fact that Chelsea, Fax, Cassie, Seth, Alyssa and Tucker were among the good guys. There was no way any of them were involved with the terrorists. They’d help keep Romo safe.
    But Sara stalled, because he’d come to her. He’d asked her to keep his presence a secret. Maybe, just maybe, it made the most sense to follow his instructions for the moment, and make her decisions once he was conscious and could fill in some of the blanks.
    Warning bells chimed at the back of her brain, but she couldn’t deal with them just then. She needed to make a decision, and it had better be the right one. Except when she came down to it, she knew she’d made her decision the moment she stepped toward him rather than away; the moment she’d touched his injured shoulder and felt warm skin, and remembered what they’d once been to each other.
    “Fine,” she said, her words seeming too loud in the silence of her secluded home. “Have it your way. You always did.” Reaching for a double handful of his clothing—and steeling herself to be a doctor rather than a woman who still, inexplicably, wanted to weep—she said, “I need to roll you. This is going to hurt.”
    She doubted he could hear her. The warning was more for her own sake than his, because she wasn’t used to dealing with patients who still had their pain responses intact.
    Doing her best to minimize the amount she twisted and moved him, in case the bullet had ended up someplace grim, she levered him partway up and checked for an exit wound or other injuries on the front of his body. She didn’t find either, which was both good news and bad: good news because his injury seemed localized and treatable, assuming the bullet hadn’t punched through to something internal; bad news because she didn’t know where the damned thing had gone.
    Easing him back down onto his flat stomach, trying not to remember how he’d slept like that, his face smashed into the pillow, his long limbs sprawled toward her, onto her, some part of him always touching some part of her, she rose and headed deeper into the house, through the smallish, oddly arranged rooms that she’d decorated to blend one into the next, with neutral, mossy colors and richly patterned curtains.
    She took the stairs leading up to her office and the bedroom, and tried not to remember the night she and Romo had made love on the landing, early in their relationship. They’d been out with her friends, teasing each other with looks and touches, with no question in either of their minds where and how the night would end. They hadn’t even made it all the way up the