Page 114 of Pride, Prejudice, & Pretense

And then she saw him.Fitzwilliam.He was tied to a metal chair in the far right corner of the room past the window. Using all the discipline of her years as an agent, she made herself stand for a moment longer and sweep the room once more. The only activity was the tree limb outside moving in the wind. She let go of the door and silently ran toward him.

His head and shoulders were slumped. His feet were tied together and then anchored to the legs of the chair. Blood stains encircled the front of the chair, spills and spatters.

"Fitzwilliam!" she whispered as she crouched down to look at him. Unsure if he was alive or dead, she put her hands gently on his shoulders and pushed him up in the chair.

He groaned—and she was so elated at the sound that she kissed his face before she registered the damage. He had been beaten. Pistol-whipped. Probably by Leo, who had clubbed her mother in the van. She had seen such damage before on missions…even inflicted it herself once during a desperate mission she had spent years trying to forget. Fitzwilliam’s face was swollen, horribly bruised, lacerated. His bottom lip was split in several places. Blood matted his chin.

She kissed him again anyway, the kiss leaving the taste of his blood on her lips.

Then she stood and stepped quickly around the chair. His hands were tied behind it, anchored to the back. She dropped the gun into her pocket to work the knot. Fingers on Fitzwilliam’s right hand—the little finger and the ring finger—were badly broken, angled unnaturally. The nausea she had carried in from the van bubbled in her stomach. She unknotted the rope, unwound it, and took his broken hand carefully in hers. The breaks were severe, but no bone punctured the skin.

She knew with a chill certainty that she was looking at the beginning of torture that would have continued. A foreplay of pain. It hadn't continued, but that was carrion comfort.

Holding his hand, she came back around the chair. She placed his hand in his lap with devoted care and then knelt to untie his feet. She noticed her fresh bloody footprints among his dried bloodstains on the floor.

His eyes flicked open and he groaned again—but this time the groan took the form of her name. "Lizzy…" He formed her name slowly, syllable by tortured syllable. Speaking made his lip begin to bleed again.

She rose, put her fingertips to his distorted cheek, and made a shushing sound. "Be quiet. I'm here. We're together."

His eyes flicked open again, stayed open this time, and he grimaced in pain. His eyes focused on her for a moment, but then his gaze slipped past her toward the door. She leaned into him as he jerked in the chair and shouted her name, shouldering her to the side.

She did not see but felt the missed blow and heard the grunt from behind where she had been bent over Fitzwilliam. She whirled to see Rook finish a downward swing with a large hunting knife?a rolling boulder with a serrated blade.

The knife narrowly missed Fitzwilliam. He had pushed Elizabeth aside knowing he could not dodge the blow if it reached him, but it had not. The force of the missed swing overbalanced Rook, and Fitzwilliam, from his chair, managed to kick him in the face. Rook absorbed the blow and stumbled to the side, one heavy step.

Once he caught himself, he lunged at Fitzwilliam, the knife raised again, murderously, up…up…to bury it as it came down. He had expected to kill Lizzy, and now he was exposed—but he would kill Fitzwilliam. As Rook’s heavy arm began to fall, Lizzy whipped the gun from her pocket and shot him in the side of his chest below his raised arm.

Changing direction, he faced Elizabeth and stalked toward her. Fitzwilliam tried to stand, to interpose himself between them, but he was too weak and collapsed in the chair. Rook seemed unfazed by her bullet. He smiled at her, a feral version of the smiley face on the frosted door. She fired again and again. He kept coming, knife out, smile fixed.

And then, as if in slow motion, theatrically, he began to collapse. He teetered, dropped the knife, and sank to his knees, then forward onto his palms, face to the floor. It seemed as if the floor were swallowing him brutish bit by bit. He sighed likegreat bellows emptying, and then he lifted his head. "Bitch!" he managed to croak as he slumped forward, flat on the floor.

Lizzy stepped over Rook's massive body and put her arms around Fitzwilliam, pulling him from the chair. As she did, she felt him try to assist her and stand.

Wailing. She heard wailing—and thought she was making the sound until she realized it was sirens, sirens coming closer. The police.

"Collingwood and a man named Leo?they left a while ago. Said they’d take you prisoner and be back,” Fitzwilliam whispered urgently into her ear.

“Both dead.”

“Good.” He breathed a sigh of relief. “Then there’s no more. Safe. We’re safe. Rook was all."

He managed to get his feet under him enough for Lizzy to help him walk. He was not a small man. Sharing their burden together, they stumbled slowly toward the door.

***

Saturday, November 28

Lizzy drank the last of the bitter coffee from the paper cup and dropped it in the wastebasket. She stood in a long hallway outside a waiting room at Strong Memorial Medical Center.

Waiting. Aching. Waiting.

She had been waiting for an eternity, or so it felt.Purgatory. Both Fitzwilliam and Lizzy’s mother were being treated, but she had yet to hear any word about either. She had been more or less chased into another room, where a nurse had dressed the cuts and wounds on Lizzy's feet. Someone had produced a sweater for her to wear. She had not even realized she was freezing until she was in the ambulance with her mother and Fitzwilliam.

She had already called her aunt and uncle on a hospital phone. They were now on their way to the hospital and should be arriving soon.

After calling them, she had phoned Kellynch. First, she told him to contact Charlie, to make sure he was okay and to alert him in case some surviving piece of the Wicker Man had made its way to D.C. Second, she related all that had happened to her that night, all that Collingwood had told her.

Kellynch had already dispatched teams in Rochester to follow up with local law enforcement and claim the scene. He wanted to talk to Fitzwilliam as soon as possible. Lizzy agreed…but with the silent caveat thatshewould talk with Fitzwilliam before he talked to Kellynch.

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