Page 118 of Pride, Prejudice, & Pretense

He rubbed his swollen face with his left hand. Lizzy could tell he was fading but fighting his exhaustion. "But I also had another idea." He pursed his lips in embarrassment. "I have another friend among the analysts at Langley that I never mentioned to you or Bingley. I admit, I used him to give me a sense of who you were without any Kellynch slant before we left D.C. I needed, wanted to know more about you." He dropped his eyes and hurried on. "Anyway, I called him from Chicago after talking to Sanz and asked him to dig into St. James's finances and to compare what he found about the parish to what he could find on Lady Catherine's—purported—donations."

Lizzy was nodding, seeing it all come together in her mind much as it had in Fitzwilliam’s. She went on for him. "…and it turned out that Lady Catherine had made large donations to St. James that were not properly reflected in the Parish financial ledgers."

Fitzwilliam grinned at her. "Exactly, or at least that's what my analyst friend, Frank Churchill…?" He stopped and looked askance at Lizzy to see if she knew the name, but she shrugged her ignorance. "That's what Frank told me. She was funding the Wicker Man—not that she was the only source of funds—by giving to St. James. The bookkeeping was complicated and doubled-up. I wasn't trying to prove it, though, just to confirm that my suspicions were right. By then, I was certain they were.

“I haven’t found evidence to suggest Lady Catherineknewher money wasn’t helping St. James, but it seems likely that she wouldn’t have cared. She has plenty of it, and she and Collingwood probably had an arrangement. He would introduce young women like Teresa Sanz to her, sacrificial lambs that she and Wickham could despoil for their pleasure. Doing so would also provide Collingwood with blackmail material if Lady Catherine balked at providing the money he wanted.

"I managed to sneak into the parsonage at St. James and install some bugs. It helped that Collingwood was so secure in his pretense, his fake priesthood. He had grown to depend on Wickham to divert any suspicions away from himself."

"Avatar," Lizzy said softly, and Fitzwilliam nodded. "But the avatar was dead."

Another nod. "What happened on Casper Mountain caused serious problems for the Wicker Man, most especially the loss of Wickham. It put Collingwood under new pressures. Those helped me, too. He was too busy trying to contend with the consequences to seriously check his rearview, check for bugs in the parsonage, or notice footprints outside the parsonage."

"So, that's how you found out about the meeting at Vivos xPoint?"

He raised his eyebrows in surprise. "You heard about that?"

"Charlie told me." Lizzy pushed herself even closer to Fitzwilliam’s bed and squeezed his hand, remembering her fear when she had heard the news.

"Yes, monitoring Collingwood paid off. He called an emergency summit of the major players…the complete management team, as it were. What you and I and Bingley and Agent McDougal did in Chicago, what we did on the mountain, it forced Collingwood to reveal himself."

Fitzwilliam shook his head slowly. "Unfortunately, his plans changed at the last moment, after I had left Chicago and relocated to the Black Hills to prepare for the meeting. I didn't know that.

"Vivos xPoint, I was willing to bet, was part of the Wicker Man, a source of funds and more. I was there a couple of days ahead of Collingwood’s scheduled arrival. Bang Fumerton was installed in one of the bunkers. I couldn't do much to prep since Vivos was crawling with security. Luckily, the place is so vast that there was no way to keep me from sneaking in. I was there when the Wicker Man's pieces arrived and kept watch from a disused bunker using a telescope. The meeting was to last for a day and night. Since Collingwood wasn't there, I assumed he would arrive later, at the last minute.

"Fumerton must've decided to demonstrate his skills for the others, or maybe he’d stored something unstable in his bunker or something, but the bunker just exploded. He lived up to his name." Fitzwilliam’s grin was grim. "The bunker was built to withstand blasts from the outside, and it certainly did well with one on the inside?so well that there was little damage to the surroundings. Everyone inside was killed."

Lizzy stood up after placing Fitzwilliam’s hand on the bed. "So you had nothing to do with Fumerton? The explosion?"

"No, honestly. Nothing. I hoped to wait for Collingwood and then capture them all at once. It would've been tricky, doing it single-handedly, but I worried that calling for help would risk discovery and send them running. I planned to gas them in the bunker once Collingwood arrived."

Lizzy shook her head. "Collingwood is not…was not…God's right hand, but that explosion might have been the hand of God?an act of God. The new God ends the old gods."

Fitzwilliam looked at Lizzy closely but did not ask her to elaborate. After a moment of thought, he nodded once. "Reversal of the movie."

"But Collingwood wasn't there."

"No, and I left almost the next day. I had a sudden sick feeling that what happened at Vivos might unhinge him, send him after revenge. Churchill had been keeping tabs on you at my urging. Sorry…it was only an over-watch, using traffic cameras between your home and the bridal shop as far toward your house as the cameras went. Nothing too invasive." Lizzy shook her head to indicate that she was not upset. "I had asked him earlier?when I had him check on the finances at St. James and Rosings?to keep an ear to the ground and try to identify a leak or mole in Langley." He pushed himself up a bit in the bed. "I admit I didn't entirely trust Kellynch or anyone else at Langley, at least not as much as I trusted Churchill."

His tone changed. "Churchill was a friend of mine at University. After Bingley and before MI-6. He moved here in Rochester just after he graduated. We sort of kept in touch, especially after we realized we were in the same line of work, broadly speaking. Sorry, I’m drifting…

"I rushed here feeling terrified that Collingwood would arrive before me. As it turns out, he did. He must've left almostimmediately after hearing about Vivos. He may have had men here already who were following you, although Churchill hadn't noticed anyone."

Lizzy thought about the car in her neighborhood but said nothing. "So Collingwooddidhave other men here?" she asked after a moment.

"Yes, they're dead in that abandoned building. I assume the Company team has found them by now."

"Kellynch didn't mention it."

"You've talked to the director?" Fitzwilliam asked with concern in his voice and on his face.

"Yes, he called to ask me to reconsider my retirement."

He shifted forward in the bed. "And?"

"And I saidno."

"Oh." He said it noncommittally, but he relaxed back against the bed. "That's your final answer?"

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