Page 75 of Pride, Prejudice, & Pretense

Thursday, October 22

She slept dreamlessly, deeply, and late. A vibrating phone woke her, a woody sound. She rolled over and slid open the nightstand drawer. It was her personal phone shaking against the wooden bottom of the drawer. She could see the caller's name.

Jane

Lizzy sat up and rubbed her eyes, blinking. The fall sun was shining outside, bright, blinding, even with the rays elongated by the season. The dark vortex of the night before was gone. Her bedroom, the entire apartment, was stable with no rotation.

Why is Jane calling me?

"Hello, Jane?"

"Lizzy, hey! Did I wake you?" the voice was excited but quiet.

She smiled lazily. "You did, but I needed to be up anyway, and you're a welcome alarm. How are you?"

"Fine, but I'm worried about you—all of you. Darcy told Charlie to call me and to tell me to call you. He seemed to think you could use a friend."

Lizzy felt warmth fill her chest, Fitzwilliam’s regard. "He was right. It's great to hear your voice!"

"Yours, too." Jane took a second before launching into her reason for calling. "So, without giving me details, can you tell me what's happening? Why's Darcy worried enough about you to continue to breach protocol? To encourage it?Darcy?"

Lizzy blew out a breath with enough force that Jane must be able to hear it. "Well, it's not easy to explain without details."

"Is it the mark?"

Lizzy was silent for a moment. "Partly. He's complex?an evil man, devoted to the corruption of otherwise good women, and he knows how to press his advantage."

"Press his advantage?" She sounded worried, as if she understood exactly what Lizzy meant, being pinned by Wickham against the counter.

"Nothing's happened—well, not much. His hands…have been…on me. He's unleashed the full-court press. Tomorrow, I've agreed to travel with him."

"Travel? With him? That's risky,seriouslyrisky. Outside your cover’s base, you cede control to him for real, and your backup can only be reactive, not proactive."

"I know. But I'm close. The mark wants…me…badly enough that he's willing to take me with him. He doesn't suspect me, I'm sure. This is by far our best chance to lure him into a mistake, a revelation. So far, we haven't got anything solid."

Jane was silent for a long minute. "I don't think I ever told you, but back when I was working as an analyst, I worked with a team, a man and a woman. I'll leave their names out of it. She did something similar?agreed to travel with her mark. She ended up not being able to get word to her partner about where the mark had taken her. A freak thing. The mark took her to a motel and…unleashed the full-court press. She ended up yielding to him, closing her eyes and sleeping with him."

She cleared her throat. "She convinced herself it would secure the mission objectives, make the mark more pliable, more forthcoming. But he beat her,after, savagely—nearly killed her. It was never clear if he identified her as an agent somehow or if he was just done with her. Afterward, he vanished. She didthat—for nothing. She spent weeks in the hospital and then in CIA therapy, and I don't know if she ever fully recovered, body or mind."

There was another pause. When she continued, her voice was insistent, pointed. "Don't ever think of your body as a tool, or of sex as something…on your toolbelt. Maybe there are agents who can dissociate from themselves to that degree and stayhealthy or at least sane, but you'renotone of them, Lizzy! I know you. You feel deeply.

"In mission situations like that, it's too easy to start a slippery slope argument with yourself. ‘Well, if his hands are here, how much worse is it if they move there?’ Or ‘If I let him do this, how much worse is that?' You've always been eager, too eager to please Kellynch. Resist that urge now." Jane's voice sank to an intercessory whisper. "Think about what you're doing."

"I am. I'm not eager to please Kellynch, not anymore. Things have changed since I've been here. They’ve been changing. This is it for me. I finish this mission and then—I find another job, another life." Lizzy heard Jane’s surprised gasp at her resolve. "My motives…have changed. What I want has changed."

"What—?" Jane asked, still doubtful but coming to belief. "You mean it, don't you?"

"I do. I've sort of known it for a while. Even though it succeeded, my last mission left me soempty. When I took this mission, crazily, I was grasping at straws, angry at Agent Darcy, but I was really fighting my own unacknowledged desire to be done, trying to force myself backin."

"By taking the kind of mission you hate, that you normally refuse?"

"In for a dime, in for a dollar." Lizzy said, still analyzing her choice in Kellynch's office, what she had actually done.

"So you think you doubled down, ending up with a mission that truly finished you instead of recommitting you?"

"Basically, yes. Do you think I'm a fool?"

"No, of course not. But I do wonder if you're telling me all that's relevant. There's something else, isn't there?"

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