Page 89 of Pride, Prejudice, & Pretense

"Have to assume it. She must have gone out this way and run into the trees. Given the state of things inside?the food, the candles?she can't have been gone long. Probably bolted when we drove up. You were right to worry about her."

"I wastoldto worry about her," the other man said. "Wickham's always thought with his dick, and it was going to catch up with him eventually."

The other man barked a sudden laugh.

"What?"

"Just imagining Wickham's dick catching up with him. He couldn't have run far."

Both men laughed.

The one near the railing stood up. "All right, I'm going after her. If we find her, we’ll kill her. When Wickham wakes up, come after me. Use the walkie-talkies, and the other team will, too. Old school. Get them out of the car while I make sure she didn't climb up the other side."

The second man disappeared. The man at the railing scanned the area again and then started climbing the stairs up to the lookout.

Lizzy waited for him to reach the halfway point, straining to see him as he disappeared into the dark, and then she worked away from the cabin, farther downhill, slowly bear-crawling in the underbrush, trying to make her passing noiseless.

Two men. Three when Wickham woke. Another team?two more? The Wicker Man was astride the mountain, like the Giant Despair in Bunyan.Why am I thinking about books?

Her odds were not good. She could probably stay hidden, but she needed to find a phone signal, help. Continuing downhill seemed the obvious choice, although the men would know that, too.

Where was the other team?

Below her. Almost a certainty.

Uphill would take her farther from a signal and civilization, and the going would be much harder, much slower.

She crawled to a clearing deeper in the trees and stood. Confident she was now invisible, she started to walk. But thedarkness also hid the rocky ground; she stumbled and caught herself.Damn.It was too risky to use the light on her phone, but the terrain was risky, too. She also had to fight against increasing her speed on the steep slope. It would be too easy to fall.

From behind her, she heard a noise.Underbrush.The man was coming behind her, distant, moving carefully. Lizzy tried to keep moving without hurrying, placing each foot carefully on the ground. The noise behind her impelled her forward, but she fought her own impulse, reining herself, making her steps deliberate.

She walked for several minutes before she tripped and fell?hard.Unfortunately, the bag she carried had shifted to her back. Unable to break her fall, she sprawled heavily onto her stomach, landing flush on a large stone half-buried in the ground. It dug violently into the left side of her ribs. Wickham's jacket protected her skin, but her ribs were going to be badly bruised.

When she stood and took a deep breath, the breathhurt. Her ribs were not broken—she had endured that before and would know the injury if visited on her again—but she was injured. Her range of motion in her shoulder and waist would soon be compromised.

Abusing herself inwardly as a clumsy fool, she continued downhill, trying to be more careful even than before.

Fifteen minutes later, she stopped. She was laboring for breath, her ribs cursing her more nastily with each inhalation. Shutting her eyes as if she could blind herself to the pain, she attempted to control her breathing, to shallow each breath. Starting again, she found herself enmeshed in heavier underbrush. Slowing was now not something she had to fight. Each step took effort, each step made noise, and each step ached.

Then, downhill ahead of her, she heard noise she did not make.Underbrush. The other team.

She had wondered why the men at the cabin had not given chase immediately, and now she knew: she had been caught in pincers, outflanked. The men had been confident they could catch up with her if she had gone uphill, and they knew she would be cut off if she went downhill.

Stopping and rotating where she stood, she sought a hiding place. The underbrush might work, but she wanted a better spot. A tree would work, but not with her injury. It would take too long to climb to the necessary height. Even worse, she had no idea how far uphill and behind her the other pursuer was. Presumably, he was on the relatively clear rocky ground she had been on for the last fifteen minutes.Maybe he didn't fall and isn't fighting for breath.

A clump of medium-tall bushes stood about twenty yards away on her right. It wasn't much, but she might be able to hide among them without having to crouch or sit. She wasn't sure she could bear to do that, not for long. She searched downhill as she hurried toward the bushes, shifting her eyes to her path every step or two, monitoring herself as she monitored the other team.

Then she saw something. A sudden narrow shaft of light, muffled by reddened fingers. It was a hand over the business end of a flashlight, allowing only a blade of light to escape, butter-colored.

"Turn that off!" A harsh whisper, a woman's voice.

"Snarled in a damn briar bush," came the harsher response, a man's voice.

"Both of you, hush!" A third voice, male. Harsher than either of the other two. The leader of the other team.

The light went off, but Lizzy now knew exactly where one of them was and had an approximate idea of where the other two were. The three were all fifteen yards downhill, spread out. She reached the bushes and pushed her way slowly into them, praying for silence.

She could hear the team behind moving more distinctly as they closed the distance.

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