Page 91 of Pride, Prejudice, & Pretense

"Yes."

"I hated those classes at the Farm."

Lizzy nodded, acknowledging her confession but not lingering on it. "That man?Wickham?and another man were behind me." Lizzy didn't go into the whole story, the details; she didn't know exactly what Fitzwilliam had told Karen in their briefing. "But the two of them must have reached the bodies and realized a walkie-talkie was missing. We have no way to know if the three of them are now together—or whether the man who ran has joined them, a fourth. I have information, details on a terrorist attack planned for tomorrow in Rapid City, but it's on my phone and there's no signal. At least there wasn't." She located her phone and looked at it. Still no bars.

Karen nodded, her lips hardening into a plump line. "We should go. There's no signal until we're in the car and still farther down the mountain, farther than we can manage on foot." Her voice sank, and her face showed embarrassment around the goggles.

"What is it?"

Karen frowned as she lifted her head and spoke hurriedly. "I was supposed to have a satphone and give you a second one in the airport bathroom—but I left them at the office. I got so focused on the guns, I didn't remember about the satphones until you and your mark left the airport. I couldn't break the tail to go all the way back to the office…Agent Darcy stressed it…"

Lizzy started. She pocketed her own phone and got Wickham's out. She hadn't looked closely at his phone in the cabin?too rushed?or when he had been using it on the trip to Casper or in the airport?too suspicious. But he’d gotten a call in the cabin.

She examined the phone as closely as she could in the faint moonlight. Karen looked at it, too, and then faced Lizzy. "That's one of those new phones, satphone and cellphone combined. Not as bulky as the ones I have in the office and no visible antenna."

Lizzy had recognized it. She nodded. "It's Wickham's. But I can't open it."

"And you won't without guessing the password. Even the computer nerds at Langley would have no luck without it."

"No time for that now, anyway. Let's go." Lizzy shoved the phone back into her pocket. They started again, once more in a line of two, Karen in the front.

Lizzy looked back. She could see nothing, but she felt Wickham's malevolence bearing down on her like an avalanche. She could not safely move faster than Karen, who was moving faster than Lizzy could travel in the dark unaided.

I will find you. I will fuck you. I will strangle you as…

She made herself stop replaying Wickham's words. The thought of facing him again filled her with a glacial cold, vast and unstoppable. Before, as difficult or awful as each encounter with him had been, they had all been mediated by her cover andhis determination to restrain himself until she yielded to him, to temptation. The next time, they would be face to face. He would do whatever he did toher, Lizzy, even if he did not know her name.

She wondered how much of his mask Wickham had let slip with Georgiana, especially at the end. If he had ever spoken to her as he had spoken on the walkie-talkie, if he had evertouchedher in that tone of voice, with such acid cruelty, it was no wonder Fitzwilliam’s half-sister had crumbled, retreated from the world, and stayed in retreat. Lizzy shuddered.

They hurried forward, a phalanx of two in the dark, one who could see in the dark followed by one who now wanted only to escape the dark.Down, down, down,Lizzy chanted to herself,done, done, done. I can't do this anymore. I need to talk to Fitzwilliam and then to Kellynch.

And then I need a new life.

Standing in the little red cabin in that little red nightie, naked beneath, holding drinks, Fanny posed, was as far as Lizzy would willingly go in her old life.Close to the edge of the world.

She was cold to the bone and bone-tired, her exhaustion, the exhaustion that had been chasing her far longer than the Wicker Man's teams, that had been chasing her as she arrived at Langley for the meeting with Kellynch and Darcy—her exhaustion had caught her. She wanted to sleep, sleep for a week, and wake to another week of sleep.

Lizzy stumbled, and Karen turned around. "Are you okay?"

"Yes, I fell before you found me. Rock to the ribs—and the exertion and the cold…"

"I've got a medkit in the car with painkillers. It won't be long now. We'll turn toward the road soon. We've been descending roughly in parallel with it but stayed away from it because it's too exposed. The people I followed knew you wouldn't go up orgo deeper into the wilds of the mountain, that you'd stay close to the road but avoid it."

"To tell the truth, I hadn't really thought it out, planned. I was just running. Reacting. The path of least resistance. Down."

Karen scanned behind them and then turned back around and started walking, this time a bit more slowly for her companion’s benefit. After another five minutes, she turned toward the road. Instead of walking downhill, they were now walking across the slope.

"How much farther?" Lizzy asked. She glanced uphill anxiously without the benefit of Karen's night vision goggles. Her tone as well as her question underscored her exhaustion.

"A little farther. Keep moving. My car's down on the far side of the road, but you won't need to go all the way to it. You can hide on this side and get in the car when I bring it up to the road. Just jump in, and we'll get to a phone signal. Maybe we'll find Agent Darcy. According to his timetable, he ought to be on the mountain by now. He said you were carrying a tracker."

"It's in my bag." Lizzy patted the Patagonia bag hanging securely at her side.

"Thank God! Maybe he won't report me to Director Kellynch about the satphones."

"I'll defend you, Agent McDougal. Are you sure you didn't just lose the phones inyourbag?"

She chuckled softly. "Maybe. Not a standard issue, that bag. But with a rugrat and no husband, I have to carry everything all by myself. We can check it when we're safely in the car. It's in the trunk, with my other shoes."

---