Page 92 of Pride, Prejudice, & Pretense

"Who's watching your child?" Lizzy found talking better than thinking, and she was curious. They both were whispering.

"My ex-sister-in-law. Despite the divorce, she's still my friend."

Lizzy imagined that being friends with Karen would be easy. She'd never thought that about any other agents, particularly female agents. Maybe that was because her father had trained her to look for other peoples' faults and follies and foibles—and because the CIA had trained her to look for other peoples' darkness. Seeing their darkness caused Lizzy to see her own and to fear its increase in the future.

Lately, however, she'd been seeing more—light.Karen, Fitzwilliam.

"Ricky. That’s my little boy. Blonde and chunky, although a mom shouldn't say that. He's just past two years old, recently drafted into the terrible twos, but not yet too terrible." Karen stopped walking, laughing softly to herself—presumably as she thought about Ricky.

The ground in front of them rose steeply. "We're almost to the edge of the road," she said. "I'll leave you behind those bushes there"?she pointed up to the ones she meant at the top of the rise?"and I'll cross the road, go down the other side. My car's hidden there, as best I could hide it. The three I followed parked a little farther down the mountain." She moved her arm to indicate the location. "I went past them and found a spot above them, waited. They never expected you to get out of the cabin. I heard them talking."

She turned and looked back uphill, behind them, and seemed satisfied with what she saw—or didn't see. "These goggles gave us a real advantage. We've stayed well ahead of them. Nowhere to be seen."

They climbed the severely pitched rise laboriously. Karen was obviously tired, her movements even slower now. Meanwhile, Lizzy felt like each step was a fresh miracle since she was convinced each prior step was her last.The end.Karen kept looking back at her, concerned.

Lizzy spotted the road as they reached the bushes, the asphalt ribbon a darker dark than the surrounding dark landscape. No headlights or taillights were visible. No artificial lights at all beneath the dim slip of the moon.

They stopped by the bushes, and Karen checked behind them again. "Okay, Agent Bennet. Rest here in the bushes. I'll go up to the car. It's an old Toyota 4Runner—but I guess you didn't need to know that. It'll take me a few minutes to reach it and come back."

She looked behind them one last time and crossed the street. As she reached the asphalt, Lizzy heard the rubber boots squeaking for the first time…and then Karen vanished down the hill on the far side.

Lizzy squeezed herself deeper into the bushes, sinking down between two. She was relieved to be off her feet, only then aware of the blisters forming or that had already formed on both feet. She pulled her revolver from her pocket and put it on the ground in front of her in easy reach. After another cautious look around and seeing no movement or lights, she retrieved Wickham's phone.

The notification was still showing. Holding it close to herself to minimize the glow of the screen, she swiped up. A number pad appeared. The phone was unlike Lizzy's personal iPhone or her CIA phone. It was unclear how many numbers or letters it would take to unlock it. There was no way to know if there was a limit on the number of unsuccessful tries, but she worried there would be. She stared at it for a moment, too tired even to speculate on the password.

She put it back in her pocket and glanced across the road. There was no sign of Karen's car, no lights.

And then Lizzy jumped at the sound of a gunshot, unsilenced.

And another.

Then an answer, one Lizzy had heard earlier. Spit.

Spit.

Spit. Spit.

She grabbed the revolver from the ground, jumped up, and leaped out of the bush and onto the road, ignoring the pain of her side and her feet, her utter exhaustion. She ran, gun up and extended ahead of her, every nerve screaming with life. Her boots pounded the asphalt. When she reached the far side of the road, she slowed and crouched, scanning ahead of her, trying to use her ears as well as her eyes.

More gunshots.

Spit. Spit.

Lizzy could see no one, no movement, no muzzle flash.

But the sound came from down, from below the road. She stood and ran down the steep pitch toward the trees. As she stumbled down, she could see a break between the trees, one large enough for a car to fit through. She angled for it as she caught her balance. Her ribs hurt as if she'd been stabbed. The blisters, open, raw, scorched her feet.

In the distance, she heard a scream, agonized, high-pitched, and feral. It was impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman.

She reached flatter ground, moving the same way she and Karen had moved earlier across the mountain, neither uphill nor downhill. The break between the trees was black, abysmal, and repellent to vision, but Lizzy ran toward it, into it. She would save Karen if it was possible.

Suddenly, her head exploded. The black around her erupted into a multi-colored fireworks display?all light and pain but without noise.

She tumbled forward, her revolver lost from her grip…tumbled toward the ground. She was unconscious before she struck it.

***

When Lizzy came to, she was on her back, although she had fallen forward. The coat she wore was unzipped but bunched beneath her. Her chest and torso and legs were cold, exposed. Her back burned.

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