Page 98 of Pride, Prejudice, & Pretense

Lizzy had settled in the bed again when her room phone rang. She had noticed the landline on the nightstand but assumed it was not yet connected. No one had mentioned it, and it had never rung.

She picked it up and answered hesitantly. "Hello?"

"Lizzy, it's Director Kellynch. How are you?"

"The doctor says I'm doing fine, physically."

He made a pleased sound. "Good, good. But howareyou, I mean, given what happened… what almost happened?"

She thought about what Fitzwilliam said before he left her. "What happened was awful enough. I don't want to think about what almost happened."

"No, I suppose not. Do you need someone to talk to there? I can send one of our psychologists and have someone there tomorrow. For you—and Agent McDougal, if she wants."

"Do you know any more about Karen? They haven't told me anything but that she's stable, and she’s still under sedation."

"Dr. Williams is chary with information. I don't think she likes me. Or the Company." He seemed more personally offended by the second than the first. "Yes, that's what I know. All I know." He stopped. Lizzy could all but hear him change gears. "Agent Bingley told me about what happened…what youtold him. I take it Agent McDougal performed satisfactorily? How would you evaluate her performance?"

"Yes. She was exemplary?resourceful and courageous. I doubt I would be here at all without her."

"But she forgot to give you a sat phone even though she’d been tasked to do it."

"That’s true, but this was all thrust at the last minute on her, an agent with no real field experience. When you factor that in, what she did was remarkable. I would work with her again in a heartbeat and put my life in her hands."

"Well, perhaps you will have a chance to do that down the line."

Lizzy pulled up. She had said that to praise Karen, not to promise her future to Kellynch. She was done. Done with Kellynch. Done with the Company. Hearing his voice only made that clearer.

"No, sir, I won't. I haven't given you my self-evaluation. I did not perform satisfactorily." She told him about Wickham's sat phone, about the numerous errors she had made in the cabin and on the mountain.

When she finished, he was silent for a moment. "Well, Lizzy, you made errors, but those are more or less your first?your first in years. The outcome, while not all we wanted where the Wicker Man was concerned, was more than satisfactory. You saved lives, the Pow Wow. Well done, especially since I know how much you hate seduction missions. I know your heart was not in this assignment."

"That's incorrect, sir. The problem was not that my heart was not in it?the problem is that my heart was."

"What?"

She cleared her throat. Years ago, she had substituted pleasing Kellynch for pleasing her father. She had chosen theCompanyin extremisand had livedin extremisever since. She had imprisoned and shadowed her heart and fed it falsity.

No more.

"Director Kellynch, I am resigning. Effective immediately I will send you an email to that effect so there's an official record."

Based on the resulting silence, she had stunned him. Her tone had been final, resolved. It took him a minute to speak. "And there's nothing I can do to change your mind? Nothing? I don't want to lose you. What can I do?"

Her eyes filled with tears for herself, for what happened on the mountain. For Karen. Lizzy cried for all the missions before that. For the years of self-division she had repressed. Tears for her Company past, lived in shadows and now lost in shadows. Tears for her imagined future, now doubtful. Tears for Fitzwilliam’s return to the shadows.

Despair backward and despair forward.

She restrained the tears long enough to answer Kellynch, to control her voice. "Nothing, sir. Goodbye."

She hung up the phone, dropped her head into her hands, and wept bitterly.

Chapter Twenty-Four: Epistles

Wednesday, October 28

The next morning, Charlie brought Lizzy a secure computer, and she used her CIA email account to write her resignation.

Director Kellynch,

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