Page 97 of Pride, Prejudice, & Pretense

Lizzy tried not to remember Wickham dead on top of her, the blood on her face and in her hair. "And Karen? She's in the ICU, the doctor said."

"Yes, down the hall. She’s stable. Got shot twice?once in the stomach and once in the thigh. Lost a lot of blood before the paramedics arrived, although I did my best. Darcy helped after he tended to you, covered you with his coat, made sure you were okay. She was in surgery for a long time."

"She's stable?" Lizzy needed to hear it again.

"Yes."

"What happened up there, Charlie, on the mountain? How did Wickham find us?"

"The man Karen wounded told us what happened. We interrogated him at the hospital later, before he died. Frank Northup, an electronics specialist, a thief.

“Wickham and another man were in the cabin and stayed there. They never came down the mountain after you. Not on foot. You had Wickham's sat phone on, and he tracked it using the other man's sat phone."

"Goddamn it! Arookiemistake!" she said through her teeth, her emotions now awake enough for her to feel fury at herself.

Charlie nodded but patted her arm. "Even if you’d turned it off, it wouldn't have mattered. There was a backup tracker in the guts of the phone. Evidently the Wicker Man likes to keep tabs. It could have been tracked either way, on or off.

"The man who followed you down the mountain was Cory Musil?he’s a professional hitman with ties to a number of terrorist groups. He used a walkie-talkie to tell them you'd taken another walkie-talkie. That's how Wickham knew he could contact you on it. He didn't want to use the phone for fear you might toss it afterward since the walkie-talkie had no tracker. Musil went across the mountain to the road. Wickham and theother man, Northup, picked Musil up in a car above you and Karen.

"They figured out roughly where you were heading when you turned to go across the mountain, and they got down there before you. Wickham left Musil and Northup near Karen's car and went to wait for you. He let her go by when she showed up first. Even in the dark, he could tell the difference. He only cared about you—that's what Northup said. Wickham knew you were nearby because of the phone. When the shooting started, you came to the rescue, as he expected."

"But there was athirdman,” Lizzy said, “in thesecondteam. Karen killed two of them, but a third ran away. She fired at him, and I thought she missed."

Charlie’s sheepishness returned, and he made a face. "Never caught him, never found him. We think he got away, although it's possible she hit him and he died on the mountain somewhere. No one's found any remains, though, and there was no blood trail."

Lizzy nodded slowly, trying to imagine how all the events on the mountain had unfolded and how wrong her understanding of them had been at the time. She'd never performed so poorly on a mission.

"Why are there guards for Karen and me?"

"Kellynch. We don't know how, but your cover was compromised. Someone sent those teams after you. Not Wickham. The man we interrogated didn’t know who it was, but there's someone in the Wicker Man who runs the show?has more power than Wickham did."

"But didn't Wickham meet with them when he left the cabin?"

Charlie gave her a significant look. "We don't actually know what happened in the cabin beyond Wickham's being tranqedand…what you were wearing. If you're up to it, could you tell me? Kellynch wants your report."

Lizzy did not want to revisit the Little Red Cabin, but she did. She started with their arrival in Casper, the bathroom meeting with Karen. She ended with Wickham hitting her from the dark. Charlie listened closely, sympathetically.

"Huh," he said when she finished. "We didn't know Wickham left the cabin. But he didn't meet with the teams. They were sent by someone else?he wasn't in that loop. Evidently, there was dissension in the upper ranks of the Wicker Man."

They were both quiet, and then Lizzy asked, "And Darcy's gone after whoever sent them, the more powerful person? He's still chasing the Wicker Man?"

Charlie’s face saddened. "I'm sorry, Lizzy. I told him to stay. But he was so angry…inconsolable." He shook his head slowly. "He told you about the trouble we had with the plane?" She nodded. "I was afraid he would tear the O’Hare apart barehanded before we left, got airborne. And when we found you? After Darcy killed Wickham, he was raging.

"Kellynch ordered him to stay here, to wait, and for the three of us to travel back to D.C. together, but he wouldn’t do it. 'I'm MI-6,' he said, 'not CIA.’ He refused the order. Kellynch tried to get MI-6 to give the same orders, but they declined to do so."

Charlie had lost focus on Lizzy as he spoke, but now he looked at her again. "Yes, he's gone after the Wicker Man…alone. I asked him to let me know where he was. I wanted to see if I could get Kellynch to let me join him later, but Darcy told me no, that I should go home to Jane. He told me to find another life."

Lizzy stared at him, catching his eyes and holding them. "I'm done, Charlie. I'm going to talk to Kellynch and resign. Agent Bennet did not die on Casper Mountain, but she disappeared there, never to be seen again."

He seemed unsurprised. "You love Darcy, don't you?" he asked softly.

Lizzy delayed for a moment, first considering making it a joke—stop it! Say it now and say it seriously—and then she nodded firmly. "Yes, I do, desperately."

Vitamin T.

After Charlie left, Lizzy slept for hours.

When she finally awoke, a nurse came to help her from the bed and to walk around the room. She was unsteady at first but quickly did better. The walking helped clear her mind, bringing her back to herself. She re-inhabited her body, her painful body.

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