William drove in a daze. When he arrived at Wallace's mansion, he failed to be impressed by the ten or fifteen million-dollar house and merely handed his car keys over to a valet and walked in. Caroline stood out in white, which made it easy to find her. A passing waitperson handed him something which he instinctively took and sipped.

"She's not arrived that I can tell. My thought is we trash this arc; it's been poison to us. We go with introducing the love interest this season, but tantalizing somehow. Maybe she's already married or a nun in a convent?"

William didn't answer but sipped, looking out into the crowds. How could I have been so wrong about Lizabeth? he thought.

"An alien with green antenna?" Caroline quipped. He continued to examine the women in the room—beautiful, polished, thin and toned (a few more rounded, but still toned). Dressed well, most were in heels, either with jewelry or tattoos as adornment, their hair always perfect. It never got away from them, never spilled back to one side when pushed off their shoulders or slipped across a cheek despite hooking it behind an ear.

Lizabeth was just as elegant as these…creatures…before him and far more real. Her form was created from food and exercise, not some fad diet and a forced routine of gym classes with weird names. Her clothes were elegant and enhanced her shape; they didn't stand out like a beacon, indicating she belonged to the latest trend.

He had enjoyed their time together. Damn her, why? Why did she say that they should break things off? He snagged another drink from a passing helper, plopping down his empty.

"That bad. It has to be female troubles, and not the kind we suffer from," Caro murmured. She grabbed his arm and hauled him through the large living area to open doors and out onto an extensive patio. "What's happened? You've been rather quiet about your sex life recently."

"Aliens are green with antennae on their head," he quipped.

"Haha," she mocked, finding a railing to lean against. "Seriously, want to confess, or can we get on with business?"

"You didn't tell me that this writer, Erin King, was a woman," he grumbled.

"Does it matter?" she challenged.

"I heard Aaron, male name," he confessed.

Caroline patted his arm. "Best of both worlds. Erin used to be Aaron and is still considering a new name. Maybe Marion or Mary; she's trans."

"Could be an interesting perspective," he admitted. Caro waved a well-manicured hand at him.

He sipped at his drink. "Lizabeth," he whispered, William didn't look at his co-producer who was his friend and often his fixer.

"Damn, I warned you," she growled. "What did you do?"

"Nothing." He watched her shift her body slightly as though about to respond. William held up a hand. "Stop. I did nothing when I should have done more. You warned me Lizabeth was the type who would want more than I usually allocated." He blew a breath out rather forcefully. "Romance, you told me she wanted romance. I didn't believe you."

"What's happened? I warned you to be careful," she said.

"She told me that she was very understanding about work being my primary focus but that we should break things off. In fact, it was just as I was driving here. There were more words about the fact that we'd never talked about what we were doing, seeing each other, but that she thought that the distance was too much."

Caro raised an eyebrow. It was an uncanny trick and unnerved him whenever she did it. "You sailed into a relationship with her and expected it to be the same as the thousands," he made a sound of protest, "of others you've had with the same superficiality and freedom to do what you want and now you're protesting because she broke it off?" That eyebrow could apparently crawl even higher on her forehead. "This is priceless. It's always about you, William, isn't it?"

Suddenly her face relaxed into a smile. "I think Erin has arrived. We should talk business. It's a good thing you are free and single and available and won't be tempted to be leaving town for a while. We have a lot of work to do." William wasn't certain if that was sincerity or sarcasm. Probably both.

Lizabeth didn't rouse herself until quite late in the morning. Frequently, she and Charlene got together to shop on Saturdays, but earlier that week, her friend had begged off, pleading no time. Lizabeth thought it was just as well because she was a wreck. Was it possible to fall in love in such a short space of time? She'd had all those months with Edgar and hadn't felt a modicum of interest, and yet she was sure that she was in love with William, but now convinced that proximity was crucial. She was too new to relationships to survive a long-distance one.

Like Jane had said, the distance made it an impossibility. While Jane had been waiting for the right opportunity to break things off with Charles, Lizabeth had been presented with the perfect one last night. She wasn't going to mope for a month and then have him call again and beg off, or even worse, endure another glorious weekend together only to have him beg off for an even more extended period. To have him tell her that there were reasons and work and distance before he'd be back would be unbearable.

Perhaps she was being inflexible and could drive down to see him, but she knew that he worked on the weekends too. Being there might just be a distraction. And would she fit in, in LA? He might resent having to make time for her. Maybe that was Jane's fear, and Lizabeth shared some of it.

She had nowhere to go that morning, but she had a cat and puttered around the house, reflecting on her situation. Being selfish was new, and Lizabeth indulged in it for a while. It wasn't until after lunch that she pulled out her laptop to check her email and read the news.

There was an eye-catching story on The Merton Daily. "Dark Web Ties to Local Company." It wasn't a cutesy short headline for once; this one indicated it had exclusive investigative reporting by Jason Jones.

Initially, she began to read with detached interest but became more and more engrossed because it touched her in multiple ways. When she was finished, Lizabeth had to pick the laptop off of her lap and set it aside. Kitty immediately curled up; the laptop heated her legs, and the cat always luxuriated in that warmth. She stroked the cat as she considered what she had just read.

Jason Jones postulated that George Wickham was merely a scapegoat in what was likely a vast enterprise, the tip of which, the reporter felt he had barely uncovered. Spectre Security Software had only been recently founded, and was alleged to be a front for creating software for people to access the Dark Web. He hypothesized that they had two levels of operations; the supposedly legitimate security software and the Dark Web software.

Lizabeth had only heard references to the Dark Web and didn't exactly understand it, but she hadn't understood about bit-coins at first either. It would require research. Spending the rest of the afternoon attempting to understand the Dark Web would be a superb distraction from her troubles.

What was at stake was that a software company that purported to make security software to keep businesses safe from outside attacks was actually in the opposite business. Their software had backdoors. They were in the business of stealing information and stealing it on a colossal scale. They also dabbled in smaller-scale scams like credit card skimming. That was where George Wickham had been caught up or what he had been accused of. It was like they got too greedy. It was alleged that he had been hired and then made the fall guy.

Spectre hired people, both locals and others across the state (often those who were down on their luck, wanting to make easy money) to install credit card skimmers. Then all of those stolen credit card numbers were sold on the Dark Web.

Lizabeth thought back to the first day she had met Lydia Wickham, who had been Lydia Philips at the time. She had brought her mother, Lori, in to obtain a death certificate. Lori had moaned how her husband had been out of work, and how they had struggled to make ends meet. She wondered if Ross Philips hadn't been one of those rogue installers.

But the scale of this deception appeared enormous, and Lizabeth still couldn't rack her brains around the fact that something like this—credit card and software fraud on such a scale—had occurred in Merton.

Then she thought about the fact that she had met these people and dined with him. There was that Vic fellow and Josef and Brandon and Amber, the woman, who she tried to get to walk to the bathroom with her just for company. That night, she had wanted to converse with someone on a level besides business. She wondered if they were all involved, or had some of them been set up, like George?

Lizabeth shoved a very reluctant Kitty off of her lap and pulled her computer back onto it with her mind running. Searches about the Dark Web were quite a rabbit hole, and she wasn't sure how long she spent reading about this secret underbelly of the internet where information and transactions were hidden behind doorways, which, in a sense, required keys.

She wondered if the Spectre people weren't doing precisely that (being ghosts, or phantoms): a business that wasn't really what they appeared to be on the outside or to the eye. She had once or twice heard people talk about the 'Silk Road' and probably seen a reference to it in news articles and had misunderstood it as an historical reference to a trade route, thinking of camels carrying goods across massive continents. But the Silk Road referenced illicit items like guns and drugs that could be purchased when a person had access to the Dark Web through that special software. But it also included things like credit card numbers that were sold and bought, hawked to the highest bidder.

Lizabeth went back and reread Jason Jones' article and understood it a great deal more on the second reading. It was amazing how much you could read something and not understand references yet understand the overall whole as she had with the first reading. But now, she had a far better comprehension of just what had gone on in her small rural town.

The police, which included the FBI, had issued arrest warrants for the entire executive branch. That seemed to be everybody she had dined with on that winter evening so long ago: Brandon Carter, Amber Chamberlayne, Victor Denny, Brian Forster, and Josef Pratt. But two people still hadn't been taken into custody: Victor Denny and Josef Pratt. There was that oft-repeated statement in the paper: 'the police were monitoring the airports' as if they were afraid that the pair would flee the country.

Spectre Security Software had been on the verge of going public. All the Spectre Customers were shocked and sent out press releases stating that they never suspected that the software and services that had been purchased from SSS had been suspect. They were now scrambling to ensure that their own websites and systems were safe.

Investors who had put money into Spectre expressed dismay that there had been anything wrong. They insisted that the business plans from the two founders, Denny and Pratt, had been authentic. The rest of the executive board (Carter, Chamberlayne, and Forster) had worked in similar start-ups before and had well-known and well-respected reputations in the software business. If they weren't in on the fraud, then they too had been hoodwinked like the customers and investors.

Lizabeth took a break and went to the kitchen to fix herself a meal, finding the time away from her computer gave her thoughts a period to sort themselves before new facts diverted her. She attempted to understand the entirety of this deceit: that a company purporting to sell security software actually was a front for making software to access the Dark Web where illegal things like guns, drugs, and credit card numbers were bought and sold. It appeared the founding men had deceived everyone else on their board, in the company, and in town.

There was one moment when she was carefully dicing an onion when she thought of William, but she chased those thoughts away. It was a painful recollection. She still felt that breaking things off with him had been the best call. When finished eating, her mind was able to sort through things, and she jotted down some notes on a piece of paper.

Spectre Software
People involved: Carter, Chamberlayne, Denny, Forster, Pratt, Wickham, investors, customers
Who are the criminals?
Who was hoodwinked?
Software investors, are they out all their money?
Dark Web
Credit card skimming

She wanted to sort out the people into two groups, but she couldn't yet place them. This was an elaborate scheme that appeared to have been put into place years ago (apparently by the founders: Victor Denny and Josef Pratt). Men who were willing to wait patiently for a payout.

Lizabeth recalled the story of a man who was stuck in a Soviet-controlled country back in the 70s or 80s. He bought some paint and a brush, and for months slowly painted a stripe down the middle of the street as he made his way towards the border. Every day, the border guards would pass him on their way to the gate without comment. Every day the man continued his slow, methodical way towards the border, diligently painting a stripe down the road. When he got to the border, the guards dutifully lifted the gate and let him pass so he could continue his work on the other side, never questioning his motives. His patience paid off, as it earned him his freedom.

But Lizabeth also considered the development of Old Man Goulding's property. Her memory was clear about that evening at the country club. Ed being excited and sending her home in a taxi because he and George Wickham were going to show the Spectre people the layout of the Goulding property.

Jason Jones hadn't said anything about that in his piece. She wondered if he knew about it and couldn't help but think that there had to be more information to uncover. She thought about contacting the reporter. Glancing at the clock, she realized that it was far past when she usually curled up in her bed with a book. Then she froze as she realized how far away from her usual routine she was. But perhaps that was good, as a constant diet of romance novels wasn't the best model for life with all its quirks and foibles and nuances.

William came to mind, memories of their time rushed at her, and she set aside her laptop and cried. Self-preservation had made her call it off. It was a tactic she had learned growing up in the Bennet household: when to cut your losses—which often meant denying herself something desired—to preserve her sanity and dignity. Still, it hurt, physically, and emotionally.

A tiny nose nudged at the hand that Lizabeth had covering her face (though there was no one to hide from). A soft paw poked at her, at first gently, then a little more urgently. Lizabeth pulled her hand free and wiped her tears. She was lying on her side on the couch. Perhaps Kitty objected to her sleeping there (though mostly the cat slept with Lizabeth now). But once she saw that Lizabeth's eyes were on her, she chirruped and purred and came to rub a furry forehead against her damp one.

How could Lizabeth not warm to such an outpouring of affection? She pushed herself up, and Kitty climbed up to curl into a tight ball on her lap. It made them both happy as the cat's sleek fur was stroked and helped to soothe the pain and distress Lizabeth felt inside. I'm being 'Elizabeth' again, she thought as her hand never stopped its activities and as Kitty purred in contentment.

She settled back more comfortably into the couch and wondered if she could change her name legally. She figured it was something that could be done at her office, though no one had ever come in and made such a request in her months of work; she would ask the Judge on Monday.

Elizabeth Todd Bennet. She liked the sound of that name better. She liked the three syllables to E-Liz-abeth. You could even draw it out: E-Liz-A-Beth. It seemed people always shortened her name: Liz-beth, as though the A was optional, particularly her mother. She repeated E-Liz-abeth in her head. Hadn't William said something about that? That Elizabeth Todd would be a good stage name? Now, why did she think that? She was a clerk in an office, not an actress; she had never considered doing anything in Hollywood.

She woke with a kink in her neck and blinked her eyes a few times as she looked around her living area. It was light enough to see, so she suspected that it was early morning. Lizabeth licked her dry lips, ran a tongue on fuzzy teeth, and headed to the bathroom. Once done, she discovered Kitty at the end of her bed. They curled back up together and slept far into the morning on Sunday.

After breakfast, she went to buy a coffee pot, a long-overdue activity. Tea wasn't cutting it for her anymore. While the idea of going to the hotel and checking in with Mary (and whoever might be around) appealed, self-preservation kicked in. Seeing Charles Lee, if he were visiting Jane, wouldn't be a good idea. Charles was too close to William.

Instead, she pulled out her laptop. Though searches about the Goulding property made her think about William, Lizabeth locked away those days of puzzling over information for him and focused on ferreting out new information related to how Spectre was involved with getting Old Man Goulding's land developed.

She had to wade through a lot of bits of information when what she wanted were documents relating to the specific investors. But she was an expert at hunting and eventually found what she wanted once she looked in the right place. Most of the information was part of the minutes from the Merton City Council meetings. Hurray for government transparency, she thought.

Lizabeth spent the afternoon pouring over plans, blueprints, and slides. A picture or a slide said a lot more than those hundreds of supporting pages. The two men who spearheaded the development of Goulding's land were the same who had founded Spectre Software: Victor Denny and Josef Pratt. It looked more and more as if they were the villains of the piece. She suspected that the development hadn't been pursued for legitimate reasons and that Denny and Pratt had pushed for its development for financial gain. How they were to benefit, though, she couldn't immediately assess.

Lizabeth sat back for a minute and tried to distance herself from getting lost in the details to consider what she knew. It appeared that two men were willing to exercise patience and play a long game for a very rich reward. This wasn't a get-rich-quick scheme; it wasn't like those people on YouTube hawking their books or systems on how to start a cryptocurrency so you could get rich overnight. (Anne Deburg had proved that that was feasible, however, creating something from nothing by making over fourteen million dollars in one day.)

But this was sinister as it involved deceiving a lot of people when she considered both the software company and the real estate venture and getting the town's approval. They had created a business proposition, wooed experts in the field, and solicited investors for the software company. They had received a lot of funding, and what was going to happen to all that money? Was all of the Spectre money gone?

Then there were parallels with the real estate development. There were venture capitalists (VCs) who put money into a holding company—Ground-Up Holdings—to develop the land along with Merton families who had also invested money. Where was all of that money? And would the city suffer losses as well?

She was a list maker; she couldn't help it (maybe she and Mimi did have things in common). Now she added to her list:

Old Man Goulding's property
Specter's involvement: Denny & Pratt
Real estate investors: who, how many, how much?

She started with Jason's article and noted the names of the VCs who had invested in Spectre. Lizabeth compared the set of investors in Spectre Software with the set of investors in the Goulding development. There weren't many parallels. That had probably been a deliberate choice.

If you wanted to bilk people of their money, you didn't ask the same person twice for money if you intended to steal it.

The requirement for Lizabeth to go to the Gardiners for Sunday dinners had been dropped when she had cut the apron strings. Her Aunt Chrissie, however, had reached out via text many times in innocuous ways, like sharing about her day, or sending pictures of cats as a means of keeping in touch.

But that Sunday afternoon, Chrissie called Lizabeth, who answered (though she felt a little hesitant). She still worried that her aunt's loyalties were too closely tied to Dawn.

Chrissie, however, didn't ask how Lizabeth was beyond briefly asking, 'how are you doing?' but not waiting for an answer. She had news to share about her family. At first, it was good news, as Scott had finally made his college choice. He hadn't gotten into his top pick, but was happy with his selection and to be getting away.

"I'm glad," said Lizabeth.

"Tyler's pleased he will be near." Both Gardiner sons were going to out-of-state schools on the east coast. "I just hope we can afford all this." Chrissie didn't usually sound nervous.

"Surely you've been saving to send them away?" Lizabeth asked.

"We have," Chrissie paused. "Ned's investments haven't done as well as we hoped." Silence pinged between them, and Lizabeth didn't know if she was expected to say anything, but her aunt continued by changing the subject.

"The news is disturbing. Ned has met most of those Spectre people. I can't believe this is happening here." Lizabeth murmured encouragement, and her aunt continued. "Rumor is that Victor Denny and Josef Pratt are fake names. That they come from Ukraine or Russia or Afghanistan!"

That got Lizabeth to sit up. "Wow! That seems almost mafia-like."

"It's all so unsettling to think that all of this is happening in my town!" Chrissie had been born in Merton.

"I agree." Lizabeth sent congratulations to Scott; Chrissie lamented some more about the news before signing off.

Lizabeth wondered why Denny and Pratt had come to Merton. It seemed, random, for them to pick a rural town to settle in to concoct their years-long scheme. Was there some connection or contact that they had which had drawn them to Merton instead of some other, more obvious place, to create a fictitious software company?

When she called Jane Sweet, Lizabeth hoped if Charles Lee had spent the night, he had left for LA. No mention was made of Jane's erstwhile boyfriend. Lizabeth delicately explained that she had been following the news and thought she had information to pass on that might be of interest to the Merton Daily reporters, but couldn't get a hold of anyone.

"Do you still have Jason's contact information, his work contact?" she asked, walking a line between being bold and being sensitive.

"I've been thinking about calling him. I sort of miss him," Jane mused. She sounded distant and sorrowful.

"How are things?" It was a very open-ended question.

"Floundering. Charles is all charm on the phone, but his schedule gets in the way all too often and prevents us from seeing each other. I just think I need to break it off." Jane still didn't sound convinced of her own advice, but she wasn't taking any action. Lizabeth wasn't sure if she should mention that she had called things off with William. That message might not be something Jane wanted to hear. But her friend kept talking. "Maybe I was hasty in thinking that things with Jason weren't repairable."

"You indicated that there were things that frustrated you, like his never getting his writing off the ground, though his reporting is excellent." Lizabeth wasn't sure if that was what Jane wanted to hear or not.

"I think we have these ideas in our head about what our mate will be like, and we have a hard time giving them up. Sometimes, we do stupid things like break up with them because they're don't fit some ideal. Love makes us do stupid things." Lizabeth had no clue how Jane was feeling with that speech, whether she wanted to go back to Jason or was lamenting what she had with Charles, but didn't truly want to leave him. But as she was learning, friends often didn't want advice, just support.

"I think you're right. We want ideals, but we make stupid choices that just break our hearts," said Lizabeth.

Jane gave her Jason's contact information and they hung up. Lizabeth tried to call the reporter, but he didn't answer. She left a long message about the connections she had found, but then followed up her rambling note with her supporting documentation in an email.

Monday was by the book. Sticking to her usual routine helped to settle feelings inside. She didn't deviate from her focus on work and didn't check the Merton Daily. She didn't even call Charlene to ask about the possibilities of dinner. At home, Kitty was her rock as she thought about Jane's musings on relationships, and as she considered whether it had been hasty to break up for reasons of distance.

But she still felt how little she knew about William despite how she felt about him. She had no experience of how to walk that line. You had to spend more time with someone to get to know them better, so breaking up with him wasn't helping that. But his saying he wouldn't be around for a month wasn't fostering a relationship. He had more experience than she did, so presumably, he was comfortable with the distance and the awkward phone calls. She was not.

Lizabeth pulled her laptop over to check on her email and peep at the news. There was no glaring headline on the Merton Daily, but Jason Jones had replied to her email.

I have been looking into these developments, but your impressive research has spurred me on. I especially appreciate your conclusion about the fact that the people who invested in Spectre are not the same ones who invested in Ground-Up Holdings intending to develop the Goulding property. I have an appointment to visit George Wickham in jail tomorrow to discuss his part in this. I think I have the makings of a huge story, and when I publish it, I will give you credit for your contributions. –Jason

Lizabeth sat back, pushing the laptop away from her as she thought about being given contribution credit in a news article. Such an accomplishment was satisfying, and warmth grew inside. This was a first for a sheltered daughter who had mostly been told how worthless she was.

I have done something valuable! She thought as she sank back further into the cushions and grinned at her empty apartment.

A/N: Quote from Doug Morris in an earlier chapter: "Love makes you do wild things. Stupid things too." He's one of my favorite side characters. I also forgot how much I like snarky, non-threatening Caro in this story as she only appears to needle William to better behavior.

And how do you pronounce Elizabeth? Three syllables or four?

On another note, the WWII story is coming along with interesting twists. As I've mentioned with this story, I liken writing P&P fanfiction to having a set of playing cards. How many I end up with in a hand, and how I play them, varies with each story. But many elements are the same. All of us love the big: the Hunsford proposal or small: Mrs. Bennet being struck speechless. So often I repeat little aspects and worry that I reuse them too much. But one thing I have never done is to have Darcy kiss Lydia, which I have just written!