A/N: More of our fourth arc. Trying to keep this going while teaching classes and finishing the final touches on my new novel, due out next month. The Vanishing Woman. Just got the cover art today. More on that in future chapter A/Ns.

Pride, Prejudice, and Pretense

Chapter 21: Visions

Lizzy stood with a drink in both hands.

The wood floor was cold beneath her bare feet.

She arranged Fanny — arranged herself — like the swimsuit models she's seen standing in photographs, on social media, angling her body slightly to the side, almost all her weight on one foot, that leg straight, the other leg, the one toward the door, bent, just the ball of that foot in contact with the floor.

She was all in. Naked beneath the nightie.

The seduction could be pushed no further and remain a mere pretense.

She was standing on a cliff's edge, an abyss gaping below her. Already she had let Wickham touch her, kiss her, press himself against her. He might have believed he did those things to, and with, Fanny, but they had happened to Lizzy. They were now part of her history, the hard record. Darcy knew they had happened and even though he knew why, Lizzy still felt guilty, dirty, miserably guilty and dirty, about it all, about what she had done to herself, about what she had done to Darcy.

There were reasons — excuses, extenuating circumstances.

But offering an excuse means conceding you did something wrong, even if you have a good excuse for it. The excuse mitigated blameworthiness — but you could still blame yourself.

You couldn't be a seducer without compromising yourself.

Compromises — and promises of promises.

Lizzy was exposed. Exposed.

She bit the inside of her lip, careful not to draw blood but to make it hurt, using the pain to focus herself in the moment. She made herself attend to the cold of the wood floor.

No more thinking about anything but the here and now.

Wickham.

Wickham had to believe — he had to believe that Fanny was standing there, ready for him, dinner prepared. Waiting, wanting, waiting for what Wickham had been waiting for. If he believed, he would drink the bourbon and succumb to the tranquilizer.

Then, Lizzy could escape the cabin, drive the rental car until she found a signal and phone Darcy.

Stop what the Wicker Man was planning in Rapid City.

The car lights blacked.

And the engine died.

And the car door slammed.

The cabin door opened and the cold mountain air blew in as Wickham came through it. The candles on the table flickered but did not go out. Lizzy saw them reflected in a window.

Wicham froze, his hand on the knob, his mouth open, agape. The cold hardened Lizzy's nipples as Wickham's eyes owned her, lingered on her legs before graduating to her chest and fixating there. Despite Wickham's having touched her there before, because he had, Lizzy hated her bodily change, hated displaying that change to him — and yet it worked toward the end she wanted. Foundation of fact.

Wickham believed. He obviously wanted to believe. His eyes never left her.

"Shut the door, George," Fanny commanded lightly, purring, lifting one eyebrow. It took everything Lizzy had — all her internal power — to render Fanny's voice playful, come-hither. Total concentration.

He stepped inside and closed the door, charmed, hypnotized. He was breathing fast. It took him a moment longer to impel his eyes from her breasts, pressed against the silky red lingerie, and to discover what she was holding, then to discover the candles, the table, the food.

"All for me?" he asked with a long, slow leering smile, unrolling like a centipede.

He was unable to hide how pleased, how satisfied, he was by the entire scene, the erotic promise of the tableau. The corruption of Fanny Prince was all but complete. She was about to cheat on her fiancé. He had made her an infidel, and her infidelity crested his excitement, his victory.

"Yes, but not — not all at once. It's a…take-your-time sort of night. I thought you might enjoy drinks and dinner best if dessert were on display, but it will come last." She kept her voice breathy, flirty.

Wickham took off his jacket, hung it by the door quickly, then stalked toward her, slowly. As he reached her, and before he could reach out to touch her, she extended her right arm, offering the bourbon. Her heart was striking away in her chest — everything, everything turned on this moment.

Now.

Wickham took the drink. He stared over it at Fanny's erect nipples, stretching the red silk. Carefully, he extended the glass toward her chest, running the rim of it along the underside of one nipple, then he pulled the glass back and, rotating it with his other hand, drank from the side of it that had touched her.

Lizzy made a one-sided toast with her glass, smiling as the bile rose in her throat, and she sipped her bourbon.

"We don't want dinner to get cold," she said, taking her chance to step away from Wickham and toward the table. "I hope you're hungry."

"Starved."

Fanny deliberately took another sip of her drink. Wickham mirrored her action. Then he stepped to the other side of the table, putting the drink down. "This looks good. Librarian and cook?"

Lizzy grinned sheepishly. "Among other things."

He stared at her in open arousal, ownership. "That lingerie…fantastic. Those legs of yours…"

"Now, now," she mock-scolded, "let's not rush to the finish." She took another sip and sat down.

Wickham sat too. And then he drank the entire glass, throwing it back and then sitting it firmly on the table. "So much for the apéritif."

Fanny took another sip to hide any facial expression of relief, forcing herself to sit straight. She put her glass down and smiled, hoping to use the flicker of the candles to her advantage, to make her expressions harder to read. She took up her knife and fork and cut a piece of her steak, slowly and deliberately. Wickham cut a piece of his. She tried not to pay attention to the knife in his hand.

The tranquillizer shouldn't take long. I need to keep him focused on me until it's too late, until he begins to lose motor control, consciousness.

"So, how did your meeting go?" Lizzy asked, and then she ate the piece of her steak.

Wickham shrugged. "Fine, there was no need for it, really, although I don't regret it, given what I found when I returned." He ate a bite of steak. "Mmmm, this is good."

Lizzy smiled. "Thanks. No need?"

He shook his head. "Some people have the nerve for their work, and some don't. The meeting was really just…handholding."

Fanny chuckled. "Can you tell me what you're working on, or is it top secret?" She inflected the last two words melodramatically, then took a bite of broccoli.

Wickham raised his eyebrows quizzically. "No, not in that sense, but it is a business deal and there's always worries about competitors, so I'm supposed to keep it quiet."

"Corporate espionage? Does that really happen?"

He nodded, using his fork to mash butter into his baked potato, then taking a bite. "Oh, yes, it's always a worry. Espionage."

"You know, I sometimes read spy novels," Fanny confessed, hoping to keep him talking.

"Really? I took you for a…Gaskell, Austen, Eliot sort of woman."

Lizzy smiled at the truth of what Wickham said. Those were her favorites, the novels she read and reread before and during college. "You're right, but sometimes you want a little intrigue in the drawing room or at dinner, something darker and edgier, Le Carré or Ludlum."

Wickham huffed a laugh, looking into Fanny's eyes. "I wouldn't have guessed it of you. You seem so…distant…from such things."

"Well," Lizzy said, "I am, but you know what they say, opposites attract."

She could not understand why Wickham was not yet showing any effect of the drug. It was supposed to be fast-working, not immediate but not slow.

Wickham raised one shoulder, grinning. "I don't think I've ever heard anyone use that phrase quite that way."

Lizzy nodded. "Me either. But, yes, I like the occasional Le Carré novel." She paused, and decided to push the conversation, to keep Wickham engaged, eating, keep him from noticing the onset of the tranquilizer — if it ever happened. "My favorite novel of his is The Little Drummer Girl. It's heartbreaking."

Wickham shook his head. "I've never read it. Wasn't there a movie?"

"Yes, a movie in the 80's, I guess. And a series, BBC, I think, but that's recent, only four or five years ago."

"I didn't see either one, but I must have heard of the movie. So, it's about spies?"

"Yes — and no," Lizzy offered, "it's not that it's not about spies, it's just about so much more. I think a reviewer, maybe William Buckley, said that it was a book about spies the way that Madam Bovary is a book about adultery, or Crime and Punishment a book about crime."

Wickham nodded, chewing. Lizzy could not understand why he was not reacting to the drug. He should be unconscious. "It's about a woman, Charlie, an actress, who's talked into a part in 'the theater of the real', and who becomes bait, dangled by an Israeli intelligence officer, in hopes of trapping a Palestinian terrorist."

"Oh, so she's…a honeypot?"

Fanny glanced away as if embarrassed. "Is that what they call it?"

Wickham looked at her again. His eyes, she thought, were slightly glassy. He blinked as he looked at her. "Yes, that's the slang term."

"'You want to catch the lion, first you tether the goat.'" Lizzy whispered a line from the novel to herself. The line had been haunting her thoughts since she first met Wickham, but she had never said it explicitly, internally or externally, to herself.

Wickham kept blinking. "What? Did you say something?" His fork slipped from his hand and onto the table. He looked from Fanny to the fork, then back up. A slow sneer formed on his face as if he were constructing the expression by numbers. "You?" His glassy eyes glared. "What have you done?" Before she could answer, his head fell to his chest, as if he suddenly went to sleep. Lizzy pushed back her chair, keeping her steak knife in her hand.

As she started around the table, Wickham's head rose again, rolling slightly. His eyes sought her but could not quite seem to focus. "You bitch!" He said it more to the room than to Lizzy; he was not quite sure where she was, surprise in his slurred voice. "You ssstupid, lousssy bitch. There'sss no way, not you. No chanccce. Missstake…"

His head sank again, followed by his shoulders. His knife fell from his hand and onto the floor like a punctuation mark, a full stop.

Lizzy held her knife out in front of her, worried that Wickham's apparent unconsciousness was a ruse. It had taken too long for him to succumb.

She stepped closer to him, her bare feet cold and numb on the floor, partly the room, partly her nerves, stress. She raised the knife, prepared to strike, and pushed on Wickham's shoulder. He did not respond but his body slumped sideways in his chair.

Another step closer still. Wickham did not move.

She put out her hand and took his wrist, his arm dangling at his side. His pulse was slow and sluggish. The drug had worked or at least was working. He should be out for a couple of hours.

She tossed her knife onto the table and then patted Wickham's pants pockets, smiling grimly to herself as she did at the dark irony. Almost but not quite what Wickham anticipated.

The rental key was in the left pocket and she forced her hand into it and fished out the key. No gun. She ran to the bedroom. Her clothes were folded on the dresser beside the bed, stacked, her shoes on the floor next to the dresser. She shoved her hand under the corner of the mattress and produced the revolver Agent McDougal had given her, placing it on the bed.

Calm yourself, Lizzy. Breathe. Get dressed and get out of here.

She closed her eyes for a moment, then snatched her panties from the top of her stacked clothes. Holding them in front of her, she bent to step into them. She did, and slid them up her legs.

She heard a sound and stopped.

It was a vibrating noise, faint or distant. She stopped dressing and went back into the living room. The sound returned, louder. The noise was coming from Wickham's jacket. She glanced at him, still slumped in the chair, and she padded quickly to the jacket.

Wickham's phone was in one of the front pockets.

The ringing, the vibrations, stopped. The phone was locked; the screen showed only the date and time, and a notification of a missed call, but she could not open the notification.

As she stood with the phone in her hand, she heard another car approaching the cabin and saw headlights. The car pulled in behind the rental car.

Who…?

She couldn't wait to find out.

Lizzy had been passive for too long — professionally passive, in a way, ever since Kellynch had assigned her this mission, or rather, ever since she had demanded the mission. It all felt like it had been happening to her and as if she was not doing any of it. The personal had eclipsed the professional. She yanked Wickham's jacket off the wall and whipped it on, jamming his phone back in a pocket, then speared her Patagonia bag and swung it around her head and one shoulder.

She sprinted to the bedroom and grabbed the revolver, her boots, and her phone. She heard car doors close, slam. Doors, plural. Darcy and Bingley? But they weren't to come to the cabin, only surveille it once they found it. Lizzy could not risk it.

She ran to the backdoor and let herself out silently, running quickly off the deck and down the steps to the steep rocky ground, angling to her left, for the nearest trees, the darkness even darker beneath them. The old moon above, a slim crescent, syncopal, provided faint illumination. She heard an indoor curse from above and lights went on in the cabin, faintly illuminating the rocky ground over which Lizzy ran barefoot, the rocks scratching and bruising her feet.

A moment later she was concealed in the double-darkness beneath the trees. She pushed her way deep into the underbrush and then sat down, putting on her boots — and only then realizing she had forgotten her socks. She tightened the laces and tied the boots.

From her position in the underbrush, she could see up to the deck of the cabin, and see the windows lit up. All the lights of the cabin were now on, a little red lighthouse. The back door opened and a man came out, crouched, a man Lizzy had never seen before. Gun in hand, extended, he moved like a trained killer. Lizzy knew the man's type: agile, coiled, economical. He crept along, reptilian. Goosebumps. She did not know whether it was the cold-blooded killer above her or the cold night air around her, making the silky nightie icy against her skin. The lingerie was intended to warm its viewer, not its wearer. She hugged the jacket closed and stayed low in the underbrush, shivering.

The man was in a half-crouch as he moved to the edge of the deck, the railing, and peered out into the darkness, surveying what could be seen by the light from the house. Casper Mountain was quiet. Lizzy could hear her own breathing, rapid. The mountain air was thin. But she knew the man was too far away to hear what she heard. He was also too far away for her to risk a shot with the short-barrelled revolver.

"Anything?" Another voice, another man standing in the open backdoor, a silhouette.

The man by the railing answered, his voice clipped, as efficient as his movements. "No, she's gone."

"Well, she wasn't just the tasty piece of trim Wickham thought. — Arrogant son of a bitch, I'm going to enjoy it when he comes to."

"You gave him an injection?"

"Yeah, got something from the car. It should bring him back to consciousness soon. How much do you think she knows?"

"Don't know, but we can't take a chance. We've got to find her. She can't get far out here on foot, and it's going to be damn cold soon. Her stuff's here, her coat."

"Wickham's is gone, though. Think she's armed?"

"Have to assume it. — She must have gone this way, ran into the trees. Given the state of things inside, the food, the candles, she can't have been gone long. Probably bolted when we drove up. You were right to worry about her."

"I was told to worry about her," the other man said. "Wickham's always thought with his dick, and it was going to catch up with him eventually."

The other man barked, a sudden laugh.

"What?"

"Just imagining Wickham's dick catching up with him. He couldn't have run very far."

Both men laughed.

The one near the railing stood up. "Alright, I'm going after her. If we find her, we kill her. When Wickham wakes up, come after me. Use the walkie-talkies; the other team will too. Old school. Get them out of the car while I make sure she didn't climb up there."

The other man disappeared. The man at the railing scanned the area again then started climbing the stairs up to the lookout.

Lizzy waited for him to reach the halfway point, straining to see him as he disappeared into the dark, and then she began to work away from the cabin, farther downhill, bear-crawling in the underbrush slowly, trying to make her passing noiseless.

Two men. Three, when Wickham woke. Another team. Two more? The Wicker Man was astride the mountain, like the Giant Despair in Bunyan. Why am I thinking about books?

Her odds were not good.

She could probably stay hidden but she needed to find a phone signal, help. Continuing downhill seemed the obvious choice, although the men would know that too.

Where was the other team?

Below her. Almost a certainty.

Uphill would take her farther from a signal, and civilization, and the going would be much harder, much slower.

She crawled to a clearing deeper in the trees and stood, confident she was now invisible, and started to walk. But the darkness hid the rocky ground; she stumbled and caught herself. Damn. It was too risky to use the light on her phone, but the terrain was risky too. She had to fight against the slope's increasing her speed. It would be too easy to fall.

From behind her, she heard a noise. Underbrush. The man was coming behind her, distant, moving carefully. Lizzy tried to keep moving without hurrying, placing each foot carefully on the ground. The noise behind her impelled her forward but she fought her own impulse, reining herself, making her steps deliberate.

She walked for several minutes before she tripped and fell hard, unable to break her fall, landing flush on a large stone half-buried in the ground. It dug into her left side, her ribs violently, Wickham's jacket protecting her skin — but her ribs were going to be badly bruised. When she stood, and took a deep breath; the breath hurt. Her ribs were not broken — she had endured that before and would know the injury if visited on her again — but she was injured. She knew her range of motion (shoulder, waist) would soon be compromised. Abusing herself inwardly as a clumsy fool, she continued downhill, trying to be more careful even than before.

Fifteen minutes later she stopped. She was laboring for breath; her ribs cursing her more nastily with each inhalation. Shutting her eyes as if she could blind herself to the pain, she tried to gain some control over her breathing, to shallow each breath. Starting again, she found herself enmeshed in heavier underbrush. Slowing was now not something she had to fight. Each step took effort and each step made noise. Each step ached.

And then, downhill, ahead of her, she heard noise she did not make. Underbrush. The other team. She had wondered why the men at the cabin had not given chase immediately and now she knew: she had been caught in pincers, outflanked. The men had been confident they could catch up with her if she had gone uphill; they knew she would be cut-off if she went downhill.

She stopped and rotated where she stood, looking for a hiding place. The underbrush might work but she wanted a better spot. A tree would work, but not with her injury. It would take too long to climb to the necessary height. Even worse, she had no idea how far uphill and behind her the other pursuer was. He was presumably on the relatively clear rocky ground she had been on for the last fifteen minutes. Maybe he didn't fall and isn't fighting for breath. '

A clump of medium-tall bushes was about twenty yards away on her right. It wasn't much but she might be able to hide among them without having to crouch or sit; she wasn't sure she could bear to do that, not for long. She searched downhill as she hurried toward the bushes, shifting her eyes to her path every step or two, monitoring herself as she monitored the other team. And then she saw something. A sudden narrow shaft of light, muffled by reddened fingers: a hand over the business end of a flashlight, allowing only a blade of light to escape, butter-colored.

"Turn that off!" A harsh whisper, a woman's voice.

"Snarled in a damn briar bush," was the harsher response, a man's voice.

"Both of you, hush." A third voice, male. Harsher than either of the other two. The leader of the other team.

The light went off, but Lizzy knew exactly where one of them was, approximately where the other two were. They were fifteen yards downhill, spread out. She reached the bushes and pushed her way slowly into them, praying for silence.

She could hear the other team moving now more distinctly as they closed the distance.

She took out the revolver and prepared herself. Muzzle flash would reveal her location if she opened fire, and there was practically zero chance that she could see to squeeze off — let alone manage to squeeze off — three accurate shots before she took return fire. She might be able to shoot one of the three and then move, but she would not be able to move fast, and she would lose track of the other two as she moved.

Closer. Closer.

A loud spit. Lizzy jerked, ducked. The man nearest her, the leader, seemed to sigh and then crumpled into the underbrush. He fell sideways and his body rolled a distance back downhill. As he rolled: "Fire, from our six!" It was the woman's voice, no whisper this time.

Another spit.

This time Lizzy could tell the spit was from behind the other team, farther downhill. The woman in the middle fell into a grave of underbrush. No movement.

The man on the far side, the one who'd been fighting the briar bush, was running.

Spit.

Spit. Spit.

The man went crashing away from them but Lizzy did not hear him fall. The sound of his running receded. The shots seemed to have missed.

Lizzy heard heavy breathing from down the hill, climbing. A wide figure loomed up out of the darkness, wrapped in black, hooded. It took Lizzy a moment, but she realized the figure was wearing night vision goggles beneath the hood. The figure held a gun, silenced, but it was pointed in the direction of the fleeing man, not at Lizzy.

A science-fiction creature. A Star Wars extra.

The figure eventually turned and lowered the gun.

At that point, Lizzy, blinking, stunned, could just make out the fringe of a bright floral skirt extending below the hooded jacket, the tops of tall rubber gardening boots almost meeting the bottom of the skirt.

"Agent McDougal?" Lizzy whispered breathlessly, doubting.

The figure pushed back the hood with its empty hand and whispered in response. "Hey, Agent Bennet. Like I said, this is the real world."

It was Karen in night vision goggles.

A/N: More soon. Assuming the site does not disintegrate further.