11. All the Kings Horses
William and Richard had met up with William Lucas and his men, Richard knew most of them as he had done various contracts with them or had served with them at some stage. William Lucas had offered him a job whenever he was ready to leave the service and earn some real money.
The cabin they were watching was deep in the lake lands, remote and desolate, which is why it had been so hard to find him but also made it easy to be here. There would be no innocent bystanders or curious neighbours to sound the alarm or give them away.
The cabin had been under surveillance for almost a week, whilst William had gotten on with running his company remotely and checking on his sister; Richard had taken shifts with the team to get the lay of the land and to confirm first hand that it was indeed Wickham. It was!
What they had not been able to confirm was if Lydia was inside the cabin or not. Heat sensors had picked up at least five people inside the cabin, two of whom seemed to be captives or at least they did not have the freedom of the other three. One of the captors was a woman, she had been seen several times out on the deck smoking. There were cameras all around the cabin, forming a perimeter so that the occupants would be alert the moment anyone crossed the line five meters around the cabin, and then around the cabin itself so that all windows and doors were covered.
It had take the extraction team two hours to find the cable, this cable provided a feed to and from the cabin, one night during a storm, the team had taken advantage of a power out spliced into the cable so that they could set up a video loop on the surveillance cameras when they hit the 5 meter boundary.
The last ray of sun disappeared behind the mountain, and the world become cold and dark. Everyone switched to night vision goggles, including William, he would not be part of the initial extraction party, his lack of field experience made him a liability and the team made effort to sugar coat that.
The extraction team went to radio silence and made their way to the rendezvous point, at the signal, an owl hoot, from the team leader, the feed was hacked, and the loop was implemented, the slight blip on the monitors was barely noticed. William knew the extraction plan by heart, the team would proceed to the cabin, two team members at each of the windows, eight windows in total, four team members at the front door, and four team members at the back door.
The second signal, a coyote call, was given and a shot was fired from the road. This was to lure most of the captors out of the cabin, despite not being too far from the cabin, William did not hear a sound after the gunshot. His nerves were shot. After what seemed like an eternity radio silence was broken as the team leader gave the All Clear. Local law enforcement and William made their way into the cabin as they saw the lights, internal and external being turned on
The stink inside the cabin made William want to gag, it seemed that no-one took responsibility for cleaning anything inside the cabin. Takeaway boxes and papers littered the floor, dirty dishes were on every available surface.
Lying face down on the filth rug were three people, two men and a woman, the woman William recognised – Mrs Young! She had been Georgiana's tutor, he wondered how George had know when Georgiana would be at music lessons. She was looking worse for wear but he could not summon up any sympathy for the woman.
The other man looked familiar, but he could not place him.
But the last man, George Wickham, also not looking his best. He still had the nerve to look at William and grin. "Hey Darcy, how's your lovely little sister?" Before William could react, Richard had hauled Wickham on to his feet, not too gently either, and started walking him out to the local law enforcement.
William's phone rang, it was Caroline, he ignored it, he did not have time for her games now.
He followed the rest of the team into the second room of the cabin, this is where the suspected captive was being held, a hand stuck out and pushed back on his chest, it was one of the women "Sorry, we have no idea what has happened to these people, we suspect they are both women and we do not want to traumatise them anymore."
William nodded and stepped back, he just wanted to know if Elizabeth's sister was there, to right the wrong.
After an hour two young girls were walked out of the room, they had blankets around them that the team had brought in with them, so that they could leave everything from their ordeal in the cabin. Neither of them had shoes on, William wondered how they were going to walk through the forest without shoes.
Someone came in from outside with two pairs of wellington boots and large socks, probably too large but they would protect the girls' feet from the cold, wet and sharp objects on the ground.
One of the girls looked up and took cognisance of their surroundings, it was Elizabeth's sister, Lydia. William's heart contracted as he recognised the same dead look in her eyes that Georgiana had when they rescued her. This was his fault, George Wickham had ruin at least two more young lives.
His phone vibrated, it was a Whatsapp message, from Caroline, all he saw was "Charles arrested for assault" he opened the message and read the whole thing "Charles arrested for assault, he is at the Town Precinct, please help!"
He phoned Caroline, she answered quickly, he could hear the rising hysteria in her voice.
"William! Charles has been arrested for assault, there has to be some mistake."
"Caroline, I am not in town at the moment, but I am going to send my lawyer, Mr Hill, I agree there must be some mistake, this will all be sorted out, I will call you in the morning, but I must go now I am in the middle of something."
Caroline ended the call with a thank you
"What was that all about?" Richard had appeared at his elbow.
'That was Caroline, Charles has been arrested for assault."
"She must be desperate for your attention if that is the route she is going, the chances of Bingley assaulting someone as a slim as you becoming a Vegas magician. Not Going To Happen." Richard was amazed at Caroline's resourcefulness.
"I don't think this was one of her tricks, she was genuinely freaked out. I am going to get Hill to go to the Town precinct and sort it out. Obviously, Charles did not assault anyone!' William walked outside a bit and called Mr Hill, he instructed him to drop everything and get to the Town precinct, sort the mess out and make sure Charles was okay.
The rest of the night consisted of the local authorities and the extraction team collecting and document every single item in the cabin. At one stage Richard called William over, in a box in one of the supposed bedrooms were a pile of photographs, of Elizabeth and her sisters, all of her sisters, lots of photographs. With the photographs was a ledger, inside the ledger were lists of girls names, most of them were ruled out but the last page had about 20 rows of girls names, including the Bennet sisters, next to each girls name were a number of columns with monetary values, Mary's name had no values, just the word DECOY written in the first column, Lydia's name had the least amount written in the columns, whilst Jane and Elizabeth had the highest on the page, also on the page was Lisa King, William Lucas's secretary and a few names that they did not know.
Was Wickham planning on taking each of the Bennet daughters, one by one? How did he think he was going to do that without raising a lot of suspicion? William turned a page back and saw his sisters name, underlined and crossed out. How many of these girls were taken and sold?
William turned around, his throat constricted at the thought of those poor girls who did not get rescued because their families did not have the means or resources to find them. He felt a hand on his arm, it was the woman who stopped him from doing into the room where the girls were. "It does not get easier but it does motivate us to do better. We did good here today."
Willian nodded but was not able to speak, he did not want to imagine what would have happened if they had not looked for Lydia, not just to Lydia but her whole family. Or his family if they had not found Georgina.
The sun was just rising above the tree line when the team left the area, more local authorities were arriving to continue the work started. For now, their work there was done.