Thanks for your kindness. I took a little detour in my work on this story to write a five-part short called Mr. Darcy's Reckless Proposal. That was a lot of fun, but I'm glad to be back to working on this story. This Darcy deserves a HEA for sure.

26.

The rest of the morning was a flurry of constant activity. Jane and Charlotte arrived in the kitchen. They had just dished up their food when Rick waltzed in. I saw how his eyebrows lifted when he saw the three women.

"When did you acquire a harem, Bill?" Rick joked and then immediately added, "Jane, so nice to see you again; is Chuck here, too?" Rick glanced around, apparently verifying that Chuck wasn't in the immediate vicinity.

As I had not told Rick anything about what Chuck had done to Jane (of course I had not, I would not break her confidence that way), he could not have anticipated her response. Even though I knew, I could not, either.

Jane slumped, sighed, fought back tears, and then with more dignity than most people could muster, hurried out of the room.

"What'd I say?" Rick asked me and the others.

Elizabeth made no reply. A moment later she followed Jane out of the room with Charlotte on her heels.

"Nothing," I told him.

"They didn't break up, did they?" Rick asked with a hopeful expression on his face. "That's it, isn't it? I knew she was too good for him. Do you think I have a shot?"

I didn't feel comfortable telling him anything. I didn't know what to say. So instead I asked "Did you have breakfast? Coffee? Go on and have some, we've got plenty."

Rick went ahead and helped himself, but the look in his eyes told me I would be interrogated more soon. He was halfway through his breakfast when Elizabeth came back in and gestured for me to follow her. We ended up outside in the formal gardens before she said a word.

"Jane's embarrassed, about the situation, about her reaction. She knows she can't just be flying off the handle when Chuck's name is mentioned, but she is too raw about it all."

"I get it. But is there anything I can tell Rick? He asked me if they had broken up. Can I tell him that much?"

Elizabeth shrugged. "I think that would be alright, but I really need to clear it with Jane first. This morning Charlotte talked with her father; she is pretty unhappy with the lackluster police response we got last night. As the former Mayor of Meryton, he still has some pull and got us a meeting with the police chief this morning."

I was not sure how helpful that would be, but saw no point in saying that.

Elizabeth continued, "Charlotte wants you to send the video you took of my call with Chuck to our emails."

I pulled my phone out, brought up my email and punched in the email addresses that she told me to. I attached the video with no problem.

"Do you need a specific message to go with it?"

"Just explain how you took it and when, and provide a phone number in case they want to speak to you."

I did as she instructed.

"Charlotte's dad seems to think they may want to run a sting texting Chuck from my phone and getting him to incriminate himself further. I think that's more of a long shot then she thinks," Elizabeth held up her phone, which still had a black screen, "but maybe he's texted more things since then."

I shrugged. "I hope that all goes well. I didn't have the best experience with the Meryton police myself."

"Yeah, they're more Barney Fife than Andy, if Barney Fife was a sexist, lazy pig."

My eyes must have widened at that or I must have made some other notable reaction, for she quickly added "Oh, I'll be on my best behavior around them, might even pull the 'woe is me the ineffectual woman' act to use that sexist attitude in our favor."

I'm not sure how I reacted to that one, but she said "What? Can't a woman make a man feel good by letting him change a tire for her? Yeah, I know what to do, but I don't particularly want to do it and can I help it if some lunk assumes I need help? Usually they have better equipment than what comes in the trunk with the spare, anyway, and are so pleased to do it. It'd be rude to take that away from them."

"I know how to change a tire, too, but don't do it. That's what the motor service is for."

"So if you saw me stranded on the side of the road you wouldn't come to my rescue?"

"I'd call the motor service for you, pay for it, too."

Elizabeth gave me a friendly push on my chest. "Really, really? You'd make me wait for help rather than doing it yourself?"

I pondered. Was that little shove from her flirtatious? I was almost certain it was, but what if I were wrong? This seemed like the time to give a knight in shining armor answer and see how she reacted. I looked her straight in the eye. "For you, I'd want to change it myself, would hope you'd be checking me out as I worked."

I shifted my shoulders and waggled my eyebrows. How I had the confidence to do that just then, I'm not sure, but Elizabeth gave me the cutest grin in reaction, one that warmed my heart, made me think I might have a shot with her, someday, when we weren't in the middle of the confluence of so many things going down at once.

"Oh, I'd love to see that, you all bent over, hard at work. If it was warm, would you take off your shirt, too?"

I shook my head in mock disbelief. "Really, have guys done that much to impress you? Is that my competition? I would hope I wouldn't be so desperate to impress to put on a good show for you.

"The thing is, even though I know how to change a tire, I've only done it the one time, when my dad taught me. I'd be secretly worried about messing up and looking like an idiot. So, I'm not sure what I'd do.

"Would you think less of me if I instead called the motor service and then braved crossing a busy road to go and buy you a super fancy coffee as we waited for that inevitably grease-covered man with all the proper equipment to show up and do his job? I'd hope that I could talk you up in the interim, impress you without all the macho stuff."

Elizabeth bit her lip as she considered. "I suppose that would be okay, especially if later I could make you lift some heavy boxes, climb a tree to rescue a stuck kitten, see you swim." Her tone was light and playful.

"For you, anything." I said it in a jokey tone, but I was serious.

Of course we were overdue by then to return and soon enough our parties split up. I well knew that Elizabeth had only meant to stay the one night, that she would go back to her regular life after this, and while that made me a little sad, I felt there was hope for us to be, well an "us" someday.

Rick and my visit to our own police station was rather frustrating. First we had a long wait, and then the detective couldn't tell us much. We learned that because G.G. disappeared overseas that it was now an international matter, with our end of it being handled by the FBI, but they hadn't really done anything because there really hadn't been anything to do, with them not knowing where G.G. might be and with no real place to start without duplicating the local efforts in England.

We were given a name and number at the FBI, but the detective was helpful enough to suggest that we might want to contact the local authorities in England again, explaining "I am not sure how long you will have to wait on the FBI, but as you have an open case over there, it might make sense to see if they can get some info off the email she sent, for if she's still over there, that may put a bug in their ear."

As soon as we got into the parking lot, we sat in our respective cars, each with someone to contact. I called the FBI office and asked for the assigned officer. I got put on hold three times, transferred multiple times (for the assigned agent was apparently on vacation and no one knew who else was in charge of our particular case in the interim) and then hung up on. I called back, got put to the whole rigamarole again, and then finally ended up leaving a voicemail for a supervisor who would hopefully sort the whole thing out. To say I was exasperated would be an understatement.

I looked over at Rick in his car (which was parked right next to mine) and could see that he looked about as unhappy as I felt. I got out of my car and slid into the passenger seat in mine.

Rick shook his head. "I'm on hold, again. I know it is a lot later there, but it is still working hours. It feels like they are just hoping I'll hang up."

"Do you think we ought to contact the private investigators again? This is a new lead for them to work, after all."

Rick opened his mouth to reply but before he did, I faintly heard a voice coming over his phone. "He's out working on another case just now, but if you'd like to leave a message..."

"Yes, I'll leave a message, but doesn't he have a cell phone, some other way to talk to him now?"

The voice replied, "I'm not at liberty to release that information."

Rick sighed, dutifully gave his information and then hung up. "What a bust."

I hoped the ladies were doing better than we were, but as Rick didn't know anything about all of that, I couldn't talk to him about it.

Rick complained for a minute or two, I did the same and then he called up the private investigator we had hired, got an answer right away and put the man on speaker. There are definitely some advantages in hiring and paying for the best, so much less dinking around!

Mr. McMichaels explained that from an IP address (which would be given in the email if appropriately decoded) it could be possible to at least pinpoint the city from which the email came. He also said that where a gift card was spent could be tracked, but opined it might be better to let law enforcement set up a sting on that. Rick had me forward the email to the private investigator while he waited. I'm not sure what kind of magic he worked, but within a couple of minutes he told us "They're in Edinburgh, Scotland." Finally, finally, we had a concrete place to look for them again.