Page 9 of Girl, Entangled

‘No. We had a doctor inspect her. No scars.’

‘So Creed was telling the truth. What’s going to happen to him now?’

Dever scratched his neck and retreated to the window. ‘Things are still being decided.’

‘That’s a very passive way of saying you don’t know what to do with him. Let me guess: you’re thinking about reducing his sentence to life imprisonment because he told the truth.’

Dever looked at Vernon, then back at Ella. ‘Yes. How would you feel about that?’

Seven months ago, Ella had been in the room – with Lindsey Doyle beside her – when Ella had helped secure Creed his upcoming death sentence. The verdict had induced a carousel of questions, and the fact it induced any questions at all meant Ella wasn’t sure the verdict was the right one. The problem with a death sentence was that no living soul knew just how much of a punishment death really was.

‘I think Creed should live out his days in jail, but it’s not my choice to make. Has he gone back to Louisiana?’

‘No,’ Dever said. ‘We transferred him to Mount Olive for the time being. He’s safe there.’

‘Good,’ Ella said. Mount Olive was a correctional facility in Fayette County, three hundred miles from D.C. ‘So, back to the topic at hand, you want me on house arrest? Is that right?’

‘Miss Dark, if someone gave me the chance to spend a week at home, I’d jump at the chance. We’ll have two cops from the MPD sit in your parking lot. Come back in next Monday, see how the land lies, and we’ll go from there. How’s that sound?’

Ella thought it over. The honest answer was that nothing was waiting for her at the office that couldn’t follow her home. The paperwork was digital. The Doyle situation, for all its weight, currently amounted to two people sitting in two cells, and neither of them needed Ella in the building to keep sitting there.

The offer was fine, but what bothered her was the framing. It was house arrest presented to her as though it was a treat. She now had week of being a stationary target with two MPD officers eating gas-station sandwiches in her parking lot, all of them waiting on a woman who might not come for a year.

‘I’ll take the week,’ she said. ‘But understand something. I’m not putting myself under glass. If I want to buy groceries, I’ll buy groceries.’ Ella tried to think of another common situation where she might need to leave the house but none came. She realized it made her look slightly pitiful.

Vernon and Dever exchanged a look. Whatever silent conversation took place, it landed on Vernon’s side.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘And feel free to take your new firearm. I don’t suppose you’ll get much use out of it, but it’s yours nonetheless.’

‘Thank you.’ Ella collected her things. ‘Keep me updated if anything happens?’

Dever said, ‘You got it. We’ll have MPD officers outside your place within the hour.’

She nodded her thanks and left the office. She guessed she was headed home, apparently to wait for Lindsey Doyle to just show up at her door.

Ella had no intention of letting it play out that way.

CHAPTER THREE

By 11AM, Ella had run out of things to do.

The paperwork was the first to go. She’d sat down with it at half nine, braced for a full day of it, and the forms had folded in just over an hour. She’d logged every discharged bullet and every step in her previous two investigations all from memory, and even uploaded her medical reports and pictures of her injuries. She filled the boxes, signed where the boxes told her to sign, uploaded the lot through the Bureau portal and watched the little wheel spin and then stop.

Done.

So now it was late morning, and the apartment was Luca-less and very quiet. Ella had already put the TV on, briefly watched a political talk show and then changed it to the DC101, the home of alternative rock. Judging by the listings she browsed, she wasn’t missing much by choosing radio over TV.

It was a strange feeling. Ella didn’t mind being home. She minded being kept home. If not for the context, she’d be happy to be here, but context was the whole of it. She made coffee and sat down at her kitchen table. She stared at her laptop home screen.

Now what?

Lindsey Doyle. Start there. Start with what was actually known. Make a list. Making lists often put things into perspective.

Ella began typing.

Lindsey Doyle was a former corrections officer at Louisiana State Penitentiary. Angola. She’d worked Camp F, the same unit that housed Austin Creed, which meant she’d had hours, days, years of legitimate proximity to the serial killer known as the Mimicker. Somewhere in those hours, the proximity had blossomed into an emotional connection. A connection which Creed might not have returned.

She had a scar on her left forearm. Sharpened toothbrush, a canteen fight, fourteen stitches. It was in the file now. It would not be on the woman in the CDF cell, and it had not been on her, and that single absent inch of scar tissue was the reason Ella was sitting at her kitchen table now.