Page 5 of Girl, Remembered

It climbed past his floor, sank back, and steadied, hanging in the dark over the recreation yard the way no star hung before.

Edgar got off the bunk and went to the window, and his heart began to move.

The light circled.

‘Oh,’ he said, in the dark, to no one.

She had told him about the circle in the workshop, about a year before his release, while he’d waxed a jewelry box that some warden’s wife would get for Christmas. He had assumed the circle was for a version of the future that would never need it. And then the messages had stopped, and the agent had said Doyle is in custody, she was never waiting for you, and the words had gone through him like a power drill to the temple.

But here was the circle.

Which meant the agent had been wrong, or lying.

Miss Doyle was not in any cell. Miss Doyle was somewhere out under this same night sky with a controller in her two hands, thinking of him.

Of him.

After everything, after his failure at the farm, she had flown this little light three floors up the side of a parish jail to keep the very last promise, the one he’d been too shy to ask her to repeat.

The warmth that went through Edgar Borden then was the warmth of the workshop in July. His eyes filled and the two lights doubled and swam, and he laughed. He put his palm on the plastic as if the drone could feel it.

She had never lied to him. Not once in all of it. She’d told him what he was, and what he could give, and what it would cost, and every word had come true. And she’d told him that when the circle came, it wouldn’t be an ending. Endings were for the lost, and he wasn’t lost. He knew exactly where Marla was, and where Myla was, and how long they’d been waiting, and how patient they’d always been with him.

His girls, patient as seasoned wood.

The drone dropped away below the sill and was gone.

Edgar stayed at the window a while. Then he lifted the child’s unicorn over his head – the first time in years – and kissed the unicorn’s horn. He set it on the pillow, standing upright, facing the door, where whoever came in the morning would find it and know it mattered.

He found the toothbrush under his pillow.

None of it had been perfect, and if he could do it again, Edgar Borden would change many things.

But it had been a life.

‘Coming home, girls,’ he said. ‘Daddy’s coming home.’

CHAPTER TWO

3AM, and every member of the Lindsey Doyle taskforce had assembled at the Greenbelt metro lot. There were an alarming number of technicians inspecting the area where Doyle had left the pistol, technicians that were probably contaminating more than they were discovering.

Vernon, whose hair had exploded into a frothy brown mess from the humidity, said, ‘I didn’t need this tonight.’

‘We don’t need this any night, but complaining won’t change anything. What’s the plan, Rick?’

‘I’m working on it.’ Vernon looked over at the technicians. ‘Talk me through the magazine again.’

Ella tried leaning against the railings but the pressure on her ribs hurt too much. She opted to stay vertical. ‘We followed the tracker, we found my Glock ripped apart. The mag was on the bench, nothing in it, nothing in the chamber, nothing on the ground, nothing in the trash cans, nothing in a fifty-yard sweep. She kept the rounds.’

‘Fifteen rounds of nine-millimeter,’ Vernon said.

‘Yeah.’

‘Why strip a weapon down to the pins and pocket the ammunition?’

‘Because ammunition’s the only part that was ever any use to her,’ Ella said. ‘The gun was a leash. The bullets are just bullets. They’ll fire out of half the handguns in America.’

Ripley said, ‘And she’s playing it safe, or at least as safe as possible. If a trooper lights her up on 95 for a plate check and catches an FBI issue pistol in her glovebox, she’s getting arrested on the spot.’