Page 8 of Girl, Entangled

‘Yes, it is. Take a look.’

Ella lifted it out of its foam casing. It was much lighter than her 17M model. The slide had been milled. Two oval ports had been cut behind the front sight so the barrel showed through. The factory sights were gone, swapped for a low red-dot optic with tall irons standing up behind it. The grip had been stippled by hand so the polymer melted into a rough texture.

‘Very nice,’ she said. ‘This isn’t a factory model. Why am I holding it?’

‘Because, Miss Dark, those guns will be standard issue for everyone in the Bureau. You’re holding one of five prototypes. You do more miles than anybody here, so I thought you’d get some use out of it.’

‘It’s a Glock 19,’ Ella said. ‘Ripley’s had one of these for over a year. They’re already standard issue.’

‘Not quite.’ Vernon let the not sit there. ‘What Ripley’s got is a 19M. What you’re holding is a 19M with something extra inside it.’

‘Oh?’

‘There’s a tracker in the frame,’ Vernon said. ‘And before you say it, no, it’s not one of those flimsy coin-sized things. It’s not an AirTag. It’s built into the polymer, wired through the backstrap. You can’t pop it out. You can’t switch it off. Short of taking an angle grinder to the gun, it stays where it is.’

Ella turned the pistol over again. Held it up to the window light. There was nothing to see. Whoever had done the work had done it well. ‘And it exists because?’

‘Because a few months ago, Agent Byford lost his gun in an airport in London. Someone found it days later and shut down Heathrow Airport for eight hours. We had to compensate the airport for delays, and that’s why you and everyone else here won’t have free champagne at Christmas.’

Dever shifted against the wall but didn’t say anything. Ella set the Glock back in its foam. She didn’t let go of it.

‘Lost guns,’ she said. ‘That’s the pitch.’

‘That’s the reason. You want it or not?’

Ella didn’t share Ripley’s disdain for Rick Vernon because he’d been nothing but nice to her since day one. This move, however, felt like it had an ulterior motive. Field agents already had trackers on their cell phones, although Ripley had somehow disabled hers without any repercussions. Ella, however, didn’t have the sway that Ripley did. Why did agents need two trackers on them? Or maybe she was being paranoid and this genuinely was about lost guns.

‘I’ll take it. Thank you. Do I need to sign anything?’ She decided that a pistol upgrade wasn’t the worst thing in the world, tracker or no tracker.

‘Take it down to Davies in the armory. He’ll log the serial, run you through the optic, and put it on your card. Then go home.’

Ella thought she’d imagined the last part, but Vernon’s smug grin said otherwise. ‘Home? I’ve just spent a week at home.’

‘Then spend another week at home,’ Dever piped up. He stepped forward and fell in line with Vernon. ‘There’s no movement on the Doyle-Creed situation, and your pal Ripley is tied up with something else.’

‘Tied up with what?’ Ella asked.

‘Something else,’ Dever said again, which wasn’t an answer, and he clearly didn’t intend it to be one.

Ella looked from Dever to Vernon and back. ‘So that’s it. You upgrade my gun and send me home? I’ve got a mountain of forms to fill out for the past few cases. I can’t just go home.’

‘Take it with you,’ Dever said. ‘And maybe take two plain clothes with you. To sit outside your apartment.’

Now she clocked the ulterior motive. She sat back and folded her arms. ‘I see. You want me as Doyle bait.’

Dever had the courtesy to look mildly embarrassed. ‘Ella, you know as well as we do – better than we do, in fact – that the real Lindsey Doyle will come for you soon. Why chase her when he can lure her?’

Ella pushed the Glock away from her, because if Dever insinuated that she was killer bait again she might shoot him. She’d done all of the work for the Doyle case while Dever and Vernon sat on their asses, and it seemed that the best idea they’d come up with while she was at home was to use Ella as a human mousetrap.

But were they wrong?

Doyle would come. She’d come for Ella, like she’d come for her friends. But Ella wasn’t just going to sit around and wait for a killer to show up on her doorstep, because she could be waiting for years, and what if Doyle struck when Ella wasn’t at home? No amount of waiting cops would change that.

‘That means you think the woman in custody really is Tracy Doyle.’

Vernon said, ‘We requested the files from Creed’s prison. Lindsey Doyle was attacked by an inmate last year. She broke up a fight in the canteen and ended up with a sharpened toothbrush in her left forearm.’

‘And the woman in the cell had no such mark?’