“Charmer wouldn’t let anyone take those souls.” Beck’s shoes didn’t move, but he leaned back. If only escaping this was so easy.
“No, he wouldn’t.” Derek agreed.
“So where is the boss?” A raspy whistle accompanied Miguel’s s’s.
Callie almost flipped him off. Instead, she said, “Exactly.”
Beck and Miguel both avoided eye contact with her. Derek let their awkwardness settle before asking, “Neither of you saw The Soul Charmer since he called, right?”
Both guys shook their heads no.
“Did he say anything on the phone?” Callie didn’t have much to go on, which is why she’d thought this was about Nate. The Charmer hadn’t said shit to Derek, but maybe that was because his anger was going to be focused on Callie.
Derek’s hand tightened on her waist. “He said all hands to me.”
Beck sucked in his lower lip. When he released it, he spoke. “He had a guy down here.”
Callie hadn’t expected that. She hadn’t expected them to know more, but now her mind snapped through the scene they’d arrived to. The shattered glass, the missing soul…. “And the blood upstairs?”
“I figured it was from the guy he had downstairs,” Miguel said. He cradled his jaw for a moment, and then added, “Maybe it wasn’t.”
“Hold up. Who did he have down here?” Derek’s fingers pressed harder against her hip. It was her turn to steady him. He’d been the Charmer’s go-to guy. So why didn’t he know someone was in the building for interrogation? Callie wasn’t about to pose that question in this company.
“Charmer had me drag in a guy trying to sling souls outside of that Thai food place near the industrial park.” Beck offered a single-shoulder shrug. “Guy was easy to find, and didn’t put up a fight. He was a hundred pounds soaking wet. Can’t see that string bean taking out the door.”
“Or getting the drop on the Soul Charmer,” Callie said. Their boss was too clever and too powerful for one guy to take him out. If it’d been that easy, Ford would have forced the Charmer to give him souls long before Derek bombed the mobster’s house.
“He had you bring in a corner guy? Why not just put some fear into the kid?” Derek’s hardened gaze settled on Beck. The other soul collector looked at the far wall, and then the floor, and then Miguel. Anywhere other than Derek.
“I just did what he asked,” Beck said.
Callie brushed the tip of her shoe across the floor in front of her. It knocked the bits of glass and wood shards away, and brushed the top layer of dust clear. Aside from the debris, the floor was clean. “Where’s the blood here?”
“What do you mean?” Beck asked.
“Had you already questioned the guy?” she asked.
“Not yet. I brought him in, and bound him like normal.”
Like normal. Bile burned in her belly. She rubbed her hands against her pant legs. The memory of searing flesh and sharp screams in this room suddenly too vivid to contain. She choked back the sickness, and curled her fingers around the flask inside her pocket. “There’s no blood in here. All the fighting happened upstairs.”
“Maybe not all of it.” Derek turned to examine the battered door. “This was definitely hit from inside the room, and it’d been bolted. It’s not an easy latch to power through.”
It was like her boyfriend was a forensics investigator merging the clinical and the plausible. Callie half expected him to ask who had installed the bolt.
“Did you use zip ties or rope,” he asked Beck.
“Zip ties.” The of course was unspoken between the colleagues, but the familiarity rankled Callie.
“Where are they? We need to know if he was cut free.”
If he hadn’t been, then they had a bigger problem. Had he slipped the bindings, had he hidden a tool on him, or had he been set free?
Everyone began skimming the floor. Miguel found the black bindings quickly. They’d been cleanly cut. The men began to talk about the cable ties as if they held all the clues. Fucking plastic wasn’t going to solve this.
An edge of black peeked from beneath the seat of one of the wooden stools. Callie tossed the wood to the side, and picked up the three by two card. The glossy sheen had been scuffed, but she couldn’t forget the slogan etched in delicate gold swirls: Be Anonymous with a New Soul.
“Guys,” she called.
“He used a piece of glass,” Miguel said, ignoring Callie.
“Glass would leave blood. No blood.” Derek answered Miguel.
Damn it. The card was cool in her hand. “Derek,” she said his name with the force only a lover could leverage.
His attention snapped to her. He held one of the cut cable ties in his hand, but dropped it to his side, and walked to her. “Everything cool, doll?” he said quiet enough for only her ears.
She lifted the card. “I found this. Adam had one of these in his coat.”
Derek hand out a hand. “Can I?”
She passed him the card.
“This makes more sense,” he said only to Callie. “The Charmer doesn’t use this room unless it’s something big.”
“Tess level big?”
Derek nodded. “If the mob crew is carrying these anonymous soul cards around, it means whoever is behind it is gunning for the Charmer.”
“Business cards and shit? That’s a lot of organization for a little time.”
“You’re not wrong.” Derek shot a sharp look over his shoulder. The two other men were still arguing about the zip ties. “At least this means this isn’t about you.”
No, this might be worse.
