Borrowed Souls (Soul Charmer #1)(84)
It didn’t take Callie more than twenty seconds to reach the security checkpoint after entering the building. Despite Ford’s initial description, though, it wasn’t the front desk. There was a small Plexiglas door, about hip high, partitioning the entrance from the main working area. The door was open already, but there was still a policeman sitting at the table adjacent.
He rubbed his right eye as though it’d remove the evidence he’d been desk napping. “What can I do for you?”
“Oh, I just need to pick up a couple files.”
“Isn’t a little late for paperwork?” His question wasn’t cutting, but instead was full of unsuspecting sympathy.
“Not my choice, but you know how it goes.” The truth sprang to Callie’s lips.
“I do, honey. Head on back. If you need anything, my name’s Vic.”
“Thanks, Vic.” She might have said more—to be more friendly or normal or whatever—but fear and elation at having not yet fucked everything up would have made her sound manic if she’d replied. Crazy, squeaky women were probably memorable, and Callie was determined to be nothing more than a figment of his late-shift dreams, the kind he’d forget by the next morning.
Once she walked past Vic’s desk, noting the frat-boy comedy flick he had playing on a phone propped on his desk, the end of the hallway was ten feet ahead. Peeking around the corner would be weird—she’d survived her first face-to-face encounter, hadn’t she?—but going into this blind was too stressful. She slowed near the corner, and leaned around the edge as surreptitiously as she could. There was no SWAT team waiting for her. Hell, there wasn’t even one of those slow Romero-type zombies. She righted herself and made the left turn.
The placard reading SERVER ROOM made the door easy to find. Gem City PD was not bringing its A game to protecting its citizens’ data. The servers inside stored court case data, police records, and research. Lots and lots of it. Once she returned to the side of the lawful, she would totally be writing the governor about this kind of lax security. Provided she didn’t get caught, of course.
The keypad above the door’s handle lit as she pressed the first button. Six numbers later, she was still outside the door. Shit. This was Zara’s fault. Callie had the numbers memorized forward and backward before her mom blustered into her apartment. Now the sequence was like one of those words that was right on the tip of your tongue, but no matter how hard you focused, you just couldn’t remember. Such bullshit.
Callie sighed, and checked both directions in the hallway before trying again. She was still alone, but for how much longer? Would a movie keep Vic from checking on her? She had ten minutes to work with when she left the car, but her dumb ass hadn’t checked the time again when she got inside. This was why the mafia should have used a professional. An expert would know to synchronize watches, set an egg timer, or something else useful.
Thank God the keypad didn’t have one of those three-strikes-on-your-code-and-you’re-permanently-locked-out “security” features. Eight tries later, the door finally opened. 5-0-9-7-2-9. She slipped through the open doorway, letting a quick sigh of relief escape her parted lips, and closed the door carefully behind her.
Callie walked to the third server rack on the right and plugged in the little black drive Ford had provided into the port on the side. When the light started blinking green, she moved on. Technology had a touch of magic. It didn’t matter how that drive worked, she was going to leave it there until the light turned yellow. In the meantime, she needed to find the right paper files. Luckily the city had doubled up on storage, and the left side of the room was stacked with grey file cabinets like the ones they’d had at her high school’s principal’s office. Not that she’d been there often.
That’s where her good luck ended though. The administrative assistants for the police force weren’t all that organized. In the fourth cabinet’s third drawer, Callie found a hefty folder labeled “DNA Soul Pairing.” Sounded accurate enough. She pulled the two-inch thick folder free, surprised it took both hands to lift out.
Her focus was trampled as what sounded like a stampede thundered past the storage room’s door. It was so startling she almost dropped the papers she was holding. Masculine voices called to “get the gurney” and “rally at door four.” Their words didn’t mean anything to her, but she needed them to go in the opposite direction of her exit. Not that she knew which door number that was. The footsteps echoed for days, or maybe it was just seconds, she was too scared to tell. She needed out.
An invisible hand squeezed her throat. She ignored her tightening airway and ran to the servers. Pinning the bulky file under her arm, Callie extracted the drive from the rack and mouthed a silent thank you at the yellow light that had greeted her. The heat the device generated as she slipped into her pocket was too familiar. She wasn’t extracting souls from delinquent clients, but she was still taking something important, something that wasn’t hers and would greatly be missed. Was this who she was now?
She stepped outside the storage room, the snick of the lock barely registering in her ears as the door closed behind her. She needed to get her ass out of the police station as fast as possible, and without attracting the attention of whoever had stormed past a few minutes earlier. She rounded the corner, the one leading back outside.
“Hey!” a male voice called out. Vic wasn’t at his desk. His phone wasn’t on the desk, either. A smoke break now, Vic, really? The exit at the end of the hallway now felt much, much farther away. Her muscles twitched as the flight-or-fight instinct surged inside her.