“Charming stole them and I helped him. I put one here. One at your house,” he said, gesturing toward Piper, who made a choking sound. “And he took one out of town with him. Not sure where he left that one.”
The garment bag. The one on the plane I teased him about. It hadn’t been a suit at all. It had been a body.
I was so out of my league.
“You put a body at my house?” Piper said, her voice hollow.
“Yeah,” he answered, sheepish. “I needed somewhere the Reaper wouldn’t look.”
“How do you even know where I live?” she asked.
There was a very heavy, drawn-out pause. “I knew Dex,” he finally replied.
My eyes shot to Piper, whose face went white. “You knew Dex?”
“Um, yeah. I was assigned to watch him and sorta you too.”
“Oh,” was all she managed to say.
I gave him a dirty look for upsetting her. “The body is still where you left it.” I was hoping he would take the hint and leave.
He nodded. “I’ll get it out of here.”
“Where are you going to take it?”
“It’s needed,” was all he said. Then he turned to Piper. “I’ll get the one at your place when I leave here.”
“I’m supposed to work later.”
“You don’t need to be there. I can let myself in.”
“That’s how he’s been getting into my apartment!” I burst out. “You’ve been helping him!”
“I make a pretty good key,” he said smugly.
Escorts were weird. They bragged about being criminals.
“I’ll just get the body and get out of here.” He moved off toward the hall.
“Wait, you said you had a message from Charming?” Maybe I should have acted like I didn’t care, but I did.
“Oh yeah. He wanted me to tell you he was working on making room for the sun and he’d see you later.”
Piper looked at me with a question in her eyes, wondering if I understood what he meant.
I smiled. I knew exactly what he meant. It meant he was coming back.
“Why couldn’t he tell me that himself?” I asked.
“About that,” he explained. “The Reaper took his body away. Right now he looks like me, except he’s red.”
Awww, he thought that would be a sufficient reply.
“That’s not going to cut it. I need more info. Pronto.”
Cloud guy sighed heavily, and with his sigh some of his body (or whatever) puffed out like breath on a winter’s day. “G.R. took away Charming’s body and locked him up at his mansion. He can’t Recall him because the only way an Escort gets Recalled is if they don’t finish a job. Charming still has a few months left to the job he was assigned, but the Reaper wants him gone. So he took his body and trapped him. He’s going to keep him there until time runs out for the job and then he’ll be able to Recall him.”
Some people might say he was getting what he deserved after all these years of killing people who didn’t deserve to die. But somewhere along the line, I stopped thinking about him as a killer and started thinking about him as a man, a man trapped in an impossible situation. And thinking about him being Recalled—or truly never seeing him again—made me want to go to the Reaper’s house myself and start ripping stuff apart.
