Chapter 13

Little known fact #3: It’s surprisingly easy to dump a body in New Jersey. What’s not so easy? Teleporting with dead weight.

Alex lay motionless beneath me. He can’t really be dead, can he? No chest movement, that’s a bad sign. Fearing the worst, I jumped off him. It took me like four seconds to get fully clothed. I began to pace.

I wasn’t even thinking about his brain getting splattered everywhere… How did simply coming kill him? Maybe he’s not dead. I checked for a pulse. Nothing. His skin is still so warm, he can’t be dead.

My hands started shaking. What do I do?

Call Viola. She’ll know.

I tripped over Pickles on the way to my purse. He sat there and stared at me, like I was the jerk for disturbing his nap in the middle of the room. “Dick,” I muttered as I fished through the contents and found my cell phone.

Answer the phone, please pick up. I groaned when I heard her voicemail message. Shit, shit, shit.

I returned to the bedroom, hoping to catch some kind of movement. Hoping he’d just get up, tell me I was a lousy lay, and leave. But that didn’t happen.

He’s dead. A cop is dead. A cop I slept with. And on top of all that, I was the other woman. It was a new low for me. At least with Chad, I could rationalize that he was a total asshole. I mean, he was trying to rape me. It was self-defense, if nothing else. But Alex? His only crime was having sex with me.

I killed them both. I’m a monster. A single tear trickled down my cheek at the realization. And then I broke down, shaking and sobbing like a frightened little girl.

I felt a hand start stroking my hair, and I just assumed it belonged to Vi. I should’ve known it wasn’t her when I didn’t hear the thump sound that always accompanied her arrival. But I wasn’t in the best state of mind at the time, so I spilled it all. In broken, sob-riddled sentences, I explained why I was sitting in my bedroom with a corpse on my bed.

“Telepathy. I knew it.”

I lifted my head at the sound of the masculine voice. A voice with a British accent. My other senses kicked in and that sexy cologne filled my nostrils once more.

Steve.

I stumbled back from him, unsure of what his next move would be. Fuck that, what should I do? Teleport? Despite Vi’s warnings, I never felt unsafe with him. It was more the opposite, I felt like I wanted to curl up in his capable arms and forget about everything.

Steve held his hands up in surrender. “Kate, it’s all right, I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I can’t trust you,” I said aloud, more to convince myself it was the right thing to feel. “You’re the enemy.”

“That sounds more like Viola than you.” He inched closer to me. “How do you really feel about me?”

I wiped the tears from my eyes. “I don’t know.”

“That’s perfectly understandable, to be confused. You’ve come into a dangerous power, and you don’t know how to control it.” He paused, studying me. There was a sympathy to his expression, like he knew exactly what I was going through. “You’ve had…accidents. People got…hurt.”

I snickered. “That’s sugarcoating it, don’t you think? I’m a fucking monster.”

“No,” he said at a volume that startled me. “You are not.”

Though I wanted to believe him, recent events proved otherwise. I looked off to the side, avoiding his deliberate gaze.

“Listen to me, Kate.” He waited for me to make eye contact. I sighed and relented, as he took my hands into his. That icy electricity was there once more, a deliciously cold tingling sensation I felt all over. “You are not a monster. You can learn to control it.”

I heard a familiar thump in the adjacent room. This is going to be interesting.

“And I’m here to help you.”

“Heard that before,” Viola said, as she burst into the room. She grabbed Steve’s shirt with both hands and shoved him away so hard, his body flew across the room.

“Oh my God!” I ran over to where he landed, all twisted against the side of my dresser. “You could’ve killed him!”

“He’s fine,” she said, looking nonchalantly at her nails. “Assholes like him always survive.”

I helped him get upright.

The bewildered expression on his face abruptly disappeared. “Viola.”

“Want some more?” Vi motioned for him to come closer. “I’ve been waiting too long to do this.”

“Enough!” I shouted and stood in between them. “This isn’t helping.”

“Shit, you can’t tell me you believe him?” Vi stomped her foot down like a pissed off teenager.

“I don’t know what to believe,” I said. “But the two of you fighting isn’t going to solve anything.”

Pickles joined us in the bedroom, jumping up on the footboard, and walking the length of it while totally ignoring the corpse next to him. I thought he was about to clean himself, when he suddenly looked at Steve and hissed.

“Pickles, what’s wrong?”

He growled that pissed off cat growl they usually only reserve for other cats.

“See?” Vi said, motioning to Pickles. “Even the cat knows he’s an asshole!”

“I’ll come back,” Steve said.

“She doesn’t need you, dickhead!” Vi screamed. She lunged for Steve, but he teleported before she could take a swing at him. “Coward.”

She took in the whole surreal scene, and her jaw dropped. She moved closer to Alex on the bed. “Fuuuuuck.”

“Yeah.”

“Your power?” she asked, as she poked at Alex’s head. His eyes were open wide, as if he were terrified. It was like a scene out of a crappy B horror movie.

I nodded.

“How?”

“I don’t know.”

She sighed. “I knew this was a bad idea.”

“I don’t need a lecture on my poor life choices.” I held my arms against my chest. “What am I going to do? If I call the police—”

“Don’t even think about it—he’s one of their own. They’ll crucify you.”

“That’s what I figured.”

“So that leaves one choice. Have to dump the body.”

What she said made sense, but I was still coming to terms that he was actually dead. Somewhere deep down, I held out a glimmer of hope. “What if he’s still alive?”

“Without a pulse?”

“I know, I just thought, maybe they can revive him or something. Like CPR.”

Vi raised an eyebrow at me. “Guess it could happen.”

“Okay, so I dump him near a hospital.”

She laughed. “Have you not seen the security they have at hospitals? It was hard enough for me to sneak into your room the other night. We would totally get caught.”

I smiled at hearing her say “we.” She was going to help me.

“What?”

“You’re a good friend, Vi.” I took her hand and squeezed it.

“I told you, I got your back.” With her free hand, she gently caressed my cheek. “I’m here for you, always.”

I wasn’t even trying to look into her mind, but a picture appeared anyway: a soft kiss and a comforting hug.

“Thank you.” I hugged her. Part of me wanted to just stay in the embrace, where it was warm and loving and safe.

But I had to clean up my mess. I thought of the perfect place – behind that shitty convenience store where Steve had kidnapped me. There was a hospital close by and it was usually deserted, especially at night.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I teleported there alone to scout it out. Not a single soul around. It was as if Jethro (who was, in fact, working again) had managed to chase away every last customer with his natural charm.

I shook my head, trying to focus. With a dead cop at my apartment, I had to move fast. In my panicked state, it felt like the faster I got rid of the body, the better my chances were of getting away with it. I know it wasn’t logical. But who the fuck ever said I made sense? I’m a developer. When I’m not mumbling code constructs to myself, I’m thinking about nested cursors I have to rewrite. To the rest of the world, I’m barely coherent.

I cleaned up Alex as best I could, removing the condom and wiping down all the semen. I knew if they did an autopsy it wouldn’t matter, they’d still find traces. It would be a miracle if I could pull this off. Once I finished dressing him back in all his clothes, Vi propped him up.

Then I did it. With Vi’s help, I teleported Alex behind that shithole of a convenience store and placed his body against the side of a dumpster.