After My Death, He Regretted Madly

Chapter 4

The morgue cold storage room was so deathly quiet you could barely even hear a single breath.

My eyes stung in an instant, and I could barely bring myself to look at Javier's face.

There was only one thought circling in my head, 'He'd finally found out.'

I stared at his hand hanging loosely at his side, trembling just barely, and my own heart gave a soft, lurching twinge.

'Was he grieving for me?'

I reached out by instinct, ready to wrap my fingers around that warm, familiar hand, then I remembered my current situation.

My fingertips passed straight through his skin, no ripples, no warmth, nothing at all.

I stared down at my own translucent hand in a daze, a bitter laugh catching in my throat.

'Is this some kind of sick punishment from the universe, Javier? It lets me stay right here next to you, but I can't even touch you.'

Javier finally lifted his hand, his thumb pressing down on the little red mole on the corpse's wrist, my signature mark, the one he'd teased me about a hundred times before, but his eyes grew colder and colder by the second.

His voice was thick with so much sneering scorn it made my non-existent blood run cold. "Someone as greedy and power-hungry as her? She'd never let herself die that easy."

That quiet, low comment wrapped around my heart like thin nylon cord, then someone wrenched both ends as hard as they could, slicing my heart clean in two.

One half knew, sharp and clear, just how much he hated me. The other half twisted in my chest, a messy tangle of stupid, unrealistic hope and cold, coiling fear.

Part of me ached for him to realize this unclaimed, mangled body was mine. The other part was terrified he'd work out that this broken, unrecognizable mess of flesh and bone was me.

I hoped he'd dig up every last truth and clear my name with his own two hands. I was terrified he'd leave me nailed to the pillar of shame as a traitor forever.

I stared at my own dead body, and a tidal wave of bitter misery surged up from my chest, burning my nose until it ached, sharp and stinging.

To be honest, I didn't blame Javier for not recognizing the body as mine.

If I didn't know my own most private, unique marks like the back of my hand, I'd never believe that battered body was me either.

I've always cared so much about my appearance, but this corpse is bloated and hideous beyond recognition. Even my fingers are smashed and bloodied.

I'm someone who's always been obsessively clean, too, but the gaps under these nails are caked with filth, looking even more disgusting under the layer of frost coating the body.

I've asked myself a thousand times: 'Why did I end up looking like this after I died?'

But no matter how hard I rack my brain, I can't recall a single thing that happened in my final moments. I had no memory of how I'd been killed, no clue who was responsible.

Creak.

The sound of the door swinging open yanked me out of my swirling thoughts. Captain Morgan strode straight into the room, his eyes locked firmly on the freezer.

"Javier, how's the examination going?"

Javier's face had already smoothed back into its usual calm. He bowed his head, scribbling something on the forensic observation sheet.

The deceased has pale yellow cut wounds on the wrist, with severe damage to the tendons and ligaments...

Captain Morgan wasn't a medical examiner, so he couldn't make heads or tails of the notes. He asked, "It's not Jennifer?"

Captain Morgan was always the no-nonsense, get-it-done type. I'd never seen him look so cautious, so tentative, like he was... scared?

Almost immediately, I shook my head with a bitter laugh at my own ridiculous thought.

As the captain of the New York City Criminal Police Force, Captain Morgan had handled so many cases that the stack of files on his desk would stack as tall as a full-grown person. What kind of brutal crime scene hadn't he seen? There was no way a single corpse would rattle him.

Javier glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. "Jennifer would never let anything happen to her hands. It can't be her."

My eyelashes fluttered hard. I dropped my gaze to my right wrist, and the words slipped out in a soft whisper, "Javier, you're wrong."

I'd had to cripple my own right hand to clear the final hurdle and infiltrate the core of the crime syndicate.

Back then, the ringleader, Victor, had grinned right at me. "We want loyal dogs, not some sharpshooter from the police force!"

I tried to curl my fingers around my wrist, only to grab nothing but thin air.

That wound had healed over three years ago, but right then, it flared up with sharp, fresh pain.

Captain Morgan let out a long, quiet breath of relief. "Good, that's a weight off... Javier, I keep thinking. Someone like Jennifer, with such a bright future ahead of her, how could she mess up this bad?

"When the body was found, it was still clutching half a police ID number tag. If we hadn't run the records and come up empty, everyone would've sworn this was her."

Javier's gaze drifted back to the corpse, his brow slowly furrowing. "We've run through all the explosion victim records already. That half police ID number tag is with the tech team waiting to be restored. We should have answers pretty soon."

Captain Morgan nodded. "If this really is tied to HS, the longer we keep the body here, the more antsy they'll get. They'll definitely send someone to steal it."

The second the words left his mouth, the two men locked eyes and spoke my name in perfect unison, "Jennifer."

I huffed a bitter, hollow laugh. If I were still alive, I really would have been their best pick for the job. I grew up in this city, and I know this police facility like the back of my hand. HS couldn't find anyone who knew the layout better than I did.

I murmured under my breath, "Too bad... you're gonna be disappointed."

Javier's phone suddenly rang sharply. He listened for all of two seconds, and his face immediately hardened into a grim mask.

"Got it. Captain Morgan and I will head over right now!"

He hung up, turned sharply to Captain Morgan, and every word carried a sharp, tight edge of rage.

"Our guys spotted Jennifer on the second floor of Evercrest Building."