1
SOPHIE
In a therapy first, I have a dead body on my office floor. A very tall man is leaning over it, his hands pressing against the corpse's neck. Not ten minutes ago, he burst into my office and lunged at my now-dead client.
I stand against the wall, my hand pressing to my mouth.George, I tell myself. I keep calling George a corpse, a dead body,it… because frankly, I’m shocked how quickly he became one.
I haven’t a clue what to do with a dead body, but this stranger acts like he sees them every Tuesday. As he pulls his hands away from George and stands up, he looks nonplussed. As if death is just another part of his day.
The blonde stranger smiles at me over my dead client. He has blue eyes so pale they’re nearly gray. He’s wearing a forest green jacket over a white hoodie, jeans, and boots. Casual but put together. Clean. Thirty-ish.
“Who are you?” I ask. His eyes find the clock on my wall and sparkle.
“Your ten o’clock. But if this guy is done, I’m happy to start early.”
“I…”have no words.
Suddenly, a pair of paramedics rush through the open door of my office. They drop to their knees, spending a few minutes attempting CPR before calling it.
I’ve never had a client die during a therapy session. When he fell over, I rounded the desk in an instant. I yelled out, and that’s when the large man burst into the room. He’d tried to help, even performed his own CPR, but there wasn’t anything that could be done. My assistant must have called 911 while the man and I watched George die.
“Time of death, nine forty?—”
“Nine thirty-two,” my icy-eyed giant interrupts. The paramedics look up at him. I expect them to insist he gets out. Instead, familiarity washes over them.
“Oh, it’s the new guy! Samuel?”
“Soren,” he corrects.
So he’s a paramedic. Well, that explains his weird detachment and maybe even the disturbing sense of humor. Except as I watch his on-duty workmates deal with my dead client, there’s something slightly different in the way they handle it. I wouldn’t notice if I wasn’t already keyed into Soren’s demeanor.
When he thinks no one is paying attention, he stares at the dead body with a blank look. He does it several times before he notices I’m watching him. A smile blooms on his face when he’s caught, making it even more odd. Shouldn’t he be embarrassed?
Maybe I’m being too sensitive. I just watched a man have an aneurysm, orsomething, for Christ’s sake. It’s natural that I’m trying to focus on something to help deal with the shock of it.
I also happen to have the peculiar habit of looking for signs of psychopathy in normal people. I guess I think it would be fascinating for my barista to secretly kill people between one peppermint frappe and the next.
Finally, I unglue myself from the wall and smooth my hand down my sweater. Psychopathy is an old obsession I can’t shake, no matter how many years ago I swore off studying killers and committed myself to therapy instead. Family counseling is a safe, decently easy career. Researching killers and psychopaths is not only disturbing to nearly everyone but also doesn’t pay well. And hey, if family counseling was a little boring? Well, that’s just the price to pay for normalcy.
Eventually, the paramedics and my dead client leave. It’s just Soren and me. No body to smile over.
My office looks the same as it did before. There’s a bit of red garland hanging festively from my desk that I put up this morning. My hot chocolate is cooling in a mug, soggy marshmallows floating on top.
Has it really been less than thirty minutes since everything was boringly normal? I let out a breath and rub my forehead. I’m not sure what to do. Do I cancel the rest of my appointments? My eyes catch a wet stain on my long skirt. Some of my drink must have spilled when I slammed it down.
Soren sits in the chair that my last client unexpectedly vacated. I look at the side of his head in confusion. His hair is pale and somewhat of a mess on top of his head, as if he came straight from hiking or some other outdoor sport. The slopes aren’t open for another week, or I’d guess he was snowboarding or skiing.
He twists his head and looks at me staring at him. I’m uncomfortable with how attractive I find him. It’s inappropriate after what just happened and because apparently, he’s my ten o’clock client. This makes him Soren Erikson, a divorcee struggling with sharing custody of his kids. Not a psychopath.
“And that’s a good thing, Sophie,”my voice of reason chides.
Soren raises an eyebrow as I keep staring at him. My face heats as I realize I’m gawking. Suddenly, I feel compelled to geton with the day. He’s acting so normal that I follow his suit and sit in my chair across from him.
“Sorry about that,” I say.
“Why? You didn’t kill him, right?” He raises an eyebrow as humor sparkles in his pale eyes. I stare, again. Maybe there really is something off about him.
My intense concentration doesn’t go unnoticed by him. He looks a bit scolded. I rub my forehead again. I’m just stressed. I’m about to open my mouth and tell him we’ll reschedule, but he speaks up before I can.
