Page 17 of View from Above
“I know the type.” He could practically hear Wells’s smile through the phone. “I’ll send the photo and check back with you soon. Get some rest for once, Detective. Something about this case is telling me you’re going to need it.”
“Thanks.” Payton ended the call, collapsing back in his seat. His phone pinged with an incoming message, and he opened the attachment from Wells. She was right. The woman who’d signed in using Kotite Litigation’s credentials had kept her face averted from the camera as though she’d known exactly where they’d been installed. Dark, wavy hair cascaded down a lean frame accentuated with a bright blue blazer and dark slacks. He couldn’t tell her age from this angle, her height, or even whether or not it was, in fact, a woman who’d breached the precinct, but it was a start. “Who the hell are you?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten my name.” The smokey addition to Mallory’s voice rocketed his pulse into his throat. She’d changed into an old college shirt he’d packed and shoved to the back of his guest bedroom closet. The hem of his favorite team jersey barely reached mid-thigh and exposed flawless mile-long legs. She leaned against the doorframe as if she owned the place, and there wasn’t a single part of him that challenged that thought. “Hope you don’t mind. There were still bits of glass in my jacket and jeans. I didn’t want to bring any of that into the bed.”
Payton caught himself admiring the view too long and cleared his throat. His attention split between the need to ID the woman in the photo and memorizing the array of small moles on the woman in front of him. “Looks better on you than it ever did on me, that’s for damn sure.”
“Any progress?” She motioned to his phone with her chin, crossing her arms in front of her.
“Yes, and no. Seems Angie Green summoned two lawyers. At least, according to the visitor logs at the precinct. Only one of them was the real deal.” He turned his phone’s screen to face her.
She closed the distance between the door and the desk and took the device from him. “And the other?”
“A ghost,” he said. “Do you recognize her?”
“No. Not without seeing her face.” Mallory’s hand rose to massage the back of her neck. “Is she the one who…”
“She’s involved. That’s all we know at the moment. Identifying her is my main priority. Until then, I’d like to take a look at Kotite Litigation’s surveillance footage.” He pointed to the phone in her hand. “From the way this woman avoids the cameras, we think she might’ve cased the precinct before tonight. If your father was murdered, she might’ve scouted his building, too.”
“You can have it all. I’ll make sure my father’s assistant can get you access. I can tell you that’s not my mother.” She handed back the phone, one hand planted on his father’s desk. “She hasn’t been that thin since before I was born.”
“But it doesn’t exclude her as a suspect either. There are any number of ways to get someone to handle your dirty work nowadays, but I hope you’re right. I hope she doesn’t have anything to do with this. For your sake.” He wasn’t sure where the last part had come from, only that he’d meant every word. Just as he’d stood up for her against Wells’s stalking accusations, he really didn’t want Mallory to have to suffer any more than she already had. And having her mother in the spotlight of a homicide investigation was sure to rip what was left of her world apart. “Those marks at the back of your neck… Do you remember any soreness the past few weeks? Any headaches or trouble seeing?”
There were as many cocktails of drugs as there were motives for murder, but if he was able to narrow it down while they waited for Virginia Green’s toxicology report from the lab, they might finally get once step ahead of whoever’d lured these victims over the ledge.
“No. Nothing like that.” Her eyebrows drew together. “But there were a couple of days I was unusually tired when I woke up. I track all the phases of my menstrual cycle in my phone, and I remember thinking I shouldn’t have been so exhausted. Nothing in my routine had changed. I hadn’t eaten anything I was allergic to. I figured I just hadn’t slept well.”
“Could be the effects of a sedative.” He grabbed a pen from his desk drawer. “Do you remember the dates?”
“It’s all in my phone, which you confiscated back at the precinct.” She pointed to his notepad. “But I had to cancel a couple of appointments on those mornings. I’d have record of that at my office.”
“All right. We can swing by there in the morning.” He dropped his pen into his jacket pocket. “If we can pinpoint the dates you were drugged, it might tell us who had access to you around that time. I also need to take a look at your place.”
“Sure.” That single word hitched at the end, exposing the fear underneath her hardened expression. Despite what Mallory presented to the world—presented to him—she was scared. And, hell, why wouldn’t she be? It wasn’t every day someone discovered they’d been the subject of sedation without their knowledge. She rounded the desk, leaning the backs of her thighs against the desk beside him. “I still don’t know why anyone would do this. I didn’t have a relationship with my father, I didn’t know about Virginia Green until today, and I’d never met Angie Green in my life.”
“Well based off of the injection marks, we have to assume you’re a target, but I give you my word I’ll do whatever it takes to keep you safe. Even if that means giving up my favorite jersey so you don’t have to sleep in a bed of glass.” He pried her hand from the desk and smoothed his thumb over a nasty cut along the back. Calluses along his fingers caught on smooth skin as he traced one line up her wrist. Two inches closer to the passenger seat. That was all that’d been standing between her and a piece of shrapnel that’d dislodged from her car’s roof after the collision. He couldn’t believe it. “How’s the arm?”
“Sore,” she said. “But I’ll take soreness any day over what happened to Angie Green.”
The control he’d held onto as he’d processed that scene, her curled up against the precinct wall instead of in his arms, crumbled. He slid one hand across her stomach and latched onto her opposite hip. With a single tug, he maneuvered her in front of him. Right where he needed her. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you, Mallory.”
“You might not have a say in that.” The words left her mouth a little more breathlessly, and a bolt of victory charged through him. She felt it too. This heat. They’d tried to each deny it with their banter and jokes, but discipline had retreated the moment he’d had to pull her from that totaled car.
He stood, leveling his mouth with hers, as he wedged her body between his and the desk. “I’m a man of my word.”
“I believe you.” Her pulse double-tapped at the base of her throat and drew his attention down her neck. Right before Mallory crushed her mouth to his.
CHAPTER TWELVE
When it came to desire, Mallory had an unusually high tolerance.
But not to him.
Her fingers dug into well-developed muscle along his chest with every intention of putting distance between them. They were partners, weren’t they? Working together to solve the case. But she didn’t push him back into his seat. Instead, she fisted his T-shirt in both hands, and a hiss escaped her mouth as the cuts along the cracked skin stretched. She held onto him as though he were the only thing keeping her sane.
Someone had broken into her home, into her office, possibly into her car. They’d injected her with a sedative three times and left her with no memory of the events. Two women with the same marks on the backs of their necks were already dead, and there was a possibility her father had been murdered in the same manner. Payton wanted to bring her mother into the mix, she’d barely survived the incident with her car, and she… She couldn’t take anymore. She couldn’t hold it together. She just wanted to let go. She wanted to forget.
Mallory thrust her tongue past the seam of his lips, and a low moan escaped up his throat. She pressed herself against him, rising onto her toes to match his height, and dragged his jacket down his broad shoulders. More. She needed him to meet her stroke for stroke, spiral for spiral. Fear for fear. To prove she wasn’t alone in this. That they could rely on each other.