Page 21 of View from Above

There was only one reason why the woman suspected of murdering Angie Green would be here.

Mallory.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

She’d done the right thing.

For her career. For her patients.

She had to believe that. But the knot in her stomach from standing in Payton’s way wouldn’t release. Especially because she couldn’t remember the sessions in question. Mallory clicked through the patient file she’d marked with a navy blue tag and reviewed her notes from the past three weeks. Of course, she couldn’t ignore the fact that each appointment with this particular patient was scheduled the days before she’d woken up too tired to get out of bed, but that wasn’t proof her patient had drugged her. It wasn’t proof of anything. It could’ve been a coincidence, another way for whoever killed Virginia Green and Angie Green to put the blame on someone else.

But the doubt was there.

What better way to get access to a target than to pose as someone in need?

She ignored the slight dryness in her mouth and read through the file. Twenty-five percent of her job qualified as administrative. While taking notes during sessions was required by the state for legal and ethical purposes, it was often the most common area therapists neglected. She had to admit that was another thing her father had taught her to take seriously during those short months she’d been relegated to Stanford. Everything could be used in a court of law.

Mallory read through the titles she’d given each of her sealed notes and expanded the last session, but the specifics of this patient remained just out of her memory’s reach. She imagined she had whatever drug she’d been injected with to thank for that. “Patient feels she may be experiencing symptoms of OCD and PTSD due to physical and mental abuse during her childhood. It appears patient values her work above all else as a coping strategy to remove herself from reality and deal with stress. Patient failed to meet qualifiers on the PTSD assessment, but there are tangible symptoms of compulsive disorder.”

But had it all been a lie? Had she locked herself in a room with the woman who’d killed her father? Movement caught her attention from the corner of the monitor, and Mallory twisted. Too late.

A pinch burned at the back of her neck, and she slumped forward onto the desk, wide awake. “Sorry, Dr. Kotite, as much as I think we’d make a great team, I’m going to have to find another therapist.”

The melodic tone of the woman’s voice distorted as though cotton had been stuffed in Mallory’s ears. Her fingers twitched beside her on the desk, but her body wouldn’t respond to her brain’s commands. The sedative. She’d been drugged. She couldn’t move, couldn’t think.

“Shame, really. I’d heard such good things about you.” Her attacker hauled Mallory upright in her chair but took position at the back, staying out of sight. With a forward push, the killer propelled her to the office door as a numbness flooded through her. A wave of thick, dark hair shifted over a blue blazer in her peripheral vision as the woman poked her head out of the office. “Here we go.”

“Where…” Mallory put everything she had into forming a protest. “Where are you taking me?”

“Hmm. Sounds like you’re going to need another dose. That’s the downside of a drug like this. Hard to get the dosage right the first time. Keeping her face turned away, her abductor slid behind her. Another pinch erupted at the back of her neck, and Mallory’s body seized. They were moving again, through the door of Mallory’s office, around the perimeter of the open floorplan desks, toward a hallway she’d never been down before.

A pair of men in business suits she recognized from the new law office that’d taken up the largest meeting room greeted a smiling woman at the elevators. She groaned to get their attention, but neither of them turned.

“Don’t worry about them. They’re taking on one of the biggest cases of their careers today. They won’t bother us.” Cool fingers brushed along Mallory’s jaw. “It’s just you and me, Mallory.”

The chair’s wheels wobbled and fought as the flooring changed from industrial carpet to shiny white tile. The service elevator gleamed at the other end of the hall, and every cell in her body screamed in warning. Public elevators could be limited by floor, but the service elevator would have permission to stop at every point the administrators needed to access. Including the roof.

Another groan escaped past her mouth. Mallory struggled to get her body to do something—anything—under the sedative’s influence, but it was no use. Fluorescent lighting reflected off the elevator’s doors, distorting the killer’s reflection. No identifying characteristics. Nothing to compare to the woman in Payton’s surveillance photos other than the color of her blazer.

A perfectly manicured hand reached from behind and hit the call button, and the doors parted immediately. “Right on time.” The killer twisted Mallory around, giving her one last glimpse of her office across the floor, and backed her into the elevator. The doors closed, sealing them inside.

She craned her neck to one side as a tingling set up in her feet and fingers. Her eyes closed on command, but it took more effort to pry them back open than she had to expend. “Why?”

The shifting of fabric reached her ears. “Well, aren’t you a fighter. You’re metabolizing the Midazolam faster than I’d planned. I only brought two doses. Looks like we’re not going to have as much time together after all.” Leather protested under the killer’s grip. “You want to know why. Okay. I mean, I guess it won’t matter in the end. You’re going off your office building one way or another, right?”

Fear snaked through Mallory as the elevator started moving. Gravity kept its hold on her stomach as they rocketed upward. Feeling returned to her toes and warmed her palms. Midazolam. A sedative known for severe amnesic properties. That was why she couldn’t remember her patient, couldn’t remember the injections. The elevator dinged with its arrival, and the doors parted.

“I confronted him, told him who I really was.” The soft click of heels registered as the invisible cotton loosened in her ears. The killer pushed her free of the safety of the elevator and into frigid cold. The cement roof of her office building stretched out before them. Exposed, terrifying. A retainer wall framed the perimeter, but nothing so simple had stopped the woman behind her from throwing at least two victims off the roof. “Do you know what he did? He laughed. Told me I was just one of many.”

Fire burned up Mallory’s throat. She gripped the seat of her office chair as the numbness brought on by the sedative wore thin. “Who…”

“It doesn’t matter now.” The killer jerked the chair to a stop. “You think you know a person, but, in the end, they bleed like everyone else. I’m not one of those women willing to make up for lost time. I’m looking ahead. And you? You’re just in my way.”

“You killed… him. Roland. You killed Virginia and… Angie.” It was easier to talk now. She could almost move her hands and feet, but escaping a killer spurned by Roland Kotite would take more than free use of her fingers and toes.

The killer maneuvered the chair over the cut in the cement, her mouth close to Mallory’s ear. Too close. “They didn’t leave me any other choice. You thought you had it bad being under the control of a narcissist? Try being lied to your whole life. About who you are, where you came from. You?”

Pain speared through Mallory’s head as the woman behind her ripped the chair out from under her. She hit the cement, face down, too weak to catch herself. Bits of loose cement ground into her face as she internally screamed for her body to respond.