Page 25 of View from Above
Glass burst around her. Screams and gasps filled her ears. There were voices and questions and blood, but she didn’t have the focus to process any of it.
“I’ve got you!” A hand locked around her wrist and dragged her from the ledge, inch by agonizing inch. Her lungs burned as that hand pulled her into a solid wall of muscle before collapsing onto a carpet identical to the one in her office.
“EMTs are on the way. Hold onto her tight and massage her arms and legs. It’ll help keep her out of shock.” Familiar blue eyes and short platinum blonde hair eased in and out of focus, and memory filtered in slowly. The state trooper she’d noticed at Virginia Green’s crime scene. Payton’s partner. “I need a blanket and some water. Now!”
“Shh.” The man who’d secured her against his chest lowered his mouth to her ear and locked his legs around her middle. The combination of soap and something sweet drove deep into her lungs. Payton. He was alive. He’d come for her. Pressing one hand into her head, he used the other to squeeze her arms and legs. “You’re safe. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
Another round of sobs raged out of control as emotions and adrenaline drained from her veins. Bystanders collected around her, only breaking the circle to hand off a small lap blanket and a bottle of water.
“Drink this.” Trooper Wells twisted off the cap of the bottle and set the water against Mallory’s lips, tipping it up. Cool water slid down Mallory’s throat, and the trooper raised her gaze to Payton. “Mallory, I know you’ve been through something unimaginable, and you don’t want to think about it more than you have to, but I need you to tell us what you remember. Do you have a description of who did this? A name?”
“My… ribs.” It was getting harder to breathe. Harder to think. Without the sedative’s effects and the eminent danger of falling to her death, the pain was strangling her from the inside. “I… think they’re broken.”
“Wells.” Payton’s warning prickled the hairs on the back of her neck. “Not now, damn it.”
Wells’s single nod was all Mallory could comprehend before two EMTs burst through the barricade separating them from the rest of the office. A light flashed into her face and triggered a headache at the base of her skull. Exhaustion unlike anything she’d felt before pressed her body into the floor until she wasn’t sure how long she’d been sitting there in the middle of an office. Whispers and theories permeated the bubble of safety Payton had provided. Had she tried to commit suicide? How had she gotten to the ledge? Was that blood on her face?
“Her vitals are all over the place,” one of the EMTs said. “We need to get her to the ambulance.”
Payton pressed his mouth to her forehead as he unhooked his arms from around her shoulders. “I’m going to be there with you the entire time. I’m not going anywhere. All right?”
A stretcher broke through the circle of onlookers, led by another EMT. While she normally lived for details—facial features, clothing, the sound of a voice, a patient’s story—the world blurred as the techs hauled her onto the stretcher.
Payton kept his hand in hers. Grounding her, comforting her, stabilizing her.
Florescent lights, blank expressions, and Wells’s orders to stay back bled into focus then out again as they moved her to the elevators. Mallory struggled to stay conscious, to take it all in, but she’d been fighting a losing battle since the moment she’d been drugged. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could hang on or why she felt it was important. She gripped Payton’s hand tighter as they maneuvered her into the elevator. “She ambushed me. In my office. After you left. She threw me off the roof—”
“I know.” He wrapped her hand in both of his, that intense gaze locked on her. “But you don’t have to worry about that right now. Okay? All you need to do is rest. Nothing else matters.”
Licking her bottom lip, she tasted blood and dirt and an aftertaste along the lines of flat diet soda. “She’s one of them.”
Confusion deepened the lines between his eyebrows. “One of who?”
“His mistresses,” she said. “She wants what’s hers.”
“What’s that?” The concern that’d softened his expression a moment before vanished. Until there was nothing left but the detective she’d welcomed into her childhood home as he informed her Roland Kotite had died.
Her hand shook in his as the memories played out, one after the other. “Everything she thinks I didn’t deserve.”
“We’re almost there,” Wells said.
The elevator dinged, and the EMTs spun into action. The stretcher bounced underneath her as they maneuvered her off the car and through the building’s lobby. Red and blue patrol lights flashed in her peripheral vision as the uproar of the city drowned out her thoughts.
“Detective Nichols, can you tell us what happened up there? Was this another suicide attempt? Detective, do you believe this could be some kind of pact?” The reporter’s voice was lost among the dozens of other questions hurled their way, but all Mallory could focus on was the rooftop of the building she’d nearly fallen from.
“Get the hell out of the way.” Payton ran alongside her until the roof of the ambulance blocked her view of the skyline, never once letting go of her hand. The stretcher slammed into the back of the ambulance rig. The reverberation shook through her, but the pain had subsided.
The weight of attention pressurized the limited air in her lungs, and Mallory turned her head to one side to face the crowd. A new energy buzzed through the cacophony of reporters, curious civilians, and police. Camera flashes popped through the crowd and left white circles in her vision. Mallory Kotite... Daughter of legendary litigator Roland Kotite... Tried to kill herself... Took his life last month from the top of his building…
Her father would’ve enjoyed this. The focus on him, the fact he’d been right from the beginning. She’d never win her independence from his legacy. Her name would inextricably always be linked to his.
A flash of blue caught her attention. A single figure walked away from the scene instead of trying to wedge herself in for a better view. A woman with dark hair and a bright blue blazer set large circular sunglasses over her eyes. Then she was gone.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
He’d almost lost her.
Payton stroked his thumb down the bruised tendons along the back of Mallory’s hand. Wells had walked the crime scene unit through every inch of that building. Fingerprints, shoe impressions, fibers, hair, DNA—they hadn’t found a damn thing. How was that possible? How the hell had the woman who’d drugged and abducted his partner gotten away so clean?