Page 34 of View from Above
“I know how to breathe, thank you.” She didn’t know this man. She was just supposed to trust her mind to a stranger and hope for the best? Was this how her patients felt meeting with her for the first time? Was this how Payton had seen her? As someone who could tear him down without the promise of helping rebuilt what he’d lost?
“I take it you’re not a fan of this kind of thing,” he said.
He was kidding, right? “My entire life revolves around this kind of thing, Agent Dunn. I’m a trauma therapist, but as much as you and Agent Reese want answers, I can’t give them to you.” Mallory pressed her palms into the chair’s arms as she stared out the single window spanning the captain’s office. “My memories of what happened on the roof of my office are gone. Trust me. I’ve tried.”
“That’s a very close-minded approach.” The BAU agent-turned-she-didn’t-know-what leveled his uncompromising gaze on her. “I’d hate to think how frustrated your patients are when they come to you believing they’re out of options.”
“So now you’re questioning my abilities as a therapist. This is going really well.” She bit the inside of her mouth to hold back the vitriol sliding toward the end of her tongue, but, in a way, he had a point. Mallory took in the commendations of the captain who sat behind the file-loaded desk off to her right. A distraction to keep herself from facing her own truth. She’d earned a black belt when it came to beating up on herself but had become an expert in helping others over the years. At least according to her own therapist. “All right. Fine. There might be… a part of me that doesn’t want to remember what happened on that rooftop.” She fisted her hands then forced herself to release. “I woke up in the hospital barely able to breathe, covered in bruises and cuts I couldn’t explain. Payton—Detective Nichols—told me I’d barely survived going over the side of the building, that I fought my way to safety before he pulled me inside.”
“And?” Agent Dunn asked.
“And I have enough nightmares to last me a lifetime.” The words escaped with more bite than she’d intended, but she couldn’t deny the rawness to them. Mallory tried to reign in the over-exposed fear. “I’m not exactly looking for more to keep me up at night.”
“You’re trying to protect yourself. Keep yourself from getting hurt.” He shrugged as though it were a given, as though he knew her better than she knew herself. “Based on what I’ve read about Roland Kotite, sounds like that’s what you’ve had to do your whole life.”
“Nobody wants to get hurt, Agent Dunn.” Wasn’t that obvious, even for an FBI agent?
“But it’s more than that, isn’t it?” He leaned forward in his seat, and the pressure behind her sternum built. “It’s not the pain you’re afraid of. In fact, I haven’t seen you struggle for a breath or wince from discomfort since you stepped through that door despite two broken ribs. It’s the control a man like your father held over you. Now that you’re faced with learning what happened to you on that roof, you fear it will control you. Just as he did. Just as he’s doing from beyond the grave by leaving his litigation firm to you.”
An ache set up residence in the corners of her mouth as the past rushed to meet the present. A flash of heat stole her breath, and in that moment, it was hard to breathe. She dug her fingernails into the leather of the chair. But without something to keep her grounded—without Payton—there was no stopping the rage and embarrassment charging up her throat.
“Dr. Kotite, you’ve been through hell and back, but you and I both know Midazolam only has amnesic side effects that last around twelve hours,” he said. “Something else is going on here.”
She shut down her instinct to argue. Yes. She knew. There were dozens of studies saying just that. It wasn’t the sedative blocking her from remembering her time on that rooftop. It was the trauma. It was her. And how was she supposed to help her patients heal when she refused to take on the challenge herself? “I was hoping you hadn’t done your research.”
His weak smile didn’t lessen the reality of the situation.
“If I remember what happened, we could solve the case,” she said. “I would know who killed my father, who killed Virginia and Angie Green, who tried to kill me.”
Agent Dunn nodded. “Yes.”
“But if I don’t, I could move on with my life.” Mallory matched her gaze with his, and a blossom of hope erupted where hollowness threatened to drown her. A lifeguard in a sea of chaos and violence where she’d treaded water through her whole childhood. “I could pretend none of it happened again. I could be happy for the first time… ever.”
“Has that worked for you so far?” he asked.
“No.” Movement registered through the slated blinds, and awareness flared. Payton. He hadn’t gone back to working the investigation. He’d stood there waiting for her. A small thrill lightninged through her at the thought, only to fade against the backdrop of that overbearing shadow still lingering at the back of her mind. That was how it would always be, wouldn’t it? Him standing there, waiting. Waiting for her to move on, to catch up, to finally let go. “I pushed Detective Nichols into finding who killed my father thinking it would help me move on from everything that he’d done. But now I’m not so sure the bastard deserves justice.”
“Even if you believe Roland Kotite doesn’t deserve justice, don’t the other victims?” Agent Dunn asked. “Don’t their families?”
Virginia and Angie Green. It wasn’t as though she’d forgotten their names or faces. No. Instead, she’d lumped them behind the monster who’d stalked her nightmares for decades.
“I think you know what you have to do next, Mallory.” Agent Dunn collected a pen and notebook from the small table beside the chair and crossed one ankle over his knee to construct a makeshift table. Words had power. It was why she encouraged her patients to journal every morning and get their feelings on paper, to physically confront them in order to start the process of healing. It was also why she hadn’t ever journaled herself. “Let’s start by having you close your eyes.”
Mallory did as instructed, her fingernails sunk into the chair’s arms. She didn’t want to do this. The past couldn’t hurt her, but it sure as hell held things she never wanted to face again. And not just from her time on that roof.
“Take a deep breath, and tell me the first thing that comes to mind.” Exhaustion quickly tunneled through her body and mind, and Agent Dunn’s voice warped. Distorted somehow.
Heat flared up her spine as the effect triggered a single image behind her eyelids. A woman. Dark hair, bright blue fingernail polish that matched her blazer. Nothing else. You’d be surprised how much financial information you can collect from someone’s office with very little access. She followed the thread of memory as far as she could before colors whitewashed into burning sunlight. “She’d been in my father’s office. The woman on the roof. She said she was there to take what was hers. Like my father owed her something.”
“That’s good, Mallory. What else can you see?” Agent Dunn’s voice overlapped a new thread of memory that twisted into existence then drowned beneath the cacophony of city sounds and hard breathing.
Cars crawled below her position on the edge of the building. Her face was cold, pressed against the retainer wall separating her from safety and a ten-story death. “I’m about to go off the ledge.” Mallory struggled to take a full breath. Her heart rate rocketed into the back of her skull. Too loud. Too fast. “I’m scared to fall. I can’t move my body. She drugged me twice. I want to scream, but I can’t.”
“You’re reliving the memory, Mallory. You’re safe here in the captain’s office. No one can hurt you here. Where is the woman who drugged you?” he asked.
The memory faded into something far more haunting without her permission.
“He… He wants me to do it again.” Her mouth dried as a smaller version of herself stared up at the man she’d trusted to protect her, and she wanted nothing more than to turn away. “I know he’s trying to impress potential clients, to get them to do what he wanted, to blackmail them. He says he’ll be proud of me, that one day this will all be mine.” Her throat threatened to close as she walked toward the scene, almost as though she hadn’t experienced it firsthand at all. “He’s holding my favorite Cabbage Patch Doll, the one I wanted for my tenth birthday. All I have to do is let his friend in my room.”