Page 35 of View from Above
Leather protested in her ears, but she couldn’t find the source. “Your father is asking you to solicit yourself to his clients?”
“I don’t want to. I just want him to love me.” A headache pulsed at the base of her neck. Her teeth threatened to shatter under the assault from her jaw. The memory blurred, and she realized he’d been right all along. She was afraid. Of the past. Of what’d occurred on that rooftop. Of her future with Payton—if there was one. Because how in the world would she ever be good enough for him? She’d been broken a long time ago.
A click registered from somewhere out of sight followed by the soft rustle of fabric. So out of place in the midst of her childhood bedroom and defeating panic.
“Mallory, go back to the rooftop for me,” Agent Dunn said. “Focus on the woman who drugged you.”
The memory shifted again.
When I’m done, there isn’t going to be enough money to bury any of you. Pain spread from her ribs. The past overwhelmed the present until she felt as though she were right there. Holding on for dear life, trying to scream for help but knowing no one would come. Tears streamed down her face, but her arms wouldn’t respond to her brain’s commands. “She’s going to push me over the edge. I don’t want to die.”
“Who, Mallory?” Agent Dunn asked. “Who is behind this?”
“She wants it all. I’m just in her way. I tried to tell her. She won’t listen. I got the firm, but he left everything else to my mother.” Her shoulder dipped off the edge of the retainer wall. Sobs wracked through her, inching her ever closer to death. Mallory tried to shake her head. Another kind of pain shot through her hands. These past couple of years have showed me who I really am, who my friends are, what I’m capable of.
The killer shoved her over.
A scream burned up her throat a split second before strong hands clamped around her arms. “It’s okay. I’ve got you, Doc. Come back to me. You’re safe. All right? You’re in the captain’s office. Just breathe.”
Jerked out of the past and back into the office, Mallory leaned into the warm support securing her in his arms. Payton. She uncurled her fingers from sticky palms. Tears soaked the shoulder of his jacket as he held her, and the strength she’d tried to hold onto failed. She clutched her hands into his clothes as tremors wracked through her. “It was so real.”
“I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere,” he said.
Something undefinable in her very being called for her trust him, to believe he’d never hurt her the way her father had, and right then she wanted nothing more than to do the same for him. To show him how important he was. She wanted to be everything he needed. Someone to talk to, someone to keep him company, someone who loved him despite the hole in his heart. “I remember everything. She’s going after my mother. She wants it all. The houses, the trust funds, the investments. She’s convinced herself she’s the one who’s earned it.”
“Shit. You’re bleeding.” Payton fisted her hair and released his hold on her. Settling back into a crouch in front of her, he reached out to uncurl her fingers from her palms. “How the hell would she think she’s earned the inheritance unless—”
“She’s my half-sister.” It made sense. Killing Roland then Virginia Green. Mallory flinched as he skimmed his thumb over the half-moon lines of blood in her hands. The pain in her palms. She’d dug her fingernails into her skin from the terror she’d blocked from her mind. “My father had an affair with Virginia Green that resulted in a baby. She’s not one of his mistresses. She’s his daughter.”
Agent Dunn and Agent Reese shared a look that said it all. It was a new lead. “That’s something we can work with.” The agents closed the door behind them, cocooning her and Payton together.
Mallory tugged him toward her, setting her forehead against his. She was safe. She was alive. Because of him. The past couldn’t hurt her, and now that’d she gotten a look at what she really had to lose, she was ready to move on. With Payton. “You’ve been there for me every step of the way, and I don’t know if what I’ve done is to pay you back for that.”
“You don’t owe me anything, Doc.” He smoothed his hands along her wrists. “That’s what partners are for, remember?”
“No, I mean I don’t know if this is enough.” She unpocketed the blank notebook from her jacket pocket and handed it off. “I hope you don’t mind I borrowed one of your spare notebooks from your house, but you smashed my phone to pieces downstairs. I didn’t have anything else to take notes on.”
Surprise lightened the concern in his expression, and excitement for him and the future exploded. This was it. This was what the last few days had been building toward. Her moving on from the past and him letting go of the one case he hadn’t been able to solve. He flipped to the first page and understanding hit. “You looked into my father’s disappearance.”
“Yeah.” She skimmed her finger over his father’s name printed on the first page. “I have a friend on the board of directors for the Seattle Clinic. He—”
Payton shoved to his feet and threw the notebook—and all her notes—into the trash beside the door. “We’re done here.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
His gut had tried to warn him from the beginning.
He couldn’t trust therapists after his father had disappeared.
Just as he couldn’t trust them now.
“What do you mean we’re done?” Mallory straightened. “You’ve spent years looking into your father’s disappearance. I thought this was what you wanted—”
“No, Mallory. It’s what you wanted.” The rage and frustration at not being able to find the bastard who’d left him and his mother clawed from the box at the back of his mind. It swarmed until a low ringing filled his ears and consumed everything in its path. “But that’s all that matters, right? What you want? You weren’t happy with the investigation into your father’s death, so you harassed me until I gave in to take another look. You needed a project to work on while we investigated this case, so you seduced me and pulled every last compelling secret you could out of me. To fix me. Well, guess what, Doc? I’m not something you can fix, and I’m sure as hell not interested in whatever you found on my father.”
Physical pain broke through the mask she fought to keep in place since he’d met her, the one that wouldn’t let him know how bad her ribs hurt or what was going on behind those far-too-intelligent eyes. One second. Two. She cleared her throat, but it failed to take the unevenness out of her voice. “Is that… Is that what you think of me? That I manipulated you into doing what I wanted, that I could be so callous, after everything we’ve been through these past few days?”
“I think you’re oblivious to the consequences of your actions, anyone else’s needs be damned. Your entire job is nothing but bullshit. You know that, right? You don’t know me. You don’t know what I want or what I’ve been through.” He motioned to her. “All you have is a glimpse of my life, and you expect me to spill my guts without giving anything in return because you’re paid to pretend you care. You’re a prostitute who uses her mind instead of her body, and I’m cutting you off.”