Page 30 of View from Above

“Sounds like he wanted to make sure you and your mother were taken care of if anything happened to him,” she said. “I mean, look at the life you’ve built here. You have an innovative career, a beautiful home anyone who watches HGTV would be jealous of, at least one friend with benefits.”

Her attempt at sarcasm shattered the tension along his spine, and Payton slid back into bed beside her. His fingers traced one of the cuts along her arm, the need to touch her—to be connected to her—stronger than he wanted to admit. “I didn’t do any of this for him. It wasn’t some inner need to do something good with that money or to give him permission to walk back into our lives. I used that money to set my mom up for the rest of her life and to show that we’d moved on. Without him.”

“Have you though?” she asked. “Moved on? If you got a lead on your father’s case tomorrow, would you follow it?”

He’d spent his entire adult life digging up everything he could on the man he’d looked up to. Financial statements, phone records, parking tickets. They’d all been dead ends. It was as though his old man had walked out that door and turned into a ghost. Hadn’t stopped Payton from following the bastard to the ends of the earth though, but the resulting emptiness had only grown.

How many times was he going to lose himself to the same mystery and expect a different result? How many times would he let himself obsess to the point of losing his mind? There had to be an end. Maybe not the one he’d wanted. But between repeating the same actions over and over with no resolution or proving he’d really moved on as he’d claimed, it was time to make a choice. Relive the past or look toward the future. He raised his gaze to Mallory’s. The future was looking pretty damn good, at the moment. “There are no leads. So why waste what I have left of this life searching for someone who chose to leave me and his wife behind?”

“That’s very mature of you.” Mallory speared her fingers through his hair and directed his head against her chest.

The deep resonating sound of her inhales and exhales soothed raw nerves along his spine, and he closed his eyes. He wasn’t sure how long they laid there, her hands on him, his head on her. He didn’t care. The entire world could’ve been burning outside the four walls of this house, and he wouldn’t have known.

His phone chirped with an incoming message.

But reality wouldn’t wait for them to recover.

A killer had escaped Mallory’s office, and they had a responsibility to stop her from striking again. Payton collected his phone from the nightstand and swiped his thumb up the screen. “It’s Dr. Moss.”

“Has there been another death?” She angled down to get a view of the message herself.

Payton sat up, losing the small amount of peace they’d created the past few hours. He read through the message twice. “In a way. The judge came through with the exhumation order for your father’s remains. They were able to carry out the order this morning with the funeral director and Trooper Wells. Dr. Moss went back through her notes and examined the body on site.”

“And?” Expectation in her voice pooled dread in his gut.

“And you were right. There were several puncture marks beneath his hairline.” He turned the phone to face her. “Your father was murdered.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Murdered.

They had confirmation now. Proof.

The past few months slipped in a blur through her mind as she recalled every interaction she’d had with Roland Kotite, her mother, Kotite Litigation—all of it. Had the signs been there? Had she been so focused on what she’d needed that she’d missed the fact her father had been hunted for weeks leading up to his death?

Mallory’s boots squeaked on the highly polished floor as she crossed into the lobby of her inheritance. The sixteen-story skyscraper had played an important role in her life. From office visits as a child, to internships as a teen, and finally to a crime scene as an adult. It was meant to motivate her to outdo the competition, give her a taste of greatness, and steer her in the right direction. Only now she saw the place for what it really was: a museum built to bolster Roland Kotite’s ego. She scanned her keycard at the security desk, Payton following mere steps behind her.

“Ms. Kotite, didn’t realize you’d be coming in today.” The security guard studied the myriad of bruises and cuts along her neck and across her face. His gaze shifted to Payton behind her, and the easiness she’d come to rely on from him vanished. “Everything okay?”

“Of course. Payroll waits for no one, Cecil. You know that.” She ignored his pointed inquiry to her physical state. Despite the twenty-four hours since her discharge from the hospital, she still couldn’t turn her upper body more than an inch in either direction. She struggled to catch her limited breath from crossing the lobby. “This is Payton Nichols. I’ll be escorting him upstairs to go through some of my father’s things today.”

“Not a problem. Just need you to sign in, sir.” Cecil handed off a clipboard and a visitor badge with a wide smile and a nod that’d always raised her spirits on those obligatory visits as a kid. Although, he usually followed it up with a sucker to make the trip sweeter. “Have a great day, Ms. Kotite. Glad to see you.”

“Thanks. I’ll be looking for that sucker on the way out.” She passed through security and headed for the elevators on the other side once Payton caught up. “My father’s office is in the penthouse. I’ve let his assistant know I’m here to clean it out and to have security records, surveillance footage, and my father’s recent deals available.”

Kiera Wood had been a former client and lover of her father’s. There was a chance whoever’d killed him and started cleaning up his messes had been as well. She hit the call button and counted down the numbers on the LED pad, just as she’d done that night in the precinct. When things had been so much simpler between them. A dry spot lodged in her throat as she tried to keep her smile to herself. “This morning was fun.”

“Is that what we’re calling it? I’m pretty sure you almost gave me a heart attack.” They stepped onto the elevator together, side by side. Payton punched the button for the top floor, and the doors closed. “I’m not even sure if I was conscious for some of it.”

“When we were in the kitchen? Yeah. I remember that part.” A small thrill chased through her at the idea of getting under this hardened detective’s skin. All that intensity, all that isolation and defensiveness—she’d been the one to break through. Her inner thighs prickled with the memory of his beard brushing against her oversensitive skin. Heat charged into her low belly. “Maybe we could try it again. You know, after we haven’t been nearly beaten to death and thrown off buildings or gone through walls of glass to save our partners.”

His smile triggered another round of delicious fantasy. “I’d like that.”

The elevator announced their arrival, and they stepped off into the open penthouse created from marble, glass, and steel, and the lightness she’d enjoyed vanished. Plush gray carpet brought out the veins of marble along the floor and commanded attention and power from anyone who stepped off the elevator. Seascapes lined perfectly along one wall and reminded her of similar paintings her father had hung at home. Black seats and coffee tables peppered the long walk to the front desk but sat empty now. “Welcome to my inheritance.”

“This is all yours?” His low whistle punctured through the easiness she’d felt all morning. They weren’t safeguarded from the world in his beautiful house anymore. They were back in the real world—with a killer—and they couldn’t pretend the world had stopped turning for them.

“He left it to me. Whether that makes it mine is a different story.” She moved past the front desk and curved along the wide corridors branching off to associate and contract lawyer offices, a gym, a full bar, and a mountain of paralegals and support staff cubicles. “This way.”

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