Page 9 of View from Above

“Yes, I can. I’m good at my job.” Mallory put the last remnants of her energy into threading her arms into her jacket. “You don’t trust psychologists. I get that, but I didn’t ask for you to share the details of your case, Detective. I was concerned about your obvious obsession with it. Yours and Dr. Moss’s. I’m not here to get to know you or learn your secrets. Whatever agenda you’ve imagined I have doesn’t exist.”

He shrugged those massive shoulders and intensified the tension in the tendons running down his neck. “So I’m supposed to believe you were just worried about me?”

Her heart squeezed in her chest, and her defenses ratcheted down a notch. “Is that so hard to imagine?”

“Kind of.” He cocked his head to one side. “According to my evaluations, I’m hard to get along with. I think the specific terms my captain used were ‘brooding,’ ‘intense,’ and something about interpersonal skills. Not a lot of detectives looking to partner with me at the moment.”

She tried not to smile, but as quickly as her hackles had raised in challenge, he’d settled her nerves with self-deprecating humor. In sessions, she tended to help her patients steer clear of talking down to themselves for the entertainment of others, particularly women, but Payton made it work for him. His tone suggested he believed his evaluation was bullshit. There was a confidence behind the quirk of his mouth that smothered her urge to correct his thinking, but she didn’t usually… respond like this. With the amount of information she soaked up throughout the day, she didn’t usually want to know more about a person she wasn’t being paid to listen to. Then again, he had tried to pay her. Mallory stared at her toes for a distraction. “You could always try bribing them with donuts. I hear cops are drawn to those like flies to a Venus fly trap.”

“Way to go for the jugular,” he said.

“I’m good at finding those trigger points you mentioned.” A wide flash of his smile took a chunk out of the pent-up anger that had driven her this far and transformed Payton’s expression into someone she didn’t recognize. In that moment, she got a full glimpse of the man he could be without the weight of his work constantly tearing holes in his happiness. But no matter how much she wished to bring that side of him to the surface—to help him—she’d recruited him to prove her father had been murdered.

Mallory rocked on one heel, back and forth, and cleared her throat to firmly plant her into the moment. She unlocked her phone and scrolled through her contacts. In less than a single breath, she’d forwarded the details to Payton’s phone. His cell pinged with an incoming message. “That’s me. I figured you’d need the contact information for the funeral director. I’m not exactly sure how this works, but I’ll let him know I give my permission to have my father’s body exhumed.”

The lightness she’d witnessed in his eyes dissipated as he reviewed her message, and Mallory felt the loss as though she’d taken a physical strike. “I’ll have Wells get in touch and make the arrangements. Until then, I need to talk to Virginia Green’s family, friends, coworkers—anyone who might’ve known what was going on in her life or could’ve been drugging her.”

Right. Because despite the crazed investigation that’d taken over her life the past few weeks, Payton had other responsibilities and promises to uphold. Not just to her. But there was a small part of her that didn’t want this push and pull between them to end. Not yet anyway. “Makes sense. Thanks for your help today. I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

Any details he uncovered in Virginia Green’s death would connect to her father’s. She was sure of it.

“Anytime.” He pulled his keys and swung them around his index finger. Half-turning toward the exit, he stopped. “It gets better, you know. The grief, but I’m sure you knew that being a therapist and all.”

Mallory tightened her arms around her midsection. It was her job to ask the questions, to guide her patients toward acceptance, understanding, and healing. Not the other way around, and she instantly rebelled against his sudden sharp probe. “What makes you think I’m grieving?”

“You might’ve hated your father for how he treated you, but there’s still a part in there that misses him,” he said. “At least, that’s how it was for me.”

Her reflexes automatically battled against the idea any part of her could miss the manipulative narcissist who’d tried running her life for her, but she knew better. It wasn’t the man she’d missed. It’d been the idea of him. Someone to protect her from making stupid choices, to be proud of her when she accomplished a major life milestone. Someone to love her unconditionally. She hadn’t gotten any of that. No. Instead, Roland Kotite had thrown her into the deep end and made her swim for herself. He’d withheld his approval to show how much power he had over her and her mother, and his love—if a man like him had been able to love at all—had always been unequivocally attached with strings. She hadn’t been born as his daughter. She’d been born a prisoner.

Mallory didn’t want to think about that right now. She focused on Payton’s invisible truce and latched on. “You lost your father?”

“That’s one way to put it.” He swung his keys around again, turning to face her fully. His expression contorted as though the slightest view into the man behind the hardened detective burned him from the inside. “My dad walked out of the house one night and never came back.”

The onslaught of his admission hit her hard and nearly stole her voice. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. She wasn’t supposed to want to know more about him. A partnership. A business arrangement. That was what she’d told herself when she sent those texts and left voicemails on his phone concerning her father’s case, but Mallory found herself needing more. From him. “I’m sorry to hear that. How old were you?”

“Six, at the time.” He scrubbed the side of his finger across his chin. “Every once in a while I search for his name in the database, but I haven’t gotten a hit so far. Not in thirty years.”

“Is that why you became a detective? To find him?” Every hero had an origin story, and in that moment, she needed to know his. She needed to know what drove him to entrench himself in the job, what kept him up at night, who was there when the nightmares got to be too much. The detective she’d recruited to prove Roland Kotite hadn’t committed suicide had lost his own father. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to align herself with someone in this world when she hadn’t really had anyone.

“Initially, yeah. I think I did, even if I wasn’t aware of it at the time,” he said. “Not really sure why. He left us for a reason without looking back. No phone calls on birthdays, no visitation requests. Just there one second and gone the next.” Payton slid his hands into his jacket pockets. “Guess we have that in common.”

“Yeah. Look at us. Just a couple of misfits.” She’d let the similarities end there. They didn’t have to get along or become friends to work together, and she wasn’t interested in getting involved with a detective who obviously made his work a priority over everything else in his life. She’d already gone down that road. Had the t-shirt, wouldn’t see the show again. Mallory hiked her thumb over her shoulder. “I need to tell my mom what’s going on so she’s not blindsided by the order for exhumation. You’ll let me know if you find anything that connects to my father after your interview with Virginia Green’s family?”

He motioned for her through his jacket pocket. “Actually, if you’re not in a rush, I could use your help.”

“With?” she asked.

“You seem to read people pretty well.” Payton dug his hands from his pockets, one hand automatically scrubbing down his face. “Hell, you got me to tell you about my childhood without even trying, which is a feat in and of itself. I’ve also been told I’m… intimidating in witness interviews. I imagine you have a softer touch.”

“You want me to use my magic therapist powers to get Virginia Green’s family to open up.” Her heart rate spiked. He was asking her for help. For a man determined to solve every homicide that came across his desk on his own, her instincts said this was a huge step in his life.

“Something like that.” A tint of pink spread around his collar.

“Most people, especially family members, want to find answers when it comes to the death of a loved one.” Mallory squeezed her hand around her phone. “What makes you think they won’t look past your broodiness to get them?”

His humorless laugh punctured through the awareness between them. “Because someone close to Virginia Green was drugging her, maybe even coerced or pushed her off that roof. According to decades of crime data, I’m looking for a female suspect, most likely a relative or close friend, and intelligent enough to make this morning’s fatality look like a suicide.”

Understanding hit. “And when you find this person, you’re hoping I’ll be the one to tell you whether or not they were connected to my father in any way rather than filing warrant requests.”

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