Page 2 of View from Above

“Thanks.” Payton stepped back enough to let the ME’s office do their job and studied the height from which the deceased would’ve fallen. He called over his shoulder. “Wells, where are we at with getting access to the roof?”

“The company who leases all ten floors isn’t cooperating. They’re not letting us inside until their lawyers give the go-ahead for an office-wide search since we can’t prove she jumped from one of their floors, but the building owner just handed over the keys. We have access to the roof from the stairwell on this side of the building.” Wells tossed them in his direction before closing the distance between them. “We’re good to go.”

Payton backtracked along the path determined by the forensic unit to get in and out of the scene and rounded the side of the Logan Building. Modern day skyscrapers were required to have a minimum of four exits for a building this size, depending on occupancy load. He tested a brass key in the first door he came across, Wells on his heels. The steel slid into the deadbolt easily and twisted without effort. He wrenched the door open. “Lucky guess.”

Ten flights of stairs. By the time they’d hit the roof, he was out of breath and out of patience. Sweat built beneath his collar despite the cool September temperature. “Let’s not do that again.” Swiping the back of his hand across his forehead, he took in the expansive view of Seattle as his heart threatened to beat straight out of his chest.

Wells leveraged both hands against her knees and dropped her head forward in his peripheral vision. “There’s my workout for the day.”

“Those lawyers better give the go-ahead fast. I’m not taking the stairs down.” Payton struggled to catch his breath, hands plastered to his hips in an effort to gain some semblance of control. “Let’s have forensics pull prints from the door. From this moment on, we treat this case as a homicide until Dr. Moss tells us otherwise. I want to know how the deceased got up here, who else could’ve been up here with her, and I want a list of every employee to compare prints.”

Wells straightened and reached for her phone. “You know I don’t actually work for you, don’t you?” She punched in the contact on her screen, raising the phone to her ear. “Just something to consider.”

Movement registered out of the corner of Payton’s eye.

His gaze automatically followed the intrusion. A black boot heel disappeared around the roof’s maintenance shed. Payton charged after the outline. Dusty white gravel threatened to skid out from under him and kicked back into the rooftop door. “Police! Stop!”

His heart rate thudded hard behind his ears as he rounded the shed and into full view of the woman running across the roof. Dark brown hair snapped and twisted behind her as she headed for the far ledge. She skidded to a hard stop, hands flung outward to catch herself from slamming into the barrier between her and certain death. Then hauled one leg onto the waist-high wall to climb over.

“Back away from the edge toward me and interlace your hands behind your head. Now!” Payton unholstered his weapon. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. The woman from the crowd, the one he hadn’t been able to forget these past few weeks.

Wells shuffled to a stop a few feet away, sidearm drawn.

“Got her?” Protocol demanded his backup was in place before he approached a suspect. Too many heroes had died trying to work on their own.

“I got her. She’s not going anywhere.” The State Patrol detective shifted her weight between both feet, finger centered over the trigger.

The woman near the ledge followed instructions. Defeat released the tension along her shoulders and down her back as she climbed down from the ledge. Long fingers interlaced behind her head as she abandoned her intention to jump to the next building over. Lean muscle flexed under well-fitted jeans. One step. Two. She retraced her steps without turning to face him. “It’s not what you think.”

Payton holstered his weapon and unpocketed his cuffs in the same move, closing in. He secured his grip around one wrist and twisted it down to her lower back then the other. Her smooth skin caught on calluses honed over years of hands-on police work as the cuffs ratcheted loud in his ears. “What is it I think, Mallory?”

“I didn’t hurt that woman,” she said. “I didn’t have anything to do with this.”

“You’re in the middle of a potential crime scene.” He tugged her into his chest and lowered his voice. “I have enough to arrest you for tampering with evidence and obstructing an investigation.”

“I tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t listen.” Her voice turned breathy as he spun her to face him. Long lashes grazed across exaggerated cheekbones and framed impossibly dark brown eyes. Almost to the point he couldn’t differentiate the color from her pupils, a hereditary gene he’d seen only once before. Mallory Kotite set her jaw as though ready for a fight. “My father didn’t jump from that roof last month, and I don’t think that woman down there did either. You’re making a mistake.”

He patted her jacket pockets, discovering her phone in one and a set of car keys in the other. He tossed the keys to Wells and turned the screen to capture Mallory’s face ID to check the logged messages. Do you believe me now? The recipient of her last message had been saved in her contacts. Detective Jackass. “Seems I’m not the only one.”

CHAPTER TWO

She wouldn’t rub the scratched skin around her wrists.

She wouldn’t show whoever was on the other side of that mirror how much the cuffs hurt.

Mallory Kotite pressed the balls of her feet into the industrial carpet smelling of sweat, body odor, and something surprisingly sweet. A sickening combination but nothing she hadn’t expected from Seattle PD’s finest. Finest. Yeah, right. Seattle PD’s laziest maybe. Most ignorant? Egotistical? She could come up with another thousand bull-headed descriptors in the time it took one of these detectives to see the truth behind her father’s death.

And now another life had been taken.

She forbid her expression to crack as she studied her own reflection in the one-way mirror. She hadn’t recognized the woman on the pavement this morning, but she couldn’t deny the similarities between Roland Kotite’s apparent suicide and the recent victim’s. Because that was what she was. A victim. Somebody had pushed her from that rooftop the same way they’d pushed her father.

Mallory just had to prove it.

And she would have if she hadn’t been caught on the roof a little over an hour ago.

The single entry point into the interview room swung open, and Detective Jackass himself stepped over the threshold.

Instant awareness tightened the muscles in her belly and shoved the air from her lungs. Every. Damn. Time. A strong jawline, mountainous shoulders, piercing blue eyes that seemed to see right through her. Detective Payton Nichols had been the lead on her father’s death investigation last month. He’d given his condolences. He’d thrown that lopsided smile her way. He’d made sarcastic jokes to make her laugh. She imagined the overall effect of his handsome appearance and sympathetic words were intentional. Meant to get her and other family members of violence like her to trust him. It should’ve worked, but the logical side of her brain had warned her his eagerness to help was nothing but smoke and mirrors. She’d been right. “Are the cuffs really necessary?”