Page 40 of View from Above

Payton pocketed his phone, out of breath despite not having moved more than a few inches over the past five minutes. The killer had left Lucille behind in favor of a more dangerous threat to her goal. Mallory was out there. Alone, possibly hurt, and he had no idea where.

“Are you ready, Detective?” Crystal asked.

He faced the nurse. “I’m sorry. I need to leave. Maybe we can do this another time.”

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible.” Sadness etched into Crystal’s plump features. “Dr. Kotite got special permission from the hospital’s board of directors for you to visit John on his last day here. He’s being moved to a more secure facility tomorrow to better meet his needs.”

“After thirty years? Where?” The two halves of his life collided into a single moment. The father who’d abandoned him and his mom in the past and the woman who held his future.

“I’m sorry. I can’t give you those details unless you’re his family, and seeing as how his real identity is still in question, it’d take weeks to get the results of any kind of DNA test,” she said. “It’s now or never, honey.”

He’d already made his decision. Payton tugged his wallet from his back pocket.

“I don’t take bribes, Detective. No matter how cute you are.” Crystal set her palm against the corner of the leather and shook her head. “Either you’re going in that room to meet John or not.”

“Believe me. I learned my lesson the first time.” He slipped his card reserved for witnesses and grieving family from the folds. “Just call me before they move him. Okay? Any time. Day or night. Please.”

Crystal took the card. “All right, but you won’t have much time.”

“Thank you.” Payton bolted down the hallway and through both sets of steel and glass doors out the building. Hiking himself behind the wheel of his SUV, he fishtailed out of the parking lot and headed north toward the Kotite family home. Wells was an experienced investigator with a good head on her shoulders, but she wasn’t him. He didn’t know Mallory like he did. He needed to see that scene. He ordered his phone to dial the state trooper, and the line connected. “Any updates?”

“Looks like the killer may have pushed Mallory out the second-story window from the master bedroom. Would explain the blood we found. Mallory most likely found her mother passed out on the floor, and the killer ambushed her. The window would’ve been the only escape route to avoid running into me downstairs.” Static reached through the phone as Wells covered her microphone to talk to someone else at the scene. “Payton, CSU recovered a long brown hair that doesn’t match Lucille or Mallory Kotite.”

A vision of the killer across surveillance told him it belonged to the killer. “Whoever was there obviously knew the house. She knew where to hide, when to strike. She’s been there before, but it’ll take weeks for the lab to pull DNA. We don’t have that kind of…” Images of a dark-haired woman dressed in a bright blue blazer played across his mind then superimposed over a similar woman walking the halls of Kotite Litigation. Payton twisted the wheel to flip around and head downtown. “Son of a bitch. The assistant.”

“Joy Leonard?” Wells asked. “What makes you think—”

“She knew Roland Kotite’s routine. She had access to his entire life. Bank accounts, his house, calendar, even his family. She had everything she needed to pull it off.” He hit the steering wheel to contain the frustration rushing to the surface. “She’s the result of Roland’s and Virginia Green’s affair. Damn it, she was right there in front of us, and I didn’t see it.”

“You said she’d set up a shrine in his office, that she was grieving his loss with tears and everything.” Clarity solidified between them. “She played you. Made you think she was one of his mistresses instead of his daughter. Wow. There’s a Freudian theory in there somewhere.”

Payton pressed his foot into the accelerator. “And I know exactly where she’s going.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

A glimmer of candlelight spread in her vision.

Then another.

An outline waved the end of a smoking match as Mallory pulled her head off the rough floor. Joy? Pain ricocheted to the back of her skull in repeating waves. She’d gone out the window of her parents’ bedroom. She’d landed in the bushes and hit the ground, but after that…

Mallory reached for the back of her neck. She hadn’t been sedated. At least, not that she could tell, but the room wouldn’t stop spinning. Had she hit her head? Dim light flickered over an all-too-familiar canvas angled above her, and the cold dark eyes of her father stared down. The painting. The one Joy had made part of the shrine dedicated to the tyrant who’d disowned her like all the other women in his life.

Other elements came slowly into focus as her fight-or-flight instinct instantly warned her to run. Walls of shelving, the hundreds of eyes staring down at her from a doll collection she’d once held precious.

She’d been brought back to her father’s office.

“You know, I had a collection like this once.” Joy circled in front of her. Her heels caught on the patterned rug Mallory had memorized dozens of times as she’d been forced to stand in front of this very desk day after day, week after week, to answer for her faults. “Not quite as extravagant, but, come to find out, very valuable. Funny how sisters, even separated, tend to gravitate toward the same interests, isn’t it?”

“You’re not my sister.” Mallory moved to press herself off the floor, but her already sore ribs stole the air from her lungs. Any healing she’d managed to get in the past two days had been undone by her fall from the balcony, and she collapsed back onto the floor. “You’re a killer, and not a very creative one at that.”

“Come on. Now you’re just being mean.” Joy’s pouty face transformed her from a psychotic murderess into a five-year-old brat trying to manipulate the people around her to get her way. Roland Kotite’s daughter, indeed. The gun she’d utilized hung at Joy’s side, almost blending in against with her slacks in the poorly lit room. “You have to admit we have more in common than I expected. We both share a father who wanted nothing more than to punish us for existing. We leap before thinking through consequences to make our own mark on the world separate from the legacy we were cursed to bear.”

“You turned into a psychopath while I dedicated my life to helping people. Yeah, yeah.” Mallory managed to upright herself with more effort than she wanted to admit and collapsed back against her father’s desk. But not without paying the price of pain. With her sister’s back to her, she could run for the door. She could hide in one of the offices and call for help, but the damage to her ribcage would slow her down. “I get it.”

Joy turned to face her, a playful smile spreading across beautifully full lips. “You might find this hard to believe, but I liked you. You’ve always had this confidence I admired. The way you stood up to him about leaving Stanford and cut him out of your life. And after you told Roland to go screw himself when he informed you of his intentions to leave you the firm, I actually felt closer to you.” She crouched in front of Mallory, grazing the barrel of the gun along her jaw as Payton had grazed his fingers. Like a lover. “This way is definitely more fun.”

“So what now, Joy?” Mallory shifted her hips to get more comfortable against the massive oak desk. “Are you going to haul me up to the roof again, stage my murder to look like a suicide? You and I both know Detective Nichols won’t buy it. He’ll figure out it was you, and he won’t stop until you’re behind bars or in the ground.”

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