Page 44 of View from Above

Slamming into the retainer wall, she thrust both hands out as fast as possible and caught hold of one ankle. The momentum jerked her feet off the ground, but she wouldn’t lose him. She couldn’t. “Payton!”

The bullet wound in her shoulder screamed in protest as she tried to get a better grip on his leg, but she wasn’t strong enough. The ligaments in her arm threatened to tear with every attempt. Her jaw ached against the pressure of her back teeth and the pain exploding through her ribcage. Mallory pressed her knees into the side of the retainer wall, but it didn’t do any good to gain her some leverage. “Payton, wake up! Please. I can’t hold you by myself.”

An all-too-familiar laugh permeated her overactive senses from behind and stripped her defenses down to nothing. “Well, isn’t this a pickle?” Joy climbed to her feet, swaying, over Mallory’s shoulder. A series of coughs gave away her sister’s struggle to stay upright. “What are you going to do now, Mallory? With that wound, he’ll bleed out before you can get him back over the wall. Even then, as long as you’re desperate to save him, you’re only putting yourself at risk.”

“The police are downstairs.” Sweat and blood loosened her grip on his pant leg, and she lost another few centimeters. “You won’t get away with this.”

Joy’s uneven footsteps barely registered over the heavy ringing in Mallory’s ears. “I already have.”

Payton’s ankle was slowly slipping through her fingers. Blood pulsed from her shoulder wound. She’d lost too much strength in her arm, and the pain… It was more than she could bear. Inky webs crawled across her vision. She wasn’t going to pass out. She wasn’t going to let him go. Because she loved him, too. So much she’d let herself become the one person she hated to protect him. She’d lost herself to the violence and in the moment she’d fought Joy, nothing and no one else but he had mattered.

“But maybe you’re right. Maybe our time together has finally come to an end. Shame about the bullet wound though. I won’t be able to pass your death off as a suicide this time. Still, I hope you enjoy the view from above.” The killer braced Mallory’s legs against both of her sides and hauled her hips over the retainer wall.

“Payton!” Mallory tried to kick her way out of the hold, but it was no use. With his weight pulling her from one end and Joy pushing from the other, she was out of time and out of options. She had to let go or risk going over the edge herself. Panic infused the muscles down her back as they both dipped a few more inches down the side of the building. Payton’s arms and free leg dangled outward from his body, limp. She was losing her grip on his ankle. In a few seconds, neither of them would see the end of this investigation or what came afterward. She reached for his other leg as seconds distorted into minutes and what felt like hours.

A hard length of steel bit into her hand as she held him tight. Mallory pressed her fingers over his jeans, memorizing the shape. Wedging his free leg under her arm, she unholstered Payton’s backup weapon. One shot. That was all she had to save them both, but it was impossible to get the angle right. Not without letting him go.

“Payton.” His name slipped from her mouth as nothing more than a whisper carried on a burst of breeze. This was it. This was how they were going to die.

Tension flexed beneath her hands as Payton came to. He brought his chin to his bloodied chest, looking up at her, and the resentment, the wounds, the betrayals—it all fell away. In that moment, they were just two people trying to survive their pasts. And she loved him for it. More than ever.

Time caught up.

Payton hauled his upper body higher, wrapped his grip around the gun in her hand, and took aim. The bullet ripped past her ear, and the pressure on her legs vanished. Her ear rang. His burst of strength visibly cost him, and he jerked back down, slipping further out of her hands. The gun rocketed down the length of the building. “Oh, shit!”

“Give me your hand!” She wedged his ankle against her chest and injured shoulder. Her knees met the retainer wall on the other side without Joy’s assistance, and she reached down the length of his body.

“It’s too high. The bullet… I’m not going to make it.” His shallow breaths puffed through his chest in short bursts. The blood had spread, covering his shirt. The faster his heart pumped, the faster he’d bleed out. “Mallory, you’re going to fall with me if you don’t let go.”

“Don’t you dare. Don’t you dare give up.” Tears blurred her vision and distorted the pattern of blood and cuts along the backs of her knuckles. Mallory engaged every muscle in her core to counter gravity, but it wasn’t enough. “We didn’t come this far for it to end like this. She doesn’t get to win, and you’re not getting off that easy. Now give me your damn hand.”

Payton braced against the pain surely tearing through his chest and hauled his upper body higher a second time. His fingers shook as he reached for her. Brushing against hers, he groaned in increasing volume until his hand fit into hers.

She locked on as tight as she could and forced her legs to dig into the retainer wall. Her skin heated as exertion and pain blistered beyond her body’s capabilities to manage. She’d lost too much blood. His hand was slipping. She was going to lose him all over again, and Mallory wasn’t sure she could survive a second time. Her upper body screamed for relief. “I can’t hold on.”

“Yes, you can. You can do this.” Payton latched his free hand around her wrist. The lines across his forehead shimmered with an equal layer of sweat and blood, but it was the confidence in his expression that burned through her. “I trust you.”

Mallory wrang every last ounce of adrenaline and energy from her body that she could manage and put it into getting him back over the ledge. With a final pull that threatened to snap her in half, they fell back into a heap of limbs and exhales. Sunlight pierced through the clouded haze closing in from the edges of her vision. A continuous line of warmth where his body pressed against hers chased back the fear and panic that’d held her hostage since Joy Leonard had ambushed her at gun point. She turned into him, setting her temple along his shoulder. Her half-sister lay sprawled across the cement, all that billowing dark hair framing her head. Her signature blue blazer was quickly turning brown from the wound in her stomach. “You came for me.”

“Of course, I did. You’re my… partner.” Payton’s words barely made it past his mouth, and she looked up in time to see him surrender to unconsciousness. The bullet wound.

No. No, no, no, no.

“Payton, stay with me.” Frantic to plug the hole in his chest, Mallory straddled his hips and pressed both palms over the epicenter of blood. Warm liquid slipped through her fingers. Nausea charged up her throat as her own pain caught up to her. His heartbeat dwindled against her hands. No. They’d won. They were supposed to walk away. They were supposed to make breakfasts together, order an unhealthy amount of sushi whenever they had the inclination, and make love until neither of them could remember their own names. They were supposed to be together. “Help!”

The rooftop door slammed back against the wall as Trooper Rowan Wells charged out of the stairwell. Her short hair escaped the tie at the base of her neck as she raced across the rooftop. Kicking Joy Leonard’s revolver out of reach, Wells holstered her own weapon and withdrew her radio. “Officer down. I repeat, officer down. Caucasian male, thirty-six years old, Kotite Litigation’s rooftop. Looks like a single gunshot wound to the chest.” Wells’s gaze dropped to Mallory’s shoulder then cut to the killer. “It’s Detective Nichols. I need a bus and techs on site now!” The state trooper wrapped a hand around Mallory’s arm, nearly digging her unpolished fingernails into skin. “Mallory, look at me. You’re wounded and bleeding. You need to let me take over for him.”

She shook her head, triggering agony in her chest. “There’s so much blood. If I move, he might not make it.”

“I’m going to take care of him. I promise.” Wells’s electric blue eyes locked with hers. “Your hands are shaking, and you’ve lost a lot of blood already. You’re going to go into shock any minute. The EMTs are on their way. They’re going to take care of both of you, but for now, I need you to sit against that wall and let me try to help him.”

Wells’s words made sense in the moment, but Mallory couldn’t force her body to obey. With the trooper’s help, she collapsed against the very retainer wall he’d gone over as the state trooper took control of the scene.

More officers and emergency personnel flooded the rooftop. A bright flashlight seared across her eyes as an unfamiliar face came into focus. A set of EMTs hauled Payton onto a stretcher, Wells at his side. Before she had a chance to make sense of what was happening, he was gone. “Save him. Please.”

“We’re going to do whatever it takes, Ms. Kotite. For both of you,” the EMT in front of her said.

The world tipped on its axis, and exhaustion took hold. Her head hit something softer than cement, and she realized she’d been loaded on her own stretcher. The sky stretched above her—poignantly blue and peaceful despite the violence circling close. The click of another stretcher and the flash of dark hair penetrated through the soft hiss of an oxygen mask as EMTs rolled her back into the building. Joy.

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