Page 48 of View from Above

Payton sat a bit straighter in his seat as the Seattle Clinic came into view. Shoving the SUV into park, he stared through the rain-spattered windshield as the sun graced them with its shining face. He waved from behind the steering wheel as Crystal—one of the nurses who’d made this possible—greeted them from the front door. “What are we doing here?”

“I think you already know the answer to that, Detective.” Mallory brought his hand to her mouth and pressed a kiss at the thin skin along the back. “Do you want me to come inside with you?”

“How did you… I thought he’d already been transferred to another facility,” he said.

“I gave my friend a recommendation to hold off on the transfer until I could get the results of a paternity test.” Mallory studied his face, every line, every curve, every scar, and hair. He was so intensely beautiful, inside and out. Putting him and the man she believed to be his father in the same room together was the least she could do after what they’d been through. “John Doe has lived two lives. One before the mugging, and one after. Unfortunately for him, he can only remember one of them. That second life has been here, and for someone who’s suffered as much brain damage as he has, he doesn’t know anything else. He’s happy here. He knows his way around. He knows the people who come to visit, has favorite meals and board games he likes to play. Taking all that away would be like trying to get him to remember who he used to be. Cruel.”

“So he gets to stay.” Payton watched as the nurse ushered an older man through the front doors. John Doe stared up into the sprinkling sky and, even from this distance, Mallory noted he’d closed his eyes as if memorizing every strike of water, every change in temperature, across his face. Payton scrubbed a hand down his face. “What do you mean results of a paternity test? I never submitted one.”

“I did,” she said. “From what you told me about your father and what I was able to find on my own going through the investigation, I played a hunch.”

“You?” Skepticism lightened the curve at the corners of his mouth. “The woman who won’t watch a new show I recommended because you’re not sure how the first season will end?”

“Yes, me.” Mallory shoved his shoulder, careful not to aggravate his still-healing wound. “How is it that a detective of the Seattle PD and now full-time investigator on the FBI’s Violent Crimes task force didn’t notice I swabbed your mouth while you were sleeping?”

“Was it before or after we picked up those boxes of donuts?” he asked.

“After.” Her laugh testified to the enjoyment of their private adventures.

“Well, there’s your answer. I was in a sugar and sex coma. Who can blame me?” He directed his attention back out through the windshield. The playfulness drained from his expression. “I take it we’re here because you got the results.”

“Yeah. I got the results.” She slipped her hand across his thigh, grounding herself as much as she wanted to impact his nerves. “It’s him, Payton. He didn’t walk out on you and your mom. The detectives who investigated reported he’d come out of a convenience store near this neighborhood with two candy bars and a strawberry-kiwi soda. By the time police had gotten to the scene, the men who’d jumped him had already taken off. The police couldn’t ever officially identify him because of the damage done during the mugging—”

“But DNA doesn’t lie.” His shoulders rose on a strong inhale, but it was the tears in his eyes that broke her heart. “I searched every police report I could get my hands on around that time. I scoured the whole damn city for incidents that could explain why he hadn’t come back. There weren’t any reports of a mugging around our house.”

“Not that you could find.” She reached into her bag she’d left on the floor of the SUV during the service and tugged a manilla file folder free. The water stains and bends in the cardstock evidenced the age of the worn paperwork inside. “Digital records didn’t exist in the 80s. This was found behind one of the precinct’s file cabinets when Seattle PD had to do renovations due to a burst water pipe a couple years ago. You’d already given up hope by then.”

He took the file with a tremor running through his hand and flipped it open. The breath he’d been holding fanned the pages. “It was there this whole time, and nobody knew. How did you know to look?”

“I’ve been visiting with the patients here at the clinic since I came back to Seattle. Originally because I thought it would earn me brownie points in my new career, at least get me more experience.” The mood failed to lighten with her sarcasm this time, but not out of anger. Out of something much more devastating: loss. “But there was always something about John Doe that kept me coming back. He’s sweet, and funny, and I walk away with a brighter outlook on life, even on my worst days. He doesn’t say much, especially when he’s trying to get away with cheating at Scrabble, but there was something he said a few months ago that’s stuck with me. He said, ‘I need to go home.’”

“You started looking into his case, the same way you started looking into your father’s.” A softness chased back the wear and the years of not being able to find his own answers.

“I obviously have a penchant for sticking my nose where it doesn’t belong. I had no way to identify him or prove who he was—to give him his life back—but I found the original case file of the mugging. After that, it was as simple as putting two-and-two together, and stealing some of your DNA.” She squeezed his thigh as the seconds ticked by into minutes, and her heart shuddered in her chest. “Are you still disappointed you weren’t the one to find him?”

“No.” He shook his head, pulling her in for a blistering kiss she’d remember as long as she lived. “I just didn’t think it was possible to love you any more than I already did.”

“Then are you ready to do this?” she asked.

Payton shaded his eyes from a burst of sunlight chasing back the clouds, his smile brighter than ever before. “As long as you’re there with me, I’m ready for anything, Doc.”

EPILOGUE

Snow-capped peaks angled across the windshield. The cold had already set in, and Trooper Rowan Wells turned up the heat in her cruiser. Didn’t help. Because no matter how many times she’d told herself otherwise, it wasn’t the weather freezing her from the inside.

Four killers. Four unique MOs. One goal.

And too many missing pieces.

Her GPS signaled for her to continue along the forest-lined one-way road. From what Payton had told her, she’d expected open farmland. This… This was a lot more dangerous. Thick woods, cold nights, not a tourist or home within miles. The perfect place to recruit, train, and brainwash ordinary women into doing extraordinarily violent crimes. To stay off the grid. “What the hell did you get me into, Nichols?”

Rowan maneuvered the hood of the car up a long dirt drive slowly being overtaken by brush and foliage. Her shocks protested the harder she pushed the vehicle up the slope. Temperatures had dropped below freezing up here, but she couldn’t help but feel the weight of being watched. Knuckles tight on the steering wheel, she flipped on the cruiser’s headlights as the sun surrendered to the horizon. She craned her head to get a better look at the clearing up ahead, and a massive farmhouse came into view. “This isn’t creepy at all.”

Tan vertical siding, aluminum roof, dark wood, and more windows than any house she’d ever seen greeted her as the terrain evened out. She pulled in front what she imagined to be the front of the house facing Samish Bay. The water glistened welcomingly, a siren song in the dead of fall in Washington state, and Rowan tucked her chin deeper into her jacket.

Two separate structures, each adorned with identical chimneys, were attached in the middle by what looked like the front entry way. Shouldering out of the vehicle, she unbuttoned the top of her holster. The farmhouse had seen better days, almost looking abandoned, but she wasn’t willing to take any chances. Not out here by herself. Wind rustled through the overgrowth of wildflowers and dying grass, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

Her boots reverberated along the old wood porch wrapping the home. No movement through the windows. Nothing to suggest anyone had lived here for quite a while, but the number FBI Agents January Reese and Director Lawson Mitchell had traced from one of the killer’s phones said this was the location where the call had originated. She approached the front door, flashlight in hand as purples, blues, and waning oranges darkened across the sky. And knocked. “State Patrol. Is anyone here?”

---