View from Above (Hunting Grounds Book 4) Read online

  Copyright © 2022 by Natascha Jaffa

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  For my husband: I researched how to get away with murder.

  VIEW FROM ABOVE

  A trauma therapist escaping her father’s legacy.

  A homicide detective who can’t prove murder.

  A case that can heal their old wounds or send them over the edge.

  When an innocent woman plunges to her death, Mallory Kotite is convinced there’s a connection to her father’s supposed suicide. Desperate to be free of the family legal empire—and the suffering at the hands of a self-made tyrant—she convinces the investigating detective to take a second look. Only to find her life and her heart in danger.

  Detective Payton Nichols can’t hold onto a partner. He’s good at understanding evidence. People are a different puzzle altogether. But faced with a mistake on his last case, Payton must rely on Mallory’s insights into her father’s life. He’s not a project for the assertive therapist to fix, but as desire ramps up between them and a killer targets Mallory, he finds himself exposed to a past better left forgotten.

  With a serial killer closing in, Mallory and Payton don’t have much choice. Learn to trust one another or get their own view from above.

  CONTENTS

  View From Above

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Epilogue

  Study in Color - Sneak Peek

  About the Author

  Also by Nichole Severn

  CHAPTER ONE

  Pride came before the fall.

  Detective Payton Nichols shoved out of his vehicle parked across from the scene. Damn it. The media had already gotten hold of the story. Cameras, flashes, and phones were already getting a head start on documenting the morning.

  Two jumpers in two months.

  Civilians pushed the perimeter to get a closer look as he wedged between jacket-padded bodies and made his way forward. The ten-story wall of concrete and glass on the other side of the tape demanded attention. The Logan Building wouldn’t ever make Architectural Digest in design, but it had made a name for itself through the world’s largest coffee brand that’d taken over the building five years ago. Patrol car lights reflected off the lobby windows spanning the main level from one corner of the building to the other. He could’ve sworn a hint of dark roast permeated the air.

  Hell. He’d just gotten off an all-night dive into one of his past cases when he’d gotten the call. If the place hadn’t become a crime scene thirty minutes ago, he really could’ve gone for a to-go cup of the strongest brew they had in stock.

  Trooper Rowan Wells nodded at him through the chaos. In all her five-five lean glory, she lifted the tape for him to pass. “Detective Nichols, glad you could make it. Dr. Moss is already on the scene.”

  “Thanks, Wells.” Payton ducked beneath the bright yellow tape and scribbled his name across the sign-in sheet keeping track of every patrol officer, tech, photographer, and detective that crossed the sacred line. Handing back the clipboard and pen to the uniform off to his right, he scanned the length of cement on either side of the body. “I wasn’t aware State Patrol had an interest in jumpers. I take it you’re first on the scene?”

  “Inside it, if you can believe it.” Wells’ angelic cheek bones, pert mouth, and wide blue eyes that pinched at the corners countered the status quo when it came to what a detective looked and acted like, but working for the Washington State Patrol the past year had stripped the brightness that’d once been there. Beneath the makeup, wrinkle-free blazer, and calm exterior, was one of the most relentless and extreme investigators he’d worked with. His former partner pointed over her shoulder with the end of her pen. “This is my favorite coffee stop before I head into the office.”

  “Anyone touch or move the body?” Any investigation—homicide or otherwise—depended on the acts of the first officer at the scene. Some patrol officers, inexperienced mostly, felt a need to do something, particularly in the presence of family or friends of the victim. In one case, an officer had been compelled to search the deceased for an ID to obtain any and all information for his desk officer when he’d called in his report. That one disturbance had cost the crime scene unit valuable time and evidence in the end.

  “Nope.” Wells shook her head. “No one but your ME.”

  “Good. Tell me what we’ve got.” Payton studied the faces in the crowd.

  One stood out among the others, and instant recognition hiked his pulse higher.

  But he didn’t have time for distractions right now.

  “Incident occurred about twenty-five minutes ago. I heard a scream, and I booked it outside. There she was.” Wells kept her attention solely on him, as though afraid to catch another glimpse of the body, but Payton understood all too well cases like this would stick around. No matter how much you tried to bury them, anyone who worked with the dead had a list of top three cases that would haunt them for the rest of their lives. “The deceased is female. Caucasian. No wedding band on her hand, possibly single. Mid-fifties, give or take a few years. Witnesses reported nothing unusual before the incident. It appears she jumped.” Wells squinted as early-morning sun filtered through the street and bounced off the dark windows surrounding them at every angle. “We’re still trying to get access to the building, but my guess is you’ll want to take a look at the roof. There aren’t any signs she was pushed through one of these windows from out here. They’re all still intact as far as I’ve been able to tell.”

  “Thanks, Wells. Until I can get access to the building, I need photos and contact information of the crowd in case we have questions later.” He clapped her on the arm in dismissal and headed for the body.

  “I’m not your rookie anymore,” Wells said from over his shoulder.

  She’d get the job done. He had no doubts.

  The medical examiner crouched near the length of sterile sheet she’d most likely taken from the ambulance and draped across the remains. Using her smart pen to make quick notes on her tablet, the pathologist raised dark eyes to Payton then brought her focus back to the body. Long brown hair had been tied at the base of Dr. Vanessa Moss’s neck, emphasizing delicate features, but there was a translucent tint to her skin that hadn’t been there the last time they’d worked a case together. A case that’d almost ended her life. The ME’s shoulder-to-ankle protective bodysuit swished as she straightened to her full height. “Detective Nichols, I haven’t made a ruling as to whether she was killed or committed suicide.”

 
“I was in the area.” Payton nodded a greeting then crouched to lift a corner of the white sheet for a better understanding of what they were dealing with. Gasps, whispered murmurs, and questions buzzed faster and louder than a beehive from the onlookers, and he settled the sheet back into place. Cruel breaks in the deceased’s skull ripped through facial features, twisting them into impossible angles. Blood smeared across pale flesh and destroyed the makeup the woman had carefully applied mere hours ago. As the blood settled into the dependent capillaries of the back half of the body, a waxy and translucent shade tinted her skin. Her pupils had dilated with her cornea slightly milky. Checking his watch, he noted the ambient temperature and pulled his notebook from his jacket pocket.

  An incoming message block filled the small screen.

  Do you believe me now?

  The contact wasn’t stored in his phone, but it’d crossed his devices too many times over the past few weeks for him to forget. Awareness burned along his neck and brought his gaze back to the crowd. Only this time, the face he’d recognized wasn’t there. Payton shifted his weight between his feet to anchor him back into the moment, focusing on the medical examiner. “Got anything for me?”

  “Pretty straightforward.” Dr. Moss handed over her iPad filled with digital handwritten notes as Payton straightened. “No ID or suicide note on the body, but with most cases like this we find them in the deceased’s home, car, or workplace. As soon as I have an ID, I can get you her background information and pull medical records.” An exaggerated exhale testified to the weight lingering around the medical examiner’s eyes. “No signs of external blunt force trauma or lacerations that suggest strangulation. No bruising around her wrists or ankles. For now, I’m leaning toward suicide, but I won’t have a complete report until I get her on the slab.”

  Payton reviewed the pathologist’s notes then took another look under the sheet. Wavy red-brown hair fanned out around an aged but once beautiful face. Bright red lipstick offset the draining color from the deceased’s skin, matching the manicure on long, broken fingernails. No chips other than the three nails he noted had been torn. From her fall or before? The woman’s head angled wrong, revealing the label at the back of her lace bra. High-end. Maybe even special occasion lingerie. Replacing the sheet, he glanced up at Dr. Moss with a soft point toward the body. “She did her makeup, got a manicure, and dressed up.”

  “You’re wondering why go through all the effort if she’s just going to kill herself.” The pathologist accepted her tablet back and made another series of quick scribbled notes.

  “Most women don’t drop that kind of money on lingerie for themselves, and they certainly don’t wear it out of the bedroom. At least not in my experience.” His instincts pulled a different theory from the depths.

  “What experience is that, Detective?” A frail smile hollowed Dr. Moss’s cheekbones but added a bit of life to her expression. The woman was beautiful in her own right. Down to earth, intelligent, distant. That kind of detachment was a skill honed over years in her field, but the effect tended to ward off a lot of people, including him. Everyone except the FBI agent who’d been assigned to the medical examiner’s protective detail and had died in the line of duty a few months ago.

  He’d reviewed the case details, memorized the events that’d led up to the agent’s death. There hadn’t been anything Dr. Moss could’ve done to save him, but that loss had certainly left its mark. “Unless she was trying to impress you, I’m thinking she was meeting someone.”

  “You’re saying this is a homicide.” Lean shoulders pulled back protective reflex. “There’s no concrete evidence of a crime from my preliminary examination, but I’ll be sure to keep you in the loop once I schedule the autopsy.” Dr. Moss motioned to one of the techs waiting in the sidelines with a body bag and a windbreaker branded Office of the Medical Examiner.

  “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.