Heart Break: An Isabel Swift Novel (The Isabel Swift Detective Series Book 1)

by MF Moskwik

  Izzy nods, though she knows that Jameson can’t see it. She pulls her flannel pajama top more tightly around her.

  Though she knows she shouldn’t think of things this way, Izzy feels like today was a failure. Their inability to find Robert Lennox and their incorrect arrest of the senior Mr. Lennox have given her a case of guilt-induced jitters, so instead of sleeping, she has been sitting cross-legged on her couch, in her pajamas, willing herself into stillness for the last hour.

  It hasn’t worked.

  “You’re up late,” she barks grumpily into the phone.

  A rich, throaty, baritone peal of laughter emerges from her handset.

  “You’re laughing?” she asks with wonder.

  “I am, Officer Swift,” is his reply.

  “At me,” she counters. Unexpectedly, she finds she has to hold back her own laugh at the realization.

  “That is also correct,” Jameson agrees.

  A silence of thirty seconds expands while Jameson chuckles and Isabel tries not to.

  “This afternoon, you and Ed,” Jameson starts.

  Izzy shakes her head. Damn it. “Yeah?” she growls.

  “You are gruff, combative, even sometimes insulting with me, Officer Swift, but with Ed Long at the station, I believe I saw the real you. And the real you can be, at times, well, I suppose, compassionate. Kind. Even, dare I say it, quite sweet.”

  Damn it. “First of all, Ed Long and I are none of your business, but we’ve been friends for years. We went to high school together. That’s all there is to that.”

  “Mmm hmm. Quite,” Jameson says in a way that sounds like he doesn’t believe her. “Second—”

  “Second!” interjects Izzy.

  “That’s right. Second, Officer Swift, you showed compassion for Mr. Lennox, when we booked him. Even though we did not know at the time—”

  “You may not have known, but I knew.”

  “Even though I did not know at the time that he was innocent, you treated him with respect and dignity, no matter the insults and slurs he cast forth upon us,” explains Jameson.

  “Cops gotta keep their cool, no matter what,” Izzy says firmly.

  “And third,” begins Jameson.

  “Why is everything with you like reciting the Declaration of Independence?” she protests.

  “An American work and I am English, but a fact I shall let pass. And third, Officer Swift, excepting your comment just now, you mercifully did not hold against me my error of wanting to arrest Mr. Saul Lennox for the murders. Though you well could have—I was bollocks to you in the interrogation room, and for that I must apologize,” concludes Jameson.

  Izzy shakes her head. “No apologies, Jameson. You were doing what you thought was best for the case. And you have from day one, which I respect. A lot,” she adds grudgingly.

  Silence builds again.

  “Listen, I—”

  “Isabel—”

  Awkward laughter. “Please,” offers Jameson.

  “Jameson, today, when you said you . . . trust my judgment, that you trust me? What did you mean by that?”

  “I meant only what I said exactly, Ms. Swift. That I trust your judgment as an officer of the law.”

  “And?”

  “And that I trust you—your motivations, your desire to do the right thing. I trust that you care about your job and the people that you protect, and that you do your job sincerely, without ego or pretense.”

  Silence.

  “Ms. Swift?”

  More silence.

  “Ms. Swift? Isabel? Are you there?”

  “Oh, I’m here.”

  Jameson laughs. “Well, I’ve taken a compliment and mucked it up, haven’t I? I’ve sent you off to the hills, running away from the barmy data scientist with no idea how to communicate?”

  Isabel hums. “No, it’s just—well, I do take it as a compliment, and a really big one at that. I . . . I’ll try not to let down your trust in me.” Isabel, embarrassed, laughs. “Well, at least in the two or three more days that you’ll be working the case.”

  “That sounds about right,” agrees Jameson.

  Isabel sighs and finds that her jitters have stopped. “Thanks.”

  “For what?” asks Jameson.

  “For calling,” she says as she looks at the clock. “At 11:21 at night. Jesus, Jameson. Have you looked at the time?”

  “Oh yes, I apologize. It is late. Eliz—I mean, I’m a habitual night owl, so I forget sometimes,” Jameson says.

  Izzy stands, yawns, and stretches, and begins walking to her bedroom. “Did you call for something?”

  “Yes, actually. Tomorrow, for the luncheon? The plan?”

  “Is the same. We post guards, we look for Robert. Plainclothes detectives will be on hand to deal with Robert and medics will be around if there’s an emergency. If anything bad happens, the hotel has provided landlines in the banquet room and throughout the hotel, so in case the frequencies are jammed, we can still communicate with each other and with the outside world.”

  “And Rodriguez?”

  “Still set to make the speech.”

  “And you told me he has a pacemaker?” asks Jameson.

  “Yup,” agrees Isabel.

  “Barmy. Or quite ballsy,” wonders Jameson.

  “I’ve known him for four years, so trust me when I say that it’s both,” agrees Isabel. “Oh, before I go, I thought of you this evening.”

  “Did you? Cheeky,” teases Jameson.

  Isabel shakes her head and holds back a laugh. “No, not like that. I looked up Richard Lipton, tried to find information about him.”

  “And?”

  “He only shows up in the local records four years ago. Odd jobs, here and there. License, DMV, no tickets. But that’s not the interesting part.”

  “No?” asks Jameson.

  Izzy shakes her head. “Turns out, Richard Lipton is the name of a famous computer scientist at . . . I think it was Georgia Institute of Technology?”

  “Damn it, that’s where it’s from! Dickie Lipton, of course,” exclaims Jameson.

  “You know him?” asks Izzy.

  “I know of him. Everybody does. Well, in the field. A genius, really. An innovator—he’s done work on many subfields within computer science, including DNA computing. He received the Knuth prize earlier this year!”

  “Um, wow?” Izzy replies.

  “Yes, I apologize, I should have recognized it earlier,” Jameson concludes.

  Isabel is silent. She walks into her room, pulls back the covers on her bed, and rolls her neck to the side. She kicks off her fuzzy slippers and sighs.

  “Ms. Swift?” asks Jameson.

  “Sorry,” she says as she yawns. “Gosh, sorry again. No, that’s interesting about Richard Lipton. Although that’s a weird coincidence, isn’t it?”

  “What is?” asks Jameson.

  “Well, that we’re working on this case that involves manipulation of radio-frequency technology and programmable medical devices, and one of the people we run into during our investigation has the same name as a famous computer scientist?”

  “Is it an odd coincidence?” asks Jameson.

  Isabel yawns again and sits on her bed. She looks at her reflection in her mirror, noting the dark circles under her eyes, the pink cloth of her pajamas, and the moonlight coming through the empty window.

  She closes her eyes and notes the jittery feeling has come back a little, but she pushes it down.

  “Yes. At least, I think it is.” She yawns again. “Okay, that’s it for me. I’ll see you tomorrow, Jameson. Have a good night.”

  “You as well, Ms. Swift.”

  “Bye.” Isabel hangs up the phone and tosses it, blindly, in the direction of her dresser. The sound it makes as it hits the floor tells her that it has missed its mark.

  “Damn.” She rubs her face with her hands, stands, and opens her eyes.

  The last thing she sees before she blacks out is a bald man with an intense amber-eyed star
e standing in the moonlit window behind her.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Everything hurts.

  Izzy opens her eyes, and she finds herself in the pitch-black dark.

  She wants to scream, but knows she shouldn’t. Not yet. Not till she figures out what’s going on.

  I’m hurting, so I’m not dead. Nothing is . . . bleeding, I think, and I have all my limbs. She tries her legs and feet, testing them with small, tiny movements. I think I can walk, that’s a relief.

  Where am I?

  She listens to the quiet around her and hears . . . almost nothing. She doesn’t hear it, but she can feel faint tremors, as if she is somewhere near something heavy, shaking the ground, but far away or with an obstacle in the way.

  Highway? I’m near a road with heavy trucks. Not frequent, but regular. I could get help. She listens more. The shaking isn’t just in the floor, it’s all around. Am I underground?

  As she listens, she becomes aware of a quiet rhythmic whooshing. No sound, just air.

  Breathing. Quiet breath. Someone’s here, and they don’t want me to know.

  The breathing comes closer, and with it, the sound of steps.

  She thinks of the man she saw in the mirror before she blacked out. He was slender, but muscular, and had at least eight inches of height and sixty pounds of weight on her.

  I’ve got one shot. I have to be faster than him. If he takes me, I’m done for.

  The feet and the breathing come closer and closer.

  Five.

  Four.

  Three.

  Two.

  One.

  She kicks his legs, hard, as she rolls from her stomach to her knees. She hears him land on the floor with a hard thud. Quickly, she pounces onto him, and, for a moment, she is able to pin him down. As she straddles him, she tries to pin down his hands with hers, but in a flash, they are reversed. Her assailant straddles her, holds both of her wrists in one of his hands, and jams his other hand down on her mouth.

  She tries to kick his groin, but the move backfires, and he pins her hips down with his wiry, heavy frame.

  She bites his hand, hard.

  The man on top of her yells, but doesn’t let go.

  I know that voice.

  “Jameson?”

  “Isabel?”

  At once, he is off her, and she sits, gulping in fresh air. “Where are we?”

  “I don’t know,” he responds, quietly.

  They sit in silence for a moment, gasping for breath. “Just us?” she asks.

  “Yes, I think so.” Silence for a moment. “You have an excellent dentist,” Jameson says sarcastically.

  “Sorry.”

  “Fine,” he says.

  They wait for their nerves to calm.

  “How long have we been in here?” Isabel asks.

  “I don’t know. I only woke up a few minutes before you did,” Jameson says. “Do you have your cell phone?”

  Izzy thinks about this. “No. You?”

  “No.”

  She waits. “He got you too, didn’t he?” she asks in a quiet voice. She feels, rather than hears, his affirmative response in the quiet unbroken silence. “What do you want to do?” she asks.

  “Find a way out,” Jameson replies.

  “Helpful.” Izzy stands and flings her hands out, searching for the wall.

  “No, Isabel, we have to get out. The reunion is tomorrow, and we’re the only ones that know who the murderer is. If we are trapped—”

  “I don’t understand. Who is Richard Lipton, and how did he become involved in this?” asks Izzy.

  “I don’t know, but he must be stopped. And he cannot be if we remain trapped in here,” finishes Jameson.

  “Look. We need to focus. Find our way out of here. What do you say I do dimensions, you do perimeter? Look for a way out?”

  “Agreed. Shall we meet here again in ten minutes?”

  “Sounds good.”

  For the next few minutes, the only sounds are their breathing, their footsteps, and their quiet counting.

  Concentrate, Swift. She counts off feet and inches carefully, putting one foot in front of the other as she crosses the room in what she hopes is a straight line. Almost nine feet this way . . . She hears Jameson coming her way, along the wall, and she moves to miss him. He doesn’t look it, but he’s strong, she thinks idly as she reverses her steps to glide a new path perpendicular to her old one.

  Twenty feet the other way. No incline. Dry. Sharp edges. We’re in a room of some sort. Underground?

  She finds their original spot and waits. In a few minutes, she hears her partner approach. “Well?”

  “No doors. No light switches. I did find a wire, though, so perhaps electricity to a switch somewhere. You?”

  She shakes her head. “No incline. Smooth floor. Sharp edges. Room is twenty by eight.”

  “Meters?”

  “Feet. I feel like we’re underground, but I can’t be sure.”

  “Why?” asks Jameson.

  “The walls, the floor, all of it, there’s vibrations everywhere. Like something far away and heavy is moving.”

  “I feel it too,” agrees Jameson.

  “Jameson? I think we’re in a bunker,” Izzy states.

  “A what?”

  “A bunker. A fallout shelter. It’s a thing we had in the fifties and sixties when we were afraid of nuclear fallout,” explains Izzy. “So people would buy bunkers, stock up on can o’ beans, and get ready for the end of the world.”

  Jameson sighs. “Americans.”

  “Shut up, British,” Izzy replies.

  After a moment of silence, Izzy clears her throat.

  “Jameson?”

  “Yes?”

  “We gotta get out of here. Any ideas?”

  “Yes, but I require your aid.” She feels, rather than sees, Jameson shift toward her, and reflexively, she takes a step back. “The wire that I mentioned, I think it’s attached to a light switch. I followed the wire and found the outlet, but could not find the switch. With your permission, I would ask for your help to follow the wire toward the ceiling and, hopefully, find an overhead lamp to turn on.”

  Izzy nods. “What do you need me to do?”

  She feels fingertips land on her shoulder, and then, a warm hand trails down her arm, and finds her elbow. “I need you to follow me to the wire, and when I say so, to stand upon my shoulders. I do not know how tall the room is or where the lamp will be, but I am hoping that with our combined heights, we may follow the wire to the light source and find the switch.”

  Izzy finds Jameson’s elbow and grasps it. “Lay on MacDuff,” she says as she nudges him forward.

  “Finally, an English work,” Jameson mutters.

  As Jameson counts his steps back to the wire, Izzy follows closely and carefully along with him. Twenty steps, thirty, forty . . . the wall. Ten, twenty, thirty . . .focus, Izzy, focus, she thinks to herself. This may be our only way out.

  “Stretch out your arms to your left.”

  Izzy feels his hand close over hers. Warm and steady. That’s good. “That is the wire. Following it toward the floor, it reaches an outlet. Instead, I wish to follow it upward,” he says as he places her hand on the wall.

  “Got it,” she replies. “Can you—”

  “Yes, I’ve got you,” is Jameson’s reply. She hears him crouch on the floor, and in a minute, she feels the broad expanse of his shoulder in front of her at hip level. “If you would—”

  “Yes.” She carefully places her legs around his head, and in a swift movement, she feels herself carried aloft. Even in the dark, the change in position is disorienting.

  “We are standing in front of the wire. Can you feel it in front of you?”

  Izzy reaches out her hand and feels a slim, plastic cord as it snakes upward. “Yes. I can feel it. It goes up, and up, and up . . .”

  She follows the cord to its height, just beyond her fingertips, where she feels it bend and attach above her head on
the ceiling. “You’re right, Jameson. The wire goes to the ceiling. I can just barely feel it . . .”

  “Can you follow it?” Jameson asks.

  Izzy stretches upward, reaching for the ceiling, and misses. Her weight shifts, and for a moment, she feels herself falling. “Jameson!”

  “I’ve got you!”

  Underneath her feet, she feels Jameson shift and sway to compensate for her movement. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then please, try again. We haven’t got much time,” Jameson requests.

  Izzy braces herself against Jameson’s head and stretches her arm to the ceiling again. “Yes. Move . . . forward. Keep moving forward.”

  Izzy feels Jameson walk, counting his steps by the swaying motion she feels underneath her hips. Thirty, thirty-five, forty-five . . . “Wait, stop.”

  “Is there a switch?”

  “No, there’s . . . no more ceiling. It’s a hole. And there’s . . . air coming through, I think,” Izzy says.

  “And the hole? Is it—”

  “Yeah.” She stretches both arms over her head and explores the hole’s edges with her fingertips. “I think it’s big enough for a person to fit in.”

  “An escape, perhaps?” Jameson asks.

  “Yeah. But there’s no way to go up. No ladder, no rails. Give me your hands.”

  “Why?” asks Jameson as he trails his hands upward to find Izzy’s hands.

  “There. Thanks. I think, if I can stand on your shoulders?” Izzy shifts her weight and puts a foot on his shoulder. “You gotta hold me, Jameson.”

  “I am doing my best, Ms. Swift,” he replies.

  “Well, here goes.” With a burst of force, she pushes herself up and puts her second foot on his shoulder. “Oh my God. You okay?”

  “Fine. Can you find a ladder?” he asks.

  Izzy hears the strain of her weight in the rasp of his voice. “As soon as I’ve got it, I’ll pull myself up. Hang in there.” Izzy stretches her hands along the smooth, metal walls of the escape hatch. “Damn it, Jameson,” she swears as she encounter only blank metal. “There has to be a ladder. Come on. Come on!” In frustration, she pounds her fist on the wall.

  CLANK! Zzzzz. Clank. Thunk.

  “Dear God, that noise. All the citizens of London, let alone Westchester County, will wake with that racket. What was that?” asks Jameson.