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

by MF Moskwik

  Izzy barks an elated laugh. “I think that’s our ticket out of here.” She pounds on the metal once more, and the racket of metal sliding on metal fills the bunker again. “I think there’s a retractable ladder up there, somewhere. If I can just get to it, or get it down, we can get out of here.”

  “Quickly, Ms. Swift,” Jameson huffs.

  “Sorry, Jameson.” Izzy bangs the wall of the escape hatch again and again, and with each thump, the ladder above them slides further and further down. Soon the sound is just above her head, and with one final stretch, she feels her fingers brush against something flat and metal.

  A rung of a ladder.

  “Jameson! We’ve got it!”

  “Magnificent!”

  She stretches, but the ladder is just out of reach. She bangs on the wall of the escape hatch, but the ladder no longer moves. “It’s stuck.” She stretches again and again. Each time her fingers brush the ladder’s surface, but she can’t get a hold on it.

  “Jameson, I’m going to jump and see if I can’t pull down the ladder. I’m going to count to three, and after I’ve jumped, you need to get out of the way so the ladder won’t fall on you, okay?”

  “The ladder is in front of us, yes?”

  “Yeah, so jump backwards, out of the way.”

  “I understand.”

  Izzy takes a deep breath. “Okay. One, two . . . three!”

  Izzy coils and springs as high as she can off Jameson’s shoulders. Against her outstretched hands, she feels the solid, cold surface of the ladder rung.

  Almost there!

  With just the tips of her fingers on the rung, she feels her weight pull her hands off the ladder.

  No! Please!

  She releases her grip to try to get a better one, but can’t.

  Izzy tumbles all twelve feet to the floor.

  “Isabel? Isabel! Are you all right?”

  Aching, she picks herself up into a sitting position. “Yup. Nothing broken. Just a helluva lot of hurting, that’s all.” She moves gingerly. “You?”

  “I was out of the way. I should have caught you—”

  “Nope. S’fine. We need to try this again.”

  “Are you mad? You nearly killed yourself!” retorts Jameson.

  “We are going to try this again, Jameson. And this time, I’ll get it.”

  The sound of metal grinding against metal fills the bunker.

  “Someone’s found us!” Jameson exclaims. “Help! Help!”

  “Jameson, shut up!” Izzy cries. “Shut up!”

  The hatch opens.

  At first, they see only the night sky, and the moon and stars fill the frame of the escape hatch.

  Then, a shadow, and then the face of a slender, haggard, bald man take their place.

  “Richard Lipton!” gasps Jameson.

  “I don’t want to hurt you. I just don’t want you involved. You’re not involved. You have to stay down there. Please,” the man whispers. He looks nervously over his shoulder, and then back into the bunker. “Please,” he repeats.

  Izzy moves under the escape hatch. “Richard, please. Let us out. Let us help you. You don’t have to do this. It isn’t over. You don’t have to do this terrible thing. Please.”

  “It’s too late. I have to do this. It’s up to me now—nobody else knows, and they should know.” Richard reaches down into the escape hatch and pulls up the ladder.

  “No! Please!” Jameson cries.

  “Richard!” yells Izzy.

  “You can’t get out now. Don’t get involved. Please. Just one more day. Now stay down there. Stay down there!” he yells as he pulls the ladder out of the escape hatch.

  “RICHARD!”

  “NO!”

  In shock, they watch as the light from the moon and stars disappear, and they hear the grind of metal on metal as the escape hatch door locks shut.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “NO! RICHARD! RICHARD!” yells Jameson.

  “Stop, Jameson, there’s no point,” Izzy says.

  “RICHARD! RICHARD!” yells Jameson.

  “Jameson! Stop! We need to get out of here,” yells Izzy.

  “Yes, and how will we do that?” Jameson asks. His tone is full of bite and anger. “Hmm? The only ladder in here was taken away, and our captor has locked us in yet again. We are alone, in the dark, without our cell phones, and yet we are supposed to divine a means of passage out of this . . THIS . . .”

  “Bunker,” Izzy supplies.

  “BUNKER!” Jameson yells.

  “Jameson! Focus!” yells Izzy.

  “I am focused, Officer Swift, on what a complete and utter failure this investigation has been,” Jameson yells. “From the moment I started working on this case, I have done nothing but compile data—newspaper articles, digital video data, DNA, fingerprints. Yet, tomorrow, a man, the man who we’ve chasing, will be able to murder in cold blood a room full of people because I was completely and utterly unable to stop him.”

  “You are emotionally compromised, Jameson. You are not thinking clearly,” Izzy protests.

  “Oh, but I am, Ms. Swift. For the first time in six months, I am thinking clearly, and I am thinking that what I do is an utter waste of time. In here, I will be unable to save those people tomorrow. As you said, I was unable to save your Carter. I was unable to save the dozen other police who were murdered. And I was unable to save—” Jameson breaks his tirade.

  Izzy nods. This is who he lost. “Who couldn’t you save, Jameson?” she asks gently.

  She hears as Jameson falls onto his knees. “Elizabeth. I was unable to save Elizabeth, my wife, and our unborn child.”

  Izzy waits for Jameson to speak, and sits, slowly, on the floor near to where she thinks he is. “What happened?”

  “A case. I had been analyzing crime statistics, trying to prove a theory that data could be used to predict the frequency of specific types of crimes as a function of a variable—weather, economic news, sports match results.”

  “Hmm.”

  “I’d noticed a rise in the number of violent crimes—theft, assault—but was unable to find a variable that correlated with the rise, so I wrote the phenomenon off as a fluke. As an odd occurrence in the data—noise, if you will.”

  “And?”

  “It wasn’t.”

  Izzy waits a minute for Jameson to continue. “What happened to Elizabeth? Your wife?”

  “My wife. She . . . was eight weeks along with our child, and one night, she had asked to go out to retrieve a goody for herself. Crisps or something of the sort.”

  Izzy smiles into the dark. “She had cravings, huh?”

  Jameson laughs softly. “At nine o’clock, sharp, every night, and always for the oddest things,” he says. “Most evenings, I would go with her, of course, and pick up her request. But that last night, she insisted she would go herself, and I, in my foolishness, let her.”

  “What happened?” Izzy asks.

  “I . . . after a few minutes, my guilt overcame me, and I followed her. But it was too late. I heard yelling, and an altercation. I came upon the scene in time to watch her being shot—”

  “Oh my God!”

  “By a man who had stolen her purse. Instead of chasing him, I ran to her, tried to help her. By the time the medics arrived, I had lost her.”

  Silence fills the bunker as the weight of Jameson’s story settles on Jameson and Izzy.

  Izzy finally breaks the silence. “It’s not your fault, you know,” she says. “There was nothing you could have done. You didn’t know that she was going to be attacked that night.”

  “But I should have. It was my job to know. And it is . . . was my duty to protect her.”

  “Computer program or no, none of us, none of us are perfect. And you were able to be with her, Jameson, in her final moments,” Izzy says. She reaches her hand out blindly for Jameson’s. “You did everything you could.”

  She feels Jameson’s hand fold around hers, and for a brief moment, she feels him squ
eeze her palm. And then he lets go. “I couldn’t bear to be around the memory of Elizabeth’s death, so near to our home. So I took a leave of absence, and . . .”

  “Six months later, here you are,” Izzy finishes.

  “I am here,” Jameson agrees. “For good or ill.”

  “Good, if you ask me,” Izzy replies. “You got the explosion and the preliminary description of the suspect. You made sure Mr. Lennox didn’t shoot me. And you figured out that someone other than Mr. Lennox was the killer.”

  “But it wasn’t I alone, Ms. Swift. You obtained the tapes from Ms. Lou Ann, you braved the gunfire of Mr. Lennox, and you had the good sense and intuition to know that the senior Mr. Lennox was not our criminal.”

  “Then we make a good team don’t we, Jameson?” asks Izzy. “And we will solve this case. Together. But right now, you will help me, because you’re tall enough to reach the escape hatch,” she explains as she stands. “If you’re up for it, I want to try again, only this time, I’ll climb up the hatch.”

  “You’ll what?” asks Jameson. The partners both stand.

  “We get ourselves under the escape hatch, you give me a good boost, and I climb the walls.”

  “Ridiculous,” mutters Jameson.

  “Hey, remember my file? Excellent physical shape?” Izzy retorts. “We have a climb like this in the rock gym—the spider man climb. It won’t be easy, because I don’t have my gear, but I think I can do it. If you help me.”

  “Like your Hector Rodriguez, you, Ms. Swift, are a curious mix of barmy and ballsy.” Jameson balks. “Is every one of the officers in your sheriff’s department like this?”

  “We’re the thin blue line, Jameson,” Izzy says with resolution. “Now help me up.”

  Again, Jameson allows Izzy to mount his shoulders. When her weight is secure, he then allows her to stand on his shoulders.

  “Are you?”

  “Yeah, I’m here,” she replies as she feels the hole of the escape hatch around her. “One big jump, and I think I’ve got enough leverage to climb. On the count of three—one, two, . . . three!”

  Again, Izzy launches herself into the air, and this time, she flings her palms and feet out to gain leverage against the sides of the narrow escape hatch.

  Jameson’s voice comes from below her, on the right. “Isabel?”

  “I’ve got it. Just give me a minute.” She spider climbs her way up the wall, her sweaty skin slipping and sliding against the smooth metal surface of the hatch. “Almost there!”

  “Be careful!” Jameson calls.

  “I’m here!” she cries out. Gingerly, she braces most of her weight with her feet. “Okay, I’m going to unlock it.”

  Izzy gives herself a three count and then grasps the lever to unlock the door.

  Come on, please! She feels her feet begin to slip, so she releases the lever once more.

  “Isabel?”

  “I think I’ve got it. I don’t think it closed all the way.” Again, she braces her weight with her feet. Last time, Izzy! You got this!

  She gives herself another three count.

  Three!

  Two!

  One!

  With all her strength, Izzy pulls on the lever. Again, she feels her feet begin to slip, but she ignores her panic and continues to pull on the latch.

  Come on, please! I am not letting go! I am not letting go! I am not letting—

  “Aaack!”

  “Isabel!” yells Jameson.

  The sound of the lock opening reverberates through the bunker.

  “Isabel!”

  “I’m all right! It’s unlocked! I’m dangling from the lever, but I’m okay! Just give me a minute to get back on the wall,” she says as she swings her body from side to side, giving her enough force to re-stick her feet onto the wall securely. “Okay, I’m on. Give me a minute.”

  A minute turns into two and then three, but finally, with the clang of metal grinding on metal, Izzy pushes open the unlocked hatch.

  The light of the stars and moon reappears.

  “Isabel!”

  “Shh! We don’t want him to know we’re out!” she responds. In minutes, she has crawled out of the bunker and pulled herself on to the ground.

  After a few minutes, lying on her back and panting, she rolls and puts her head back into the hole. “Jameson! Jameson!”

  “Isabel! Can you get me out? Is there the ladder?”

  Izzy looks around. “No, I don’t see it.” She runs quietly in the small space around the escape hatch—still nothing. “No, no ladder. Listen, Jameson, I’m going to go get help, but I have to leave you here. I have to close the hatch again so that if Lipton comes back, he won’t know that one of us is out.”

  “Ms. Swift!” he exclaims with surprise.

  “Jameson, please. I promise I will come back for you, and we will find Lipton together,” she says. A rustle in the leaves makes her look over her shoulder. God, I hope that’s a possum or something. “Jameson. Jameson!”

  “Isabel! Please!” Jameson protests. His voice betrays his bewilderment.

  “Do you trust me?” she asks.

  “What?”

  “Today, at the station, you told me you trusted me, Jameson. Do you trust me?”

  “Yes, of course, but—”

  “Then trust me, Jameson. Mark. I will come back, and I will get you out, and we will both go after Lipton together, do you understand?”

  “Isabel? Isabel!” Jameson cries.

  “I’m sorry!” she responds as she closes the hatch door.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Where are we?

  Izzy looks around at her surroundings. Grass, dirt, trees. Lights in the distance.

  Still near or in the city.

  She looks around her for a large branch or rock—something to use as a weapon in case Richard Lipton is still around. She finds a large, heavy stick and picks it up.

  Which way? She stands still, listening to the sounds around her. Nothing. Nothing. Frogs, crickets . . . cars?

  Izzy remembers the vibrations in the bunker.

  “The freeway,” she whispers as she takes off silently through the moonlit woods.

  As Izzy runs, a strange feeling of déjà vu comes over her.

  I have to find help. I have to help him. Jameson, I have to get help. He’s still back there.

  Leaves and sticks claw at her hair and skin as she runs. The brush is thick and dry, and as she pushes her way through the woods, the moon and stars give just enough light to outline the figures of the trees and rocks around.

  Where is he? She looks behind her. She sees nothing, but in her mind she can feel him, and she picks up her pace to flee the dark wood.

  She feels an ache building in her side. She ignores it and the rapid beating of her heart. Drops of sweat begin to bead at her brow, and pain slices through the soles of her bare feet as she runs.

  SNAP! Izzy trips, and the impact of her fall to the forest floor stuns her.

  Get up. Get up! GET UP!

  With a gasp, she stands. She is tired and disoriented. Gotta get help. He’s still back there.

  Ben!

  No, Jameson. It’s Jameson.

  But Ben, oh, Ben, I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.

  I’ll save you.

  Behind her, she hears a rustle in the leaves. She looks over her shoulder and sees the dark outline of a figure hidden in the branches.

  Please, God, be a possum!

  With a shake of her head, she begins her run again, away from the quivering branches of the forest and toward the safety promised by the lights and the deep rumble of cars traveling the highway.

  Go! Go! GO!

  She runs through a colonnade of trees, and suddenly, the oppressive dark of the forest is broken by the lights and sounds of the freeway fifty yards in the distance.

  Please!

  Fifty, forty, thirty yards separate her from safety. The last twenty yards, she pushes her pace into a mad desperate sprint.

 
I hear it! A car is coming! Lights appear on the left, and she races to meet them in the road.

  A pair of hands grabs her.

  “No! Let me go!” she yells as she struggles. Her arms bat away two large tree branches that have snagged her pink pajamas. Branches carve shallow cuts into her sides, arms, and face, and the pain banishes the grogginess from her fall.

  I have to flag down that car, but it’s going too fast! she thinks as she watches the car lights approach.

  With a hard yank, she frees her pajama top from the branches, and with a final running leap, she breaks free from the forest and collapses onto the road.

  A pair of high beams blind her, and she hears the screech of tires and horn as the car tries to stop before it hits her.

  As Izzy feels herself slip in and out of consciousness, the feel of the road underneath her body, the scrape of the gravel on her cheek, and the rumble of the pavement as the car hurtles toward her come in flashes. “Don’t!” she yells weakly.

  Another wave of pain and disorientation comes over her, and against her will, she feels herself beginning to slip into unconsciousness.

  The car stops.

  Outlined by the high beams of the car in front of her, two figures approach her, their voices and frenzied run a portrait of worry and concern.

  As her rescuers bend down to examine her, Izzy reaches out her hand and pleads, “Please. Save him. Please.”

  And with this final plea, Izzy Swift allows herself to fall into the welcoming embrace of the dark.

  ***

  Izzy wakes to the flashing blue, white, and red lights of an ambulance.

  “Captain, she’s waking up!” a voice behind her yells.

  Izzy blinks slowly and tries to sit up, but a pair of gloved hands keeps her prone on the stretcher. “Jameson.”

  “Captain!” the voice yells again. The speaker, a blue-shirted woman with auburn hair, jumps out of the ambulance, and walks into the sea of police that flood the highway.

  “Jameson,” Izzy says again weakly.

  “Thank you, Maggie,” Izzy hears just outside of her field of view.

  “No problem, Captain.”

  “Swift? Iz?” The face of Captain Williams swims into focus.