Chapter 7 #3
Victoria’s first reaction wasn’t visible — she’d trained herself too well for that — but inside, it was as if someone had knocked the breath from her.
Isabel wasn’t smiling.
She was dressed sharply in dark jeans and a fitted black button-up under her leather jacket.
Her hair was swept back, revealing the line of her jaw.
Usually, she brought a restless energy into a room, a half-smirk ready, a comment already loaded.
Today, she was stripped of that warmth, her presence all clipped focus.
She gave Collins a small, polite nod. “Lieutenant.” The tone was friendly enough, but there was a shadow where her usual easy humor lived.
Then she turned to Victoria. The temperature dropped another degree.
“I’d like to hear the ransom call,” she said, her voice level. No greeting. No teasing. Just business.
It shouldn’t have stung.
It did.
Victoria gestured toward the speakers. “You’re just in time. We were reviewing it.”
She pressed play again. The static filled the space, followed by the flattened voice delivering its short demand. Isabel stood beside Collins, her arms crossed and her eyes narrowed in concentration.
When it ended, Isabel stepped forward. “Again.”
Victoria replayed it.
The second pass, Isabel’s head tilted slightly, the movement pulling Victoria’s attention like a hook. The line of her throat was visible where she’d left the top two buttons undone. Her gaze was fixed on the speaker, her brows drawn, her whole posture sharpened toward the sound.
It hurt to look, but Victoria found herself doing it anyway — until Isabel shifted, catching her eye for half a second. No spark, no softness. Just acknowledgment.
Victoria looked back to the screen.
On the third play, Collins leaned forward. “That clang. Could be a shipyard. Or a loading dock.”
“Too clean for a dock,” Victoria murmured. “Doesn’t have the layered ambient noise you’d get near the water. No gulls, no wave wash.”
“Could be an indoor facility,” Isabel said. Her voice was even. Clinical. “Metal shelving, maybe. Large space, minimal insulation.”
Victoria glanced at her — just a glance — but her mind betrayed her, replaying the sound of that same voice last night, low and rough in her ear.
She pressed her lips together and replayed the call.
This time, Isabel moved closer to the desk, bracing one hand against it as she leaned in. Victoria could feel the heat of her just across the space, but Isabel’s attention was locked on the waveform on the screen.
“That hum,” Isabel said. “That’s not a normal AC unit. It’s got a cycle. Almost mechanical. Could be a generator.”
Collins nodded slowly. “Portable? Or industrial?”
Victoria hit the space bar, rewinding ten seconds. The room fell silent again except for the static and the distorted voice. She isolated the last two words and looped them. The hum was clearer there, steady, followed by that faint metallic note.
“Not portable,” Victoria said finally. “Too low. If it’s a generator, it’s powering something big.”
“Warehouse,” Isabel said.
Their eyes met for the first time since she’d walked in. For a second, Victoria forgot to breathe. Then Isabel looked away, her jaw tightening, and the moment was gone.
Victoria clicked the mouse, loading the audio file into the precinct’s waveform editor. The screen filled with jagged peaks and valleys, the ransom voice a distorted block in the middle.
“Let’s break it down,” she said, her tone brisk. It was easier to keep her voice even when she focused on the work.
She highlighted the first second of the file. “This — background static, room tone. Could be a call placed from an enclosed space.”
She clicked play. They all listened to that empty second, the hiss of the distortion.
Isabel leaned in, forearms braced on the desk. “There’s a texture to it. Not just white noise — there’s depth. Sounds like the mic picked up room echo. High ceiling, maybe concrete walls.”
Victoria nodded, forcing herself not to notice how close Isabel’s sleeve brushed hers when she shifted.
Collins stepped forward, her hands on her hips. “Warehouse or big garage. You get that same bounce in the sound.”
Victoria moved to the next segment — the voice.
“One chance. Five million. Cryptocurrency. Instructions to follow.”
She looped it, playing it at half speed. “Listen for breaths. Cadence.”
At the slower pace, the pauses between sentences stretched. They weren’t natural pauses for breath — they were intentional.
“Reading from a script,” Isabel said flatly. “Probably prewritten.”
Victoria stopped herself from agreeing too quickly. “Or just methodical. Either way, not improvised.”
She isolated the final second of the file, boosting the volume on the faint metallic clang. The speakers emitted the sound, tinny but distinct.
“That’s not a dropped tool,” Collins said. “Too resonant.”
Victoria was already running it through a frequency filter. The software visualized the sound as a sharp vertical spike. “Hollow metal. Pipe or drum. And the hum…”
She layered the sound profile of a standard HVAC unit over it. The peaks didn’t match.
“Generator,” Isabel said again, more certain this time.
Collins frowned. “You said that already.”
Isabel glanced at her. “I’m saying it louder in case the captain didn’t hear me the first time.”
The corner of Collins’ mouth twitched, but she didn’t bite.
Victoria replayed the loop one more time, but her eyes kept drifting to Isabel’s profile — the set of her jaw when she was concentrating, the faint line between her brows.
She looked good like this. Focused. Controlled.
But the coldness in her expression was new, and it landed like a stone in Victoria’s stomach.
They combed the file for another fifteen minutes, slowing it down, reversing it, isolating background layers.
They tried to identify the hum’s rhythm, to hear anything human in the gaps between the clipped ransom words.
But there was nothing — no voices in the background, no identifiable location noise. Just that damned hum and the clang.
Finally, Victoria sat back in her chair. “We’re not getting a location from this. Not without something else to compare it to.”
Collins blew out a breath. “Well. That’s frustrating.”
Before Victoria could respond, her desk phone rang. She snatched up the receiver.
“Langley.”
A woman’s voice crackled over the line. “Captain? This is St. Brigid’s. The female suspect from the warehouse shooting — she’s conscious.”
Victoria straightened. “Condition?”
“Stable enough to talk. She’s asking for a lawyer, but she’s coherent.”
“I’m on my way.” Victoria hung up, already standing. “Collins, get her moved to Interrogation One as soon as she’s cleared for transfer.”
Isabel’s voice cut in, sharp. “I want to take the lead.”
Victoria turned to her. “That’s not how this works. I’m the one with the most history on the Iron Fang Syndicate. I know their methods.”
Isabel stepped closer, her gaze unwavering. “And I’m the one who got shot taking one of them down. I’ve earned a crack at her.”
The air in the office thickened. Neither woman looked away.
Collins raised a hand, deadpan. “I could cut this tension with a butter knife.” Laughing she chopped down, making a whooshing sound. She looked between them, and after a pause she continued. “Or, you know, you could just both go in. Play good cop, bad cop. Might rattle her faster.”
Isabel’s eyes rolled so hard it was almost audible. “Right. And clearly, I’m the good cop here.”
Victoria arched a brow. “That remains to be seen.”
Isabel’s lips curved just slightly — not a smile, but somewhere between a grimace and a smirk — before she turned toward the door. “Let’s find out.”