Conflict of Heart

Chapter 21

A tense silence enveloped the party like a pall. Isabella felt her whole body turn into a numb block of ice that she didn't even notice her sister grasp her hand tightly with her own. All that she could focus on was Detective Colton's words.

The brake lines had been cut.

Nathan swallowed harshly, an action that seemed to pain him. A light sheen of sweat coated his paled brow, and his voice trembled when he asked, "H-how could that have happened?"

Ryker's hard hazel gaze focused on the older man's stunned sapphire eyes. His dark eyebrows dipped into a harsher frown. "Unfortunately, I wasn't able find out. I couldn't retrieve anything from the car's EDR."

"EDR? What's that?" Rosa asked, her voice timid as she clung to her sister's frozen frame.

"It stands for Event Data Recorder," Ryker explained, looking at her. "Normally it only records when an accident takes place, but the system your father had installed on your cars makes it record whenever someone is near the car, even when it's not running. So, I should have been able to see when someone went near the car in order to cut the lines."

"So why couldn't you?" Rosa continued to question.

For a brief moment, Ryker looked at Isabella, who seemed to have been carved into stone. She hadn't uttered a word since his revelation, and the look on her face made it appear that she would pass out at any moment. "I think you should take a seat," he suggested in his deep baritone.

His focus on the older sister caused both of her family members to look at her with concern. Rosa quickly linked her arm through Isabella's and guided her to the chair on which she had previously been seated. Isabella followed her lead in a daze, and mindlessly conformed when her father urged her to sit. Nathan then took a seat beside her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her into his side as he gently rubbed his hand up and down her arm.

Ryker watched Isabella closely, taking note of the wide, frozen state of her eyes and the paleness of her pink lips. His frown deepened. He didn't even know her personally, but in that moment, he knew that the look on her face bothered him immensely.

"She's in shock," Rosa stated as she looked over her sister's expression before glancing around to see a nurse nearby. "Can you bring her some sugar water, please?" she called.

The nurse nodded and quickly went to fetch it. Once she had returned, she handed the glass to Rosa who then gently offered it to her sister. Isabella's eyes were still unfocused, and Rosa almost had to force her fingers to close around the cool glass. When she finally gripped it with enough strength that it wouldn't slip from her grasp, she slowly brought it to her lips, visibly shaking.

After a few sips and deep breaths that her sister instructed her to do, her gaze slowly started to focus. Her dark chocolate eyes trailed up to meet his, and she swallowed with clear embarrassment on her cheeks. "My apologies. Please, continue."

A muscle ticked in his strong jaw at how feeble her voice sounded. "Are you sure you can manage it?"

Isabella hesitated then slowly nodded, a gleam of determination igniting her once frozen dark eyes. One corner of his mouth lifted in a tiny smirk.

She was resilient; he'd give her that.

"Very well," he conceded. "Even in a terrible crash like your mother's, I should still have been able to access the data on the airbag computer. The fact that it came up blank brings me to the conclusion that someone had accessed the system and corrupted it before anyone got there."

"But . . . who would have been able to do so?"

His lips thinned into a stern expression. "Although it is usually only law enforcement and accident reconstructionists who have the tools used to link to the airbag computer, there are several other people who may have them, and I have a feeling that Mrs Walker might have seen who it was."