Deadly Revenge (Pearl River #3)

Chapter 17

17

Jenna could kick herself for letting Max catch her in the bedroom checking on the data drive. Now she had to explain what she was doing in the spare bedroom with a screwdriver.

She sighed. “We’ll talk about it on the way.”

The look he gave Jenna said they would indeed discuss it. “I’ll meet you outside,” she said.

She waited until the door closed behind him before she returned the tiny data drive she’d taken out of the wall socket, then she pressed tape across the plate so she’d know if anyone disturbed it.

Max was probably waiting on her at her SUV, and Jenna hurried to catch up with him. She entered the kitchen and gasped. Max was kneeling on one knee at her back door, examining her deadbolt. “You scared me. I thought you were outside.”

“I was checking your deadbolts.” He stood. “You ready?”

Jenna nodded and tried to decide just how much she was going to share as they walked to her SUV. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to tell him—she needed to tell someone. If the intruder had killed her today, no one would even know to look for the drive that had the blurry photos showing Phillip and Sebastian together.

Her mind buzzed. If ever an honest man lived, it was Max. He said he’d always had her back, but he’d been out of her life for several years now. She couldn’t turn on trust like it was a light switch. At least not until she had some answers. Jenna just didn’t know what the questions were.

“Let’s use my truck—I’m more familiar with it.” Max opened the passenger door, and she climbed in. Once they were on the road, she took a deep breath and released it.

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded. “Why didn’t you call after you left Chattanooga? You kissed me and then walked out the door and ghosted me.”

Max had been tapping the steering wheel, and he stilled. Then like her, he drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out. “I know, and like I told you yesterday, I’m really sorry about that.”

“Words are easy.” Especially for someone like Max, who could charm robbery suspects into confessing.

He took his gaze off the road for a second and turned his head toward her. “Truth?”

She nodded.

He returned his gaze to the road. “I was in a bad place when I left Chattanooga. Shannon had done a number on me ...” He tapped the steering wheel again. “Time to man up,” he said and sat up straighter. “I really have no excuse for the way I hurt you.”

Quiet settled between them. He broke it first. “Are you open to letting me make amends?”

Jenna took her time answering. He seemed truly sorry, but his silence had hurt. “We’ll see. It really hurt when I didn’t hear from you after I was shot. I thought maybe you believed the rumors.”

“I never heard them.” Neither of them spoke for a couple of miles, then Max said, “For the record, I don’t understand why you were relegated to a desk job after the psychologist released you. You were too good of a cop for that.”

Jenna looked up, surprised by the concern in his voice. Maybe he wasn’t part of the good-ol’-boy network. “Apparently you’re the only one who feels that way.”

“You’re wrong about that,” he said. “I’ll grant you there are a few who resent women on the police force, and some of them are in authority, but they are the same ones reaching retirement age. I promise, more than one detective respected you when I was on the force there.”

“Then why didn’t they speak up when Billingsley let it be known I’d never work an investigation again? I wasn’t the only cop who’d suffered PTSD after getting shot, and they returned to work once the psychologist released them.”

“I don’t know ...” Then he quietly added, “I would’ve spoken up if I’d been there.”

The anger Jenna had held against him dissolved. She rested her head against the seat as peace washed over her. She and Max had always been tight while they worked together, and she’d missed it.

“You want to know what I regret?” she said softly.

“What?”

“That I let them run me off. But they had me second-guessing myself, and when a cop loses their confidence, they’re no good to anyone.”

“Is it getting better since you’ve come to Russell County?”

“Definitely. Alex is great to work for—I think I was her first hire. Why do you ask?”

He hesitated. “I worried you might be experiencing PTSD from the shooting.”

“Alex told you?” He nodded, and she turned and watched the passing trees out the window. Max didn’t push, just let her be while she gathered her thoughts.

“Other than occasional nightmares, the PTSD is gone—I haven’t fainted at the sight of blood since the psychologist released me. And I did not have PTSD back at the house,” she said quietly. “I heard an intruder. When you saw me in the bedroom, I was making sure he hadn’t found the data drive I hid.”

“Okay. What’s on it?”

“Photos I took of Phillip and Rick Sebastian the night I was shot.”

“The gang leader?”

Jenna nodded. It felt so good to talk to Max about this.

“You didn’t turn them over to Billingsley?”

She shook her head. “Billingsley and I were like mixing vinegar and baking soda. Even when you and I worked together in robbery he had a reputation for not wanting women detectives in the gang unit. That never changed in spite of pressure from higher up.”

Max slowed and made a right turn. “I never understood why you joined the gang unit—you knew what Billingsley was like.”

“I probably wouldn’t have, but after you left, I worked with one of the inner-city churches, and I got close to the kids. That’s when I learned just how widespread the gangs were. I kept hearing about this Sebastian who was rumored to be the head of the Scorpions, but he was like a ghost.

“When two of the kids in my group overdosed, I vowed to bring him down. Took me three months to even identify him, but I developed a really good confidential informant. She’s the one who told me about Sebastian’s coke habit and when he’d be getting a new supply. That’s when I arrested him—he had enough of the drug on him to get five years.” Jenna wondered if he’d kicked the habit in prison. “If only my camera and phone hadn’t been stolen that night, he would’ve been looking at ten to twenty.”

Max tapped the steering wheel as they drove up the mountain. “If your phone and camera were stolen, how—”

“I emailed a few of the photos I took with my phone to myself before everything went south.”

“I still don’t understand why you didn’t turn them over to Billingsley.”

“I didn’t trust that he wouldn’t trash them.” Even now, she wasn’t sure her former boss and Phillip weren’t in cahoots. “And there’s a problem with them—they’re grainy, and they’re not timestamped. Without the originals on my phone that show when they were taken, there’s no way to prove they were taken the night I was shot.”

“Wait. Didn’t they automatically upload to the cloud?”

She shrugged. “They should’ve, but whoever stole my phone deleted the photos from everything. If I hadn’t emailed them to myself, I wouldn’t have anything, such as they are.”

He thought a minute. “How about the metadata—”

“I thought of that too, but the metadata is linked to when a person accesses or downloads a photo from their email. Check any of the photos you’ve received in your emails and you’ll see what I mean. I didn’t open my emails until just before I got out of the hospital.”

“So, if Phillip believes all the evidence was destroyed, why would he be looking for something?”

Jenna bit her bottom lip. “Because I might’ve hinted to him that I had evidence even though the photos had been deleted from my phone.”

“What do you mean?”

“Before I left the hospital, I called Phillip and accused him of being at the school that night. Told him I had evidence putting him there. Not sure what else I said, but evidently enough to let him know I thought he was a dirty cop.”

Max winced.

“I know, not the smartest thing I’ve ever done, but I’d just learned the camera and my phone had been stolen, and I was pretty loopy and not thinking straight. By the time I was released from the hospital, there was a rumor floating around the precinct that I was the dirty cop. That I’d set up the meeting with Sebastian and it went south.

“Of course it was only a rumor, nothing anyone could prove because Sebastian was claiming he wasn’t there. So he couldn’t very well turn around and say otherwise.”

“Didn’t you have any backup?”

She shook her head. “It was supposed to be a routine surveillance. I wasn’t to engage the subjects. Officer Creasy—don’t know if you remember him—”

“I remember him.”

Max’s tone indicated he didn’t particularly like him.

“He was supposed to be parked two streets over. If I observed a drug deal going down, I was to radio him so he could pull the subject over and arrest him. That way my position wouldn’t be compromised. Creasy didn’t arrive on the scene until after I was shot and Sebastian had disappeared, so he never saw him.” She rubbed her shoulder. “I never said anything about Phillip to my supervisor because I didn’t think Billingsley would believe me—Phillip had pretty well convinced everyone I was a hysterical woman out for revenge because he broke off our engagement.”

“It’s hard to fight something like that,” Max said.

“You’re not kidding, and what I have on the data drive wouldn’t hold up in court, but he doesn’t know that.”

Max was quiet a minute. “You said Sebastian is in prison, but if he got away that night—”

“He was out on bond after I arrested him on the possession of cocaine charge. He probably thought the charges would be dropped after I was shot, but I was well enough to testify in court—he got five years.”

“So he couldn’t have been the one who broke into your house. Do you think it was Phillip?”

Her face clouded. “I don’t know. This isn’t the first time someone has broken into my house—it happened before I left Chattanooga. I never knew who it was, but since Phillip was tight with Sebastian, I figured it was Sebastian or one of the Scorpions. Or maybe even Phillip himself.”

Jenna rubbed her temple. Sifting through the memories took a mental toll. She leaned back against the seat and closed her eyes, shifting her thoughts to the break-in. Why couldn’t she remember going into the kitchen? Could she have seen the intruder’s face?

Max’s GPS broke the silence in the truck, telling him to turn onto the road that led to Eagle Ridge. When they came to a fork, it directed him to the left.

“Go right,” Jenna said, opening her eyes. “For some reason GPS always sends you the long way around here.”

He did as she directed and wound around the other side of the mountain. “Who lives on the other road?”

“There are a few rental cabins. Mark Lassiter lives almost to the top ... and Mae Richmond and her granddaughter, Dani. I figure Mark and Dani will be the next to announce a wedding.”

It wasn’t long before they came to the spot where Slater’s Hummer had plunged off the road.

“I don’t know which is worse,” Max said. “This being an accident or someone having it in for the man.”

Jenna had been thinking the same thing. “Murder times two is always worse.”

“You’re right. And now this Paul Nelson. If these are linked, what if the murderer isn’t done?”

That’s what Jenna was afraid of. “What could the two men have done for someone to hate them this much? It’s bad enough killing Slater, but why kill his wife as well?”

Max slowed as they came to Slater’s drive. “Maybe we’ll get the answer to that at his house.”