Page 34 of Deadly Revenge

“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 saidquietly. “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 precinctthat 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—”

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