Page 57 of Nikki Sinatra: For Her Lover
“More? What do you mean more?”
“We’re making progress. We’ve got CCTV on who was in that car that fired those shots at you and Teddy.”
“Who was it?”
“Jackson Reeves was the main shooter.”
Nikki was shocked. “Jackson Reeves? The guy Emilio used to work for back in the day?”
“One in the same.”
“But he was in prison on a life without parole sentence.”
“He was.”
“Teddy ordered you to check him out.”
“And I did. He was still behind bars according to the prison records. Life without parole actually does mean life nowadays. So he was off our radar. But when our face recognition software came back saying it was him, we looked even deeper. He was listed as still locked up, but the warden at the facility couldn’t find him.”
“He’s not there.”
“He’s not there. We could only conclude that he apparently pretended to be another inmate and was released under that inmates name, with the help of some crooked guards I’m guessing, while the person he impersonated was paid off, murdered, or whatever. Because we got a positive ID on him. It was absolutely Jackson Reeves and some local, small-time crooks he hired to be his backup.”
“But why would he be coming after me and Teddy?”
“Not Teddy. He wasn’t coming after Teddy. It was you he wanted. You, Emilio, and Juda. That’s his trifecta. He got Juda and Emilio. You’re the only one left. That’s what we believe anyway.”
“But why? I never had any dealings with him at all, and Emilio stopped working for him when he went up on that murder charge.”
“But those cartel boys didn’t look at it that way. Just like they killed Emilio’s family, they killed Reeves’s family too.”
Nikki was shaking her head. “That can’t be right, Hoke. Jackson Reeves had no family. He was notorious for having no family for anybody to harm. Nobody even knew who his parents were.”
“That’s what we thought too. Because that’s what we heard from all of our sources. But when we dived even deeper we found that he actually had two young twin daughters that he made it his business to keep out of the limelight. Nobody in the gang world knew of those two girls. But the cartel found out and killed them both.”
Nikki’s heart sank. Because of her decision to trash their drugs even more young people lost their lives! “How old were they?” she asked.
The chief didn’t want to say because he knew how taxing this all was for Nikki, but technically she was his boss. He had no choice. “Fifteen,” said the chief.
Nikki’s heart just fell, and it showed on her face.
“Nikki, you okay?”
She rallied. “Yeah, I’m good. Just tired, that’s all.”
“Oh I can imagine! But from our sources inside, Jackson blamed you, Emilio and Juda for what happened to his daughters. But he kept his cards close to his vest. He let very few people in on his plan. Until he came up with hisget out of jailscheme. And his first order of business was to exact retribution.”
“Do you know where he is now?”
Hoke shook his head. “We literally just got this intel in. We’ve got BOLOs out on the car he was driving and anything else connected to Jackson Reeves. We’re also doing a back search ofevery CCTV in the area to find him. But guess how he got on our radar?”
“How?”
“We realized the car he was driving was registered to Juda. It was Juda Gavin’s car. We couldn’t find it, so we put it on our list of tags to search.”
Nikki frowned. “But why would Jackson be driving Juda’s car?”
“After he killed him and everything was over and everything was cleaned up, he showed back up at the crime scene and stole the car. He was afraid we might be searching for his car, so he wanted one he figured wouldn’t be on our radar. We saw him taking the car on one of Juda’s neighbor’s Ring doorbell camera. Isn’t that something?”
