Nikki’s Townhouse
3:55 pm
Nikki and Simon had been working most of the day. Nikki had a large map of the country hung on a whiteboard she keeps in her home office and she had pinned the location of all of the Jacker victims. The victims were taken from Wilmington, North Carolina down to Savannah, Georgia. All cities with, or close to sea ports. Nikki was busy cross referencing ships, shipping companies, and destination ports. Simon was busy with his satellite program and if Nikki thought he looked good wearing nothing but his devastating smile, he was smoking hot sitting behind his computer, fingers flying around and a look of total concentration on his face. As she was staring at him, a smile started playing across his face and it morphed into a huge grin. He leaned back just then and caught Nikki starting at him. His grin grew even bigger then and he stood up, walked over and laid a kiss on her that had her thinking of breaking a few laws of her own. When he finally pulled away and Nikki was trying to remember her own name, he said,
“I found them Nikki”, still staring into her eyes with that look that made her stomach do funny things. After a few seconds when her brain reengaged she looked up at him,
“What, you found them? Where?” Simon smiled back at her and continued,
“I found the same car around two of the abduction scenes. I figured it had to be a 2 or 3 man team. One drives the car and one or two handle the car jacking. 3 would make the most sense. That means someone is driving the vehicle stalking their victims. I was able to pull video around 2 of the scenes and I found the same car. The plates are stolen and I have only processed 2 of the abduction scenes so far. They may be using the same car for the other abductions or not. I have pulled the satellite footage from the other scenes, do you think your people can process those and see if they can pull security and traffic footage from each area to find the same car or maybe another one that shows up in multiple locations?”
Nikki smiled and shook her head. “How come we don’t have tools like this at the FBI?” Simon smiled a half smile,
“It isn’t exactly legal to aim spy satellites at the United States. I also didn’t exactly come about this data accidentally if you know what I mean. If the public knew their own country is spying on them, it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the government. Privacy or use in criminal investigations, it’s a slippery slope. Can you imagine what a stalker could do with live streaming satellite imagery? Regardless, the least amount of people that even know this satellite imagery exists the better. You said you had some dedicated resources to your task force, can we trust them to keep this inside the group? I mean INSIDE. If the wrong people in the government find out that someone has been accessing this data” He shook his head in thought before continuing, “I don’t need that kind of shadow following me around.”
Nikki mulled that over for several long moments and she remembered what Simon said in his blog about a series of events arising to allow him to retire. She thought back to the story of how his wife was killed and she also studied the scar on the left side of his face and it finally made sense. He faked his own death when his wife was killed so he could get out of whatever agency he was working with.
She assured him she would make sure they kept it inside and she called Rob and updated him. Everyone, except Nikki, agreed that Simon should head south to be their asset on the ground until he could pin down a better location for the jackers. Nikki was mad because she just got him back and now he was leaving again. Maybe she would need to do some field work.