Page 58 of Nikki Sinatra: For Her Lover
Nikki nodded. It was. But then Nikki’s eyes stretched and she thought of something she had completely forgot! She quickly pulled her phone out of her back pocket.
Hoke saw her reaction. “What’s up?” he asked her.
“Nothing. I’m good.” But she was on her phone searching frantically. “You go on in. I’ll be in shortly.”
Hoke knew not to question his superiors, so he nodded his head. “Yes ma’am,” he said, and did as she had ordered.
Nikki didn’t even notice that he had left. Because she remembered the night she went to Juda’s house to get an update on whether or not the assassin he hired took out Emilio. Before she rang his doorbell, she went to his car and put a GPS tracking device beneath it as a just in case. And then she rang his bell.
She quickly pulled up that GPS app to get a read on the location of Juda’s car. And sure enough the location appeared. To be certain, she tracked back to the scene of the shooting earlier that day, and sure enough Juda’s car was in that very area on that very street at the time of the shooting.
“I’ll be damn,” she said. She failed to recognize that it was Juda’s car at the scene of the shooting because of the trauma, because of the heat of the moment, and mostly because of what happened to Teddy. But there it was right before her eyes. That car was involved. And if Jackson was now driving that car, she knew she was on to something big.
She started to hurry into the waiting room and tell the family. But she stopped herself. There had already been too much carnage. Too many people, including Teddy, already had to endure unspeakable horrors and pain because of her.
She wasn’t letting anybody else fight her battle.
Jackson Reeves wanted her ass. Her ass he was going to get.
Nikki walked down the hall, but then turned a corner out of the sight of the guards outside of that waiting room, and then she was on her way.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Hoke Bianca stood in the waiting room as the family members finally finished their questioning of Teddy’s surgeons and they left the room. And then Hoke was able to tell them exactly what he had told Nikki.
But Roz frowned. “Nikki isn’t still in Recovery with Teddy?”
“No ma’am. She was outside this door when I walked up. I think she had just come out of the restrooms across the hall.”
“Well if that’s the case then where her ass at?” Reno asked.
“I thought she was coming in behind me. I told her what I just told you and then she acted as if she suddenly remembered something, and she quickly pulled out her phone.”
“What was it that she remembered?” Mick asked.
Hoke hunched his shoulders. “She didn’t say, Boss. She just told me to go on into the waiting room. So I came on in.”
“But that was fifteen minutes ago,” said Sal. And Mick, understanding Nikki probably better than anybody in that room, jumped up and ran for the exit. Monk Paletti ran after him.
“Who’s staying?” Reno asked as he, Sal, and Amelia jumped up too.
“Go,” said Big Daddy. “Me and Tommy’s staying. You and Sal Luca go.”
But as Reno and Sal ran out of the waiting room, Big Daddy jumped up and pulled Amelia back. “Your ass aren’t going anywhere.”
“Don’t even try that, Charles,” Amelia said as she snatched away from him. “I can handle myself!”
But Big Daddy was firm. “I said you aren’t going.”
“I am going.”
“You want me to call Hammer Reese and let him handle it? That what you want me to do, Millie?”
That seemed to work. Amelia had enough drama going on with Hammer to risk further alienating him. She didn’t like it, but she sat back down. Big Daddy looked over at Marco. He was usually the adventurous type. “You don’t want to go with them?”
“I’m staying with Pop,” Marco said bluntly. And in that moment they all realized, despite the doctors’ good report, just how devastating an effect his father’s shooting still had on him. Roz went over to him, and pulled him into her arms.
Then Alex Drakos looked at Tommy. “You don’t think Nikki would go it alone. Do you, Tommy?”
