Page 32 of Nikki Sinatra: For Her Lover

The lead surgeon had already attempted to prepare her.

But when she walked into that recovery room and saw Teddy laying on that hospital bed with so many tubes coming out of him and all of those machines around him, she realized she wasn’t prepared at all.

Her knees buckled as soon as she saw him, but she didn’t fall.

She made her way over to his bedside and sat in the chair the surgeon provided for her.

As she sat there and held and rubbed his hand, music was playing softly over the room’s stereo system, and Nikki remembered how it was so not Teddy’s taste in music.

And it bothered her. But then she wondered why would it?

He took eight bullets for her. Eight bullets!

And she was worried about the music? What was wrong with her? Tears fell down her face.

She looked at Teddy. He had tubes everywhere.

And it broke her heart. “I’m so sorry, Teddy,” she said as the tears fell down like rain.

She knew he was in that bed because of her and her reckless past. She knew had she told him when they first met and let the chips fall where they may, this would have never happened to him.

He might have decided she was too much trouble for a new relationship and left her where he found her, but at least he wouldn’t have been shot eight times because of her.

At least she wouldn’t have to carry that burden to her grave.

“Oh Teddy,” she said as she held his hand. She kept wiping her tears away, but they still kept coming, and coming in bucketsful. She couldn’t stop crying.

And then Luther Vandross came on singing that Stevie Wonder-penned Superstar song she knew Teddy just loved. And song to her at their last anniversary dinner. And her heart soared:

“Don’t you remember you told me you love me, baby.

You said you’ll be coming back this way again.

Baby, baby, baby, baby oh baby.

I love you.

I really do.”

It was too much for Nikki. Now she was crying tears of joy because it was like a sign to her.

He was going to be just fine. The doctors had already told her that, but when she saw him she didn’t believe it.

Now she believed it. He was coming back to her.

He was going to be just fine. She believed it!

And even when the surgeon tapped her on her shoulder and told her it was time for her to go, she smiled at Teddy and kissed him, and lingered. She couldn’t pull herself away from him. Until the surgeon insisted. And then she left.

But as soon as she walked out of those doors and made her way around those halls back to the waiting area, she felt that heavy load of guilt again. Because something could go wrong. He could get an infection. A stitch could come undone and he could start bleeding internally.

Instead of going back into the waiting room, she went to the chapel and prayed. For nearly half an hour she prayed and cried until she had no more tears left. And then she went to the restroom across the hall from the waiting room, pulled herself back together, and came out again.

But just as she walked out of the restroom, Hoke Bianca, their security chief, was coming toward the waiting room. “Nikki hey,” he said. “I heard from the guys downstairs that he’s out of surgery and is expected to recover. That true?”

Nikki managed to smile and nod. “It’s true,” she said.

“Well hallelujah! More good news finally.”

“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 his get out of jail scheme. 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 of every 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?”

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.