“What?” I asked him.
“I just got a really, really weird text from mom telling me she wanted to know why you weren’t paying your doctor bills. She asked if you were low on money,” Nico said.
Michael, who’d been talking up until that point, stopped and turned to me.
“You didn’t tell me you were having trouble paying your bills,” he left that hanging, and my face flushed in embarrassment.
“I’m not having trouble. In fact, I’ve already pre-paid for the hospital as of last visit!” I replied huffily. “What the hell? Why would anyone call my mother? That’s like against the law or something…isn’t it?”
Silence fell among the room, and something huge in the air started to radiate around me.
Testosterone paired with fury started to fill the room, and I looked around at the men surrounding me as they comprehended something I hadn’t.
“What?” I asked, settling on Michael whose eyes had gone flat.
He blinked. “Call your mother. Ask her who called.”
Surprised at the way he’d spoken to me, with zero emotion at all, I did just that.
I called my mama.
Dialing her number, I put it on speaker phone and set it on the desk in front of me, keeping my eyes focused on Michael.
He didn’t look right.
In fact, he looked like he wasn’t my Michael at all.
“Nikki?” My mother answered. “What is this about you not paying your bills? You told me Michael was helping you pay when I offered to help you. Why would you lie about that? I only wanted to help you.”
A blush rose to my face and I dropped my eyes from Michael’s flat ones the moment she called me on my lying ways.
No, Michael hadn’t helped me pay.
In fact, I’d paid all eight thousand dollars that I owed out of pocket myself, and I hadn’t asked him for a thing.
Something I was regretting right now if the fury that was coming off of him was anything to go by.
Shit!
“And you know, I’ve supported you even though you sinned. I will always support you. Which is why when you get the bill in the mail, I want you to bring it to me and let me pay for it,” she chastised me sternly, the only way a mother knew how. “And I told them where you and Michael worked, as well as Michael’s home address because you shouldn’t lie about something like that. Bill collectors are not fun to deal with. They’ll call you any time of day.”
I rolled my eyes.
Why wouldn’t she have just asked me herself, instead of sending a text to every one of my sisters?
“Why would you have given them my work address? And Michael’s? He’s not even on the chart at all. They shouldn’t even know his name.”
Had she been hoping that I wouldn’t hear it from my siblings?
“Lolita, this is Michael. Nikki’s paid up in full as of last week. Was it a man or a woman who called?” Michael asked abruptly.
“Oh, Micahel! I didn’t know you and Nikki were together. How are you?” My mother asked, her Spanish accent getting a little thicker with affection now that she wasn’t yelling at her daughter.
“I’m okay, Lolita. Now was it a man or a woman who called?” He asked again, a little less polite this time.
My mother didn’t notice, or if she did, she didn’t care that he was being short with her.
“It was a man. He said he was the doctor, believe it or not. I couldn’t believe it when I spoke with him, but he seemed to be a really nice man,” Lolita chattered.
That’s when things started to make sense.
This wasn’t about any bills at all.
This was about a killer.
A killer who’d just put his sights on me.
Chapter 19
What do we want? Coffee. When do we want it? Right the fuck now.
-Coffee Cup
Michael
“Got a warrant to search his place yet?” I asked Luke.
Luke shook his head. “Not yet. Judge Maddox is out of town, and we had to go to Bender. He’s not our team’s biggest fan since the last warrant that was served was the one where that old lady broke her hip.”
I winced.