“Where are you?” Teddy asked frantically.
“In front of the theater. Teddy help!”
Everybody knew Nikki was chill even in the face of danger. To hear her in such a state of distress let them know without a doubt it was bad. Worse than bad. And they ran up front as fast as they could.
But when they got up front, and could see a van with its backdoor flapping open and Nikki and Jackie and their bodyguard all running and attempting to grab Duke out of the back of that van, their collective hearts dropped.
It wasn’t Roz they were after. It was their child!
Storming the stage and forcing them to find Roz was the distraction.
They were taking Duke.
They had Duke!
They had the youngest son of MickThe TickSinatra.
Mick’s very soul burned in fury.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
When Mick and Roz saw that they had kidnapped their baby boy and that the van was attempting to get away, Roz snatched away from Mick’s hand and began outrunning him and Teddy toward that van. But the van was already getting away, as if it had only stopped long enough to grab Duke and go.
But Nikki was letting go. She was holding onto the flapping back door of that van, refusing to let go, and was reaching for Duke as the van was speeding away. Her body was flapping with that door, which caused everybody’s heart to sank even more.
But when one of the men in the back of the van kicked her hand off of the door and she fell to the street, Teddy thought he was going to die. The man closed the flapping door, closed Duke inside that van with him, just as Teddy and the bodyguards pulled out their guns.
“Don’t shoot!” Teddy yelled because he knew his baby brother was in the back of that van. But that meant that the van sped away.
But as Teddy and the capos continued running to Nikki’s aid, Mick stopped Roz, grabbed her and their daughter Jackie and hurried them back to his parked Escalade. Artie DeGinnava, his driver, hopped out and helped Roz and Jackie onto the middle row, and the driver got onto the back row.
Mick ran around and got behind the steering wheel and sped up to Teddy and Nikki. Nikki, who was a little banged up but okay, got onto the middle row too, the two capos got into Teddy’s SUV with Teddy’s driver, and Teddy got onto the frontpassenger seat of his father’s Escalade. Both SUVs began to take off.
But they were suddenly hemmed-in with the other limos and town cars and SUVs, not to mention all the cop cars, as those drivers were attempting to get their high-dollar clients out of that madness in that theater district too. Mick’s Escalade could barely move.
But Mick,being Mick, could not let those men take his son. He knew his fleet of SUVs were custom-made with bullet-proof glass and metal as thick as that vehicle calledThe Beastthat was customized for POTUS. He gunned the gas petal and began knocking SUVs and limos aside as he forced his big tank of an SUV to make its way out of that traffic jam. Limos were pushed aside as if they were toy cars and other SUVs were slammed. But Mick got out of that traffic jam, with Teddy’s SUV following past the wreckage, and they took off after that van.
Mick whipped in and out of traffic, speeding like a madman trying to find that van.
Roz was hysterical. She was looking everywhere as Mick drove. Teddy and Nikki and everybody else in that Escalade were searching too. Panic had already set in and it was palpable in that vehicle. They had to find Duke. They just had to!
But Duke nor that van was nowhere to be found.
Mick searched and he searched. For several minutes he was up and down streets searching frantically for his son. He thought he would have a heart attack the way his heart was hammering. But he kept on searching.
It wasn’t until he stopped at a red light and could see through buildings that there was a similar van a street over. They all saw it because they all were looking just as frantically.
“Could that be the van?” Nikki asked as she squinted her eyes.
Mick didn’t know, but he didn’t hesitate either. He quickly hopped out of his SUV and took off across the street and through those alleys. The two capos hopped out of Teddy’s SUV behind them and took off too.
“Nikki, get behind the wheel,” Teddy ordered as he unbuckled his seatbelt and took off behind his father.
Nikki quickly left the middle row and got behind the steering wheel as she closed Mick’s driver seat door and locked his SUV. With horns blowing angrily at her from behind, she hooked a quick turn around the corner to get on the same street as the van they all hoped was the one they had been chasing.
But when Mick and Teddy and their capos made it to that side street and ran up, with their weapons drawn, to that parked van, they realized their mistake. It was a van converted into a food truck, and the couple was getting out to set it up. They looked at Mick and company with fear in their hearts.
And Mick, overwhelmed with fear himself, knelt down. He could barely breathe. Teddy and the capos looked around, but there was no other van to be seen.
