“It’s Dean.” She coughed, shaking her head. “He’s still here. Blending in.”
Liam’s pulse skyrocketed, and he turned around, every instinct in him on alert. But it was too late.
Something hard connected with his face. Isabella screamed as the pain sent him to his knees.
“Why won’t you people die?” Dean bent over Liam and reached for Liam’s gun.
Liam responded with a punch of his own, knocking Dean off-balance.
“Get out of here!” He yelled the order at Sam and the girls while he worked to overpower Dean and pin him to the ground.
Dean delivered a well-placed blow to Liam’s chest, where the butterfly stitches held his wound closed.
Liam’s breath caught, and pain reverberated through his chest.
“Not today.” Sam’s leg came out of nowhere and connected with Dean’s face, sending him sprawling onto the concrete. Knocking him unconscious. He didn’t move again.
Sam collapsed in a coughing heap next to Liam.
He scrambled over to Dean and secured the man’s hands behind his back. Two officers raced over.
“Deputy US Marshal Liam Roberts.” Liam sat back on his heels, panting for breath. “This man is under arrest. Could I borrow some handcuffs? He needs to sit in one of your units until my coworkers get here to take him into custody.”
“We’ve got him.” One of the officers shifted into place, and Liam moved out of the way.
He let the officers take care of Dean. In this moment, he wasn’t a marshal but a man whose family had been in danger.
But he hadn’t been too late.
Thank You, Lord.
Sam lay on the ground. Her coughing spasms had subsided, but she was so pale. He stood up and scooped her into his arms.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Getting you help.” He carried her over to where Sophia and Isabella were seated in the back of an ambulance, oxygen masks covering their faces while EMTs checked their vitals.
“Here’s another one.” He set Sam on the rear bumper of the ambulance, stepped back, and let them do their work. He took some deep breaths to try and steady his heart rate, pulled his phone from his pocket, and dialed Glover.
She picked up on the first ring. “Where are you? I just pulled into the slaughterhouse parking lot. It’s chaos.”
“Over by the ambulance.” Liam hung up, and she jogged to them.
“That’s a lot of blood.” She stared at his chest. “You need to get checked out.”
He looked down at his chest. The cut had bled through the gauze the paramedics had applied earlier. Getting punched in the chest hadn’t helped. “On my list of things to do.”
“It needs to be at the top.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “Fill me in on everything else.” She quickly glanced at Sam and the girls.
“Caleb Dean, Sam’s coworker, is our guy. He kidnapped the girls and lured Sam here, set the buildings on fire with them inside one. I managed to free them, but he attacked us once we were outside. He’s in a police cruiser somewhere.”
Glover motioned to his front. “Get that taken care of first. I’ll take custody of Dean and get him down to the office. You can come in when you’re stitched up and help me with the paperwork.”
As much as he wanted to argue, he couldn’t. She was right. He was already risking infection with the cut being open as long as it had been. He also needed to make sure Sam and the girls were okay.
His cut was deep enough to require internal stitches as well as external. Twenty-six stitches and four hours later, he and Sophia were released from the ER. Sophia had only suffered minor smoke inhalation, and all of her vitals and oxygen levels were normal.
They’d been able to find an emergency vet who’d agreed to pick up Blossom and keep her under observation.
