Page 19 of Last Chance Christmas

He got up and paced away a few feet, probably feeling the same thing she’d felt seeing him with a gun to his head. You protected both of us, Lord. Help us still. He prayed for the three missing convicts and the officer who’d gone with them—presumably an accomplice—to be located and brought in by the cops.

Izan didn’t want to face down Alonzo Sosa again.

But he was going to have to explain one thing to Olivia. Or the cops, at least.

Kianna and Trace got Olivia onto a backboard, and her head lolled to the side. She was only partially conscious. Izan helped them lift her onto the stretcher and into the ambulance.

“Coming with?” Trace asked.

Izan said, “I’ll meet you there.” He closed the doors and hit his palm twice on the back window, then turned and went back to his house. He didn’t really want to go inside after what had just happened, but he grabbed his wallet and keys and locked up.

He drove to the hospital, his stomach rumbling. If Sosa hadn’t been there, Izan would have eaten by now. Olivia probably would have as well. He swung through a takeout place with breakfast burritos and grabbed an extra one for Olivia, just in case.

Right as he entered the hospital’s emergency department, he ran into his sister Ainsley again. She stood by the nurses’ station in the center of the ring of side-by-side emergency bays. Most had a clear slider door to cut down the noise. Some only had a curtain separating the patient from the rest of the room.

“Peace offering?” She indicated his bag of food.

“Uh, sorry. No. It’s for Olivia.”

“Another one of your friends got hurt?” A worried expression shifted across her face. “What happened?”

Izan didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t told the rest of his family anything about looking into the Sosa crime family. Months ago, he’d shared a little with Ainsley about the firefighters getting involved with Bryce going missing, and all that stuff with the governor and the plane crash, but he didn’t want to talk about it right now.

He wanted to see Olivia.

“What is going on with you?” Ainsley shook her head. “Seems like everyone’s having an off day since that van accident. It’s scary to think criminals are on the loose.”

“One of them was in my house.”

She gasped.

“It’s fine.” He just held me at gunpoint and called me “cousin.” “Don’t worry about it, Ains.”

“Not worry! Are you serious?” She slapped his shoulder. “I’m telling Mom.”

Izan rolled his eyes, because a man with two sisters in addition to the three brothers he had was an expert at doing that. “Don’t tell them. I was on shift, and we worked the van crash scene, that’s all. The cops in this town are friends of mine.”

Her expression shifted.

“They’re friends of yours too? Or is it just Junior?”

She rolled her eyes right back at him. “We’ve only gone out a couple of times. I can’t believe he got shot.” She covered her mouth with her hand. “His job is so dangerous.”

“So is mine, but you deal.”

Her eyes filled with tears.

Okay, maybe she didn’t deal as well as he thought she did. “We’re all highly trained. Yes, we take risks, that’s part of the job. But we do it as safely as we can.”

He wanted to point out that they always had someone to watch their backs, but Junior had been alone. The same as Olivia when she’d faced down Alonzo Sosa.

Izan dragged his sister over and gave her a hug, kissing her forehead. “Junior is gonna be fine. Hopefully, my friend will be too.”

“Is this Olivia a friend or a friend.”

“None of your business.”

She giggled and shoved him away. “You’re serious about her. You like this woman.”