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“Why are we meeting Daddy here?” The young girl looked around curiously from her perch in the strange man’s arms. The park was nearly deserted this early in the morning and they were headed to a point a few yards past the closed ice cream stand.
Huffing in annoyance, the man responds, “This is where your mommy said your daddy would meet us to bring me the money I asked for.” Seriously, he was getting tired of the kid’s persistent questions. Ever since he had picked her up at the preschool she had not shut up. As soon as he had the ransom money he was going to be glad to be rid of her; then it would be smooth sailing on some beach somewhere.
“Why is Daddy bringing you money?” The little girl asked, frowning at her current companion, her eyes narrowed and questioning.
Not quite sure how to answer the question, Dan eventually goes with, “He works at a bank with a bunch of money and I wanted some of it.”
He watches her eyebrows come together and her head tilt to the side a bit, the move striking him as more than likely a learned expression since it didn’t really fit on such a small child.
“My daddy doesn’t work at a bank! Mommy’s boyfriend Richard works at a bank but not my daddy.” Pouting at the man, “Does that mean Richard is coming instead of Daddy?”
Dan stops walking. His girlfriend, Jenna, had told him that the girl was the daughter of Winona Hawkins and a man by the name of Richard Miller but that they had different last names, probably for some new age feminist reason. She sometimes worked with Ms. Hawkins and had overheard her talking to another co-worker about her man, and had later found out that Mr. Miller was the vice-president of one of the largest banks in the area. He and Jenna had come up with the kidnapping plan to force the banker into handing over 250,000 dollars in exchange for Miller’s young daughter. At no point had they thought the little girl might not even belong to the man.
Before he could question the girl further about Richard not being her father, the girl suddenly stretches taller in his arms looking over his shoulder and shouts “Daddy!”
Whipping around, the man spots the lone figure walking down the path. At first he can’t see the man’s face, it being obscured by a large hat, but it was hard to miss the holstered gun at his waist and the shiny U.S. Marshal badge on the opposite hip. At the little girl’s call, the man raises his head, his piercing blue eyes quickly assessing the little girl and the man carrying her. The Marshal’s mouth thins from within mostly grey stubble.
“That’s my daddy!” The girl says proudly, pointing at the intense looking stranger.
Stopping several feet from Dan and Willa, the Marshal rests his hand on the butt of his gun and smiles softly at the girl. “Hey baby, you ok?” The Marshal drawled, his accent thick. The girl nods enthusiastically and tries to reach for her daddy but the man holding her pulls her back tight to his chest. Both men stare at each other for a moment, one assessing the situation, the other trying to figure out how everything had gone so wrong.
Realizing that he should say something, Dan blurts out the first thing in his head.
“Well, you’re obviously not a banker.”
Narrowing his eyes identically to how his daughter had mere minutes ago, the Marshal responds, “No, I am not.”
“Daddy is a U.S. Marshal. The fastest draw of all the Marshals.” The little girl pipes in, the statement delivered with a firm nod like she is reciting a well known fact, something she had heard talked about many times before. Not knowing how to respond to that, Dan turns back to the Marshal, a hard stare greeting him accompanied by a short nod, the threat remaining unspoken to keep the girl from knowing how precarious the situation actually was.
She continues, “He and Papa catch all the bad guys! They are heroes!”
His continued confusion must be plain to the Marshal, because he clarifies for the girl.
“She’s referring to my much better half, her papa, who is also a Marshal and formerly a sniper with the Army Rangers. He’s currently perched on a building across the street with his biggest gun, ready to intervene should you try anything stupid.”
The little girl seems to finally understand that everything was not right and with confusion heavy in her voice she says, “Papa is here? Why is he not right here with us?”
“Baby Girl, you know how your papa says he has to constantly keep an eye on me so I stay out of trouble?” Willa giggles into her hand at her daddy’s question.
“He always says people end up hurt if he’s not watching you, Daddy!”
“Well, he decided to watch from up high so that he could see everything while this gentleman and I chatted.” Moving his eyes from the girl to Dan, the Marshal looks straight into Dan’s eyes. “Sometimes people get hurt even when he is watching.”
Dan was so done with this entire thing. Screw the money and screw his dipshit girlfriend. He was in way over his head here. “Man, I don’t want any trouble. I’m just going to set the girl down,” he slowly leans over with the girl in his arms, keeping his eyes on the Marshal’s hand resting on his gun, “and I’m going to back slowly in the other direction.” Willa’s feet touch the ground and Dan is already backing away, his hands out to the side of his head and his eyes never leaving the Marshal. Unfortunately, he doesn’t back up far before he bumps into a hard chest and his arms are being yanked down and behind his back.
“Dan Holman, you are under arrest.”
Whipping his head around, Dan sees that the solid thing he’d bumped into was actually a tall officer in a Miami PD uniform and there were two more officers standing to the sides with their guns drawn. When he looked back at the Marshal, he saw that the girl was now in her daddy’s arms, her head rested on his shoulder, and the man in the hat was wearing a lopsided grin having successfully distracted his daughter’s kidnapper, allowing the cops to get within shooting range once he released the little girl. If his hands were free, Dan thought maybe he’d have his face buried in them now and he wouldn’t even blame himself if he were also crying a little.
A couple of minutes later, Dan is sitting in the back of the squad car at the entrance to the park. He suddenly hears running feet and a man with slicked back dark hair jogs into view, a large case slung over his shoulder. He stops a few inches from the Marshal and envelops the man and the girl in a hug, burying his face in the girls blond hair. This man, obviously the sniper if the big case is any indication, is a bit shorter than the Marshal but when he turns to look at Dan, his steely cold eyes convince Dan that had he been the one to meet them in the park, Dan would not be walking away completely unscathed now.
“Papa! We had an adventure! Did you see us?” The girl nearly shouts, reaching for her papa.
“Willa, you tell Tim about your adventure and after i’m done talking to the man that brought you here we are all going to get ice cream and figure out how to tell your mother without her going crazy.”
That gets the tall Marshal an exaggerated eyeroll and a “Raylan” from his husband. ‘Raylan’ hands his daughter to ‘Tim’ and heads in the direction of the squad car. Dan is doing his best to back away and act like he wasn’t watching the entire exchange. Not getting far due to the cuffs keeping him in his seat, Dan is still next to the window when Raylan leans into it, one elbow resting on the top of the car.
“Now, I know that you really had no idea what you were getting into when you picked this little girl to take.” His drawl somehow being both condescending and oddly comforting. “I get that you were under the impression she belonged to my ex-wife and her boyfriend, I do. But you see, even if I ignore how incredibly stupid you must be to not do some research on the matter and see what you were missing, you still thought that it was a great idea to kidnap a goddamn kid to try to get something from her parents. To me, well, you’re about as low on the scale of humanity as you can get. It’s only your dumb luck that it happened to be my kid you decided to mess with. You are now going to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Every outstanding warrant, parking ticket, littering charge, and jaywalking citation you’ve ever had or avoided will be thrown on top of the kidnapping charges you are going to be facing.”
Leaning closer, his face almost in the window, Raylan continues in a low voice, “and you are going to happily admit to everything, and thank your non-existant luck that you are only riding away from here with a broken nose.”
Eyes widening, Dan opens his mouth to say “broken nose!” when Raylan’s fist flashes through the window, square into Dan’s face. There is a crunch and extreme pain screams through his face, the only noise being a choked grunt as Dan can’t even get the air to cry out.
Struggling to catch a breath through his now broken nose and the blood gushing down his face, Dan opens his eyes a couple moments later to see the Marshal back with his family and leading them down the street to a parked car. He nods his head at the uniformed officer standing near the squad car, who leans nearer the window till he can see his bloody passenger.
“Shame you fell and broke your nose while resisting arrest, we’ll swing by the hospital on the way to the station and have that reset.” Dan groans and slumps back in his seat, he was so screwed.