Standoff (3 page)

Compared to the dimness of the hallway, the fluorescent lighting in the store seemed inordinately bright. The cowboy had left. The elderly couple were browsing through the array of magazines. The two Spanish-speaking men were eating their burritos and talking quietly together.

Tiel sensed their smoldering gazes as she went past them on her way to the refrigerated cabinets. One said something to the other that caused him to snicker. It was easy to guess the nature of the comment. Thankfully, her

Spanish was rusty.

She slid open the door to the refrigerator and selected a six-pack of high-voltage cola for the road. From a rack of snack food she chose a package of sunflower seeds. During college she had discovered that cracking open the salty seeds in order to get to the kernel inside was a good manual exercise to keep one awake while studying. Hopefully it would translate to night driving as well.

She debated whether or not to buy a bag of chocolate-covered caramels. Just because a man she had been dating for weeks had turned out to be a married shit-heel didn't mean she should use that as an excuse to binge. On the other hand, if ever she deserved a treat—

The security camera in the corner of the ceiling virtually exploded, sending pieces of glass and metal flying.

Instinctively Tiel recoiled from the deafening noise.

But the camera hadn't exploded on its own. A young man had entered the store and fired a pistol at it. The gunman then aimed his weapon at the cashier, who screeched a high note before the sound seemed to freeze inside her throat.

"This is a holdup," he said melodramatically, and somewhat needlessly, since it was apparent what it was.

To the young woman who had accompanied him into the store, he said, "Sabra, watch the others. If anyone moves, warn me."

"Okay, Ronnie."

Well, I might die, Tiel thought. But at least I'll get my story.

And she wouldn't be going to Hera to get it. It had come to her.

chapter 2

You!" ronnie davison pointed the pistol at Tiel.

"Come over here. Lie down on the floor." Incapable of moving, she only gaped at him. "Now!"

Dropping her package of sunflower seeds and the six-pack of sodas, she scrambled over to the indicated spot and lay facedown as instructed. Now that her initial shock had worn off, she bit her tongue to keep from asking him why he was compounding a kidnaping with an armed robbery.

But she doubted that at this moment the young man would be receptive to questions. Besides, until she knew what he had planned for her and the other eyewitnesses, perhaps she shouldn't reveal that she was a reporter and knew his and his accomplice's identities.

"Get over here and lie down," he ordered the elderly couple. "You two." He pointed the gun at the Mexican men. "Now! Move it!"

The old people complied without argument. The Mexican men remained where they were. "I'll shoot you if you don't get over here!" Ronnie shouted.

Keeping her head down and addressing her words to the floor, Tiel said, "They don't speak English."

"Shut up!"

Ronnie Davison broke the language barrier and made himself understood by motioning with the pistol. Moving slowly, reluctantly, the men joined Tiel and the elderly couple on the floor.

"Put your hands behind your head."

Tiel and the others did as he asked.

Over the years, Tiel had covered dozens of news stories wherein innocent bystanders, who had become eyewitnesses to a crime, were all too often found at the scene, lying facedown, dead, one gunshot to the back of the head, executed for no other reason except that they had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Was this to be how her life ended?

Strangely, she wasn't so much afraid as angry. She hadn't done everything she wanted to do! Snowboarding looked like a real kick, but she hadn't had time to try it.

Correction: She hadn't taken time to try it. She'd never toured the Napa Valley. She wanted to see Paris again, not as a high school student under strict supervision, but on her own, free to meander the boulevards at will.

There were goals she had yet to reach. Think of the stories she would miss covering if her life ended now. Nine

Live would go to Linda Harper by default, and that was so unfair.

And not all her dreams were career-oriented. She and other single friends joked about their biological clocks, but in private she anguished over its incessant tick. If she died tonight, having a child would be just one of many dreams left unfulfilled.

Then there was the other thing. The big thing. The powerful guilt that fueled her ambition. She hadn't done

enough yet to make up for that. She hadn't yet atoned for harsh words spoken angrily and flippantly, which, tragically, had been prophetic. She must live to make restitution for that.

She held her breath, waiting for death.

But Davison's attention was on something else. "You, in the corner," the young man shouted. "Now! Or I'll kill the old folks. It's up to you."

Tiel raised her head only high enough to glance into the fish-eye mirror mounted in the corner at the ceiling.

Her assumption had been wrong. The cowboy hadn't left.

In the mirror, she watched him calmly replace a paperback novel in its slot on the revolving rack. As he sauntered down the aisle, he removed his hat and set it on top of a shelf. Tiel experienced a flurry of recognition, but she attributed it to having seen him before when he came into the store.

The eyes he kept trained on Ronnie Davison had a tracery of fine lines at the corners. Unsmiling lips. The face said Don't mess with me, and Ronnie Davison read it well.

Nervously he shifted the pistol from one hand to the other until the cowboy was stretched out alongside one of the

Mexican men, his hands clasped on the back of his head.

While all this was going on, the cashier had been emptying the cash drawer into a plastic grocery bag. Apparently this out-of-the-way store wasn't equipped with an after-dark safe into which cash automatically went. From what Tiel could discern, there was an appreciable amount of money in the sack Sabra Dendy took from the cashier.

"I've got the money, Ronnie," said the daughter of one of Fort Worth's richest men.

"Okay then." He hesitated as though unsure about what to do next. "You," he said, addressing the terrified cashier.

"Lie down with the rest of them."

She might have weighed ninety pounds sopping wet and was a stranger to sunscreen. The skin hanging loosely from her bony arms looked like leather, Tiel noticed as the tiny woman lay down beside her. Little hiccups of terror erupted from her spasmodically.

Everyone had his own unique way of reacting to fear.

The elderly couple had disobeyed Ronnie's orders to keep both hands behind their heads. The man's right hand was tightly clasping his wife's left.

This is it, Tiel thought. He'll kill us now.

She closed her eyes and tried to pray, but it had been a while and she was out of practice. The poetic language of the King James Bible eluded her. She wanted this appeal to be eloquent and stirring, persuasive and impressive, compelling enough to distract God from all the other prayers coming His way at this particular moment.

But God probably wouldn't approve of her purely selfish reasons for wanting to live anyhow, so all she could think to say was, "Heavenly Father, please don't let me die."

When the scream rent the silence, Tiel thought for certain it had originated from the cashier. She glanced quickly at the woman beside her, to see what unspeakable torture had been inflicted. But the woman was still blubbering, not screaming.

It was Sabra Dendy who had screamed, and that first startling sound was followed by, "Oh, my God! Ronnie.1"

The boy rushed over to her. "Sabra? What's the matter?

What's happening?"

"I think it's… Oh, Lord."

Tiel couldn't help herself. She raised her head to see what was going on. The girl was whimpering and staring aghast at the puddle of fluid between her feet.

"Her water broke."

Ronnie whipped his head around and glared at Tiel.

"What?"

"Her water broke." She repeated the statement with more composure than she felt. Actually her heart was hammering.

This might be the spark that set him off and caused him to bring things to a swift conclusion, such as shooting them all and then dealing with his girlfriend's crisis.

"That's right, young man." Unafraid, the elderly woman sat up and addressed him with the temerity she had demonstrated when lecturing her husband about fiddling with the home video camera. "Her baby's coming."

"Ronnie? Ronnie?" Sabra crammed the skirt of her sundress up between her thighs, as though to impede the course of nature. On bended knees, she lowered herself to the floor until she was sitting back on her heels. "What are we going to do?"

Clearly the girl was frightened. Neither she nor Ronnie seemed adept at armed robbery. Or at childbirth, for that matter. Taking courage from the older lady, Tiel also sat up. "I suggest—"

"You shut up," Ronnie shouted. "Everybody just shut

I )» up!

He kept his pistol aimed at them as he knelt down beside

Sabra. "Are they right? This means the baby's coming?"

"I think so." She nodded, shaking loose tears and sending them rolling down her cheeks. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay. How much time… How long before it's born?"

"I don't know. It varies, I think."

"Does it hurt?"

A fresh batch of tears formed in her eyes. "It's been hurting for a couple of hours."

"A couple of hours!" he cried in alarm.

"But only a little. Not bad."

"How long since it started? Why didn't you tell me?"

"If she's been in labor—"

"I told you to shut up!" he yelled at Tiel.

"If she's been in labor for a while," she said persistently, keeping her eyes steadfastly on his, "you'd better get medical attention. Immediately."

"No," Sabra said hastily. "Don't listen to her, Ronnie."

She grabbed his sleeve. "I'm okay. I'm—"

A pain seized her. Her face contorted. She gasped for breath.

"Oh, God. Oh, Jesus." Ronnie studied Sabra's face, raking his teeth across his lower lip. His gun hand wavered.

One of the Mexican men—the shorter of the two— surged to his feet and lunged toward the couple.

"No!"Tiel shouted.

The cowboy made a grab for the Mexican's leg, but missed.

Ronnie fired the pistol.

The bullet shattered the glass door of the refrigerated compartment, making a horrific sound and puncturing a plastic gallon jug. Everything nearby was showered with glass and milk.

The Mexican man drew up short. Before he came to a complete rest, inertia caused his body to rock slightly forward, then back, as though his boots had become stuck to the floor.

"Stay back or I'll shoot you!" Ronnie's face was congested with blood. A common language wasn't required to get his message across. The man's taller friend spoke to him softly and urgently in Spanish. He backed away until he reached his starting point, then sat down again.

Tiel glared at him. "You could have gotten your fool head blown off. Save your machismo for another time, okay? I don't want to get killed because of it."

Although the words were unknown to him, he caught her drift. Pridefully, his dark eyes smoldered resentment over being dressed down by a woman, but she didn't care.

Tiel turned back to the young couple. Sabra was now lying on her side, her knees drawn up to her chest. For the moment she was quiet.

By contrast, Ronnie looked on the verge of losing all self-control. Tiel didn't believe that, in the span of a single afternoon, he could have been transformed from a student who'd never been in trouble into a cold-blooded killer. She didn't think the boy had it in him to kill anyone, even in self-defense. If he had wanted to hit the man who had charged him, he could have easily. Instead he appeared as upset as anyone that he'd had to fire the pistol.

Tiel guessed that he had intentionally missed the man and fired the gun only to underscore his threat.

Or she could be entirely, terribly wrong.

According to Gully's information, Ronnie Davison came from a broken home. His real father lived far away, so visits couldn't have been too frequent. Ronnie lived with his mother and stepfather. What if little Ronnie had had a problem with those arrangements? What if his personality had been twisted by the forced separation from his father, and for years he'd been harboring hatred and mistrust? What if he had been concealing murderous impulses as successfully as he and Sabra had concealed her pregnancy? What if he'd been driven over the edge by

Russell Dendy's reaction to their news? He was desperate, and desperation was a dangerous motivator.

For speaking out, she would probably be the first one he shot. But she couldn't just lie there and die without at least trying to avoid it. "If you care anything for this girl…"

"I've told you before to shut up."

"I'm only trying to prevent a disaster, Ronnie." Since he and Sabra had addressed each other, he wouldn't wonder how she knew his name. "If you don't get help for Sabra, you're going to regret it for the rest of your life." He was listening, so she took advantage of his apparent indecision.

"I assume the child is yours."

"What the hell do you think? Of course it's mine."

"Then I'm sure you're concerned for its well-being as much as you are for Sabra's. She needs medical assistance."

"Don't listen to her, Ronnie," Sabra said weakly, "The pain's better now. Maybe it's a false alarm, after all. I'll be okay if I can just rest for a while."

"I could take you to a hospital. There's got to be one fairly close."

"No!" Sabra sat up and gripped his shoulders. "He'd find out. He'd come after us. No. We're driving straight through to Mexico tonight. Now that we've got some money, we can make it."

"I could call my dad…"

She shook her head. "Daddy could've got to him by now. Bribed him or something. We're on our own, Ronnie, and that's how I want it. Help me up. Let's get out of here." But as she struggled to get up, another pain seized her and she gripped her distended abdomen. "Oh my