Ronnie was transfixed by the sight of Doc lifting Sabra into his arms. Blood immediately saturated his clothes.
"Oh, Jesus, oh, God, what've I done?"
"Save the regrets for later, Ronnie," Doc said in a stern voice. "Tell Galloway we're coming out."
The dazed young man began mumbling into the mouthpiece.
Tiel quickly retrieved the scissors they'd used earlier and knelt down beside Cain. She sawed through the tape around his ankles. "What about my hands?" His tongue seemed thick. The man probably had two concussions.
"When you get outside." She still didn't trust him not to try and be a hero.
His eyes narrowed to slits. "You're in deep shit, lady."
"Usually," Tiel quipped, and moved to the Mexican men.
Juan was enduring his leg wound stoically, but she could feel resentment emanating from him like heat from a furnace. Keeping as much distance as possible between him and herself, she cut the tape around his ankles. It took some effort. Vern had done an excellent job.
She felt even more aversion for the one she'd nicknamed Two. His dark eyes roved over her with unconcealed malevolence and an intentionally demeaning, sexual suggestiveness that made her feel in even more need of a shower.
That chore completed, she said, "Doc, go first," and motioned him toward the door. "Right, Ronnie?"
"Right, right. Get Sabra to someone who can help her, Doc."
Tiel moved to the door and held it open for him. Sabra looked like a faded rag doll in his arms. She looked dead.
Ronnie lovingly touched her hair, her cheek. When she didn't respond, he moaned.
"Hang in there, Ronnie, she's alive," Doc assured him.
"She'll be okay."
"Dr. Giles," Tiel told Doc as he moved past with the girl.
"Got it."
In a blink, he was gone, running across the parking lot carrying the unconscious girl.
"You next," Ronnie said to Tiel.
She shook her head. "I'm staying with you. We'll go out together."
"You don't trust them?" he asked in a voice made high and thin by fright. "You think Galloway will try and pull something?"
"I don't trust them." She hitched her head back toward the other three hostages. "Let them go first."
He contemplated that, but only for an instant. "Okay.
You. Cain. Go."
The vanquished FBI agent skulked past them. Because his hands were still bound, Tiel once again held the door open. More injurious than the two clouts to his head was the blow his pride had sustained. No doubt he dreaded facing his fellow agents, particularly Galloway.
Ronnie waited until Cain had been swallowed up by a crowd of paramedics and officials before he motioned Juan and Two toward the door. "You next."
After trying twice to escape, they now seemed reluctant to leave. They shuffled forward, muttering to one another in Spanish.
"Come on," Tiel said, impatiently motioning them through the door. She was frantic to know how Sabra was faring.
Juan went first, limping noticeably. He hesitated on the threshold, his eyes darting to various points on the parking lot. Two, she noticed, was practically on Juan's heels, standing belly to butt as though using the other man as a shield. They stepped through the door.
Tiel had turned to speak to Ronnie when suddenly the front of the store was seared with blinding light. The SWAT team, looking like black beetles, came scurrying from every conceivable hiding place. Their number amazed her. She hadn't seen a third of them when she'd gone out to confer with Galloway.
Ronnie cursed and ducked behind the counter. Tiel screamed, but from outrage, not fear. She was too livid to be afraid.
Oddly, however, the tactical officers surrounded Juan and Two, ordering them to lie facedown on the ground.
The injured Juan had no choice but to comply. He practically crumpled.
Heedless of the warnings shouted at him, Two took off at a dead run but was almost immediately tackled and knocked to the concrete. Before Tiel could assimilate what had happened, it was over. The two men were shackled and dragged away by the SWAT team.
The lights went out as suddenly as they'd come on.
"Ronnie?" His name was bellowed through a bullhorn.
"Ronnie? Ms. McCoy?" It was Galloway. "Don't be alarmed. You've been in the company of some very dangerous men. We saw them on the videotape and recognized them. They're wanted by the authorities here and in Mexico. That's why they were so eager to escape. But they're in our custody now. It's safe for you to come out."
Far from being calmed by this information, Tiel was furious.
How dare they not warn her of the potential danger!
But she couldn't vent her anger now. She would take it up with Galloway and company later.
With as much composure as she could muster, she said to Ronnie, "You heard him. Everything's okay. The lights, the SWAT team had nothing to do with you. Let's go."
He still looked afraid and uncertain. In any case, he didn't move from behind the counter.
God, please don't let me make a deadly mistake now, Tiel prayed. She couldn't push him too hard, but she had to push hard enough to get him moving.
"I think it would be best if you left the pistols here, don't you? Lay them there on the counter. Then you can walk out with your hands up, and they'll know that you're sincere in wanting to work things out." He didn't move. "Right?"
He looked tired, depleted, defeated. No, no, not defeated, she corrected. If he looked upon this as a defeat, he might not leave. He might take what would seem to him the easier way out.
"You did an exceptionally brave thing, Ronnie," she said conversationally. "Standing up to Russell Dendy. The FBI. You've won. What you and Sabra wanted all along was an audience, someone to listen and play fair with you.
And you've got them to agree to do just that. That's quite an achievement."
His eyes strayed to her. She smiled, hoping it didn't look as phony and wooden as it felt-indeed, as it was.
"Set the guns down and let's go. I'll hold your hand if you like."
"No. No. I'll go out by myself." He placed the two pistols on the counter, and as he wiped his damp palms on the legs of his jeans, Tiel exhaled the breath she'd been holding.
"Go ahead. I'm right behind you."
She hesitated, worried about the handguns, which were still within his reach. Was his seeming compliance a trick?
"Okay. I'm going. Coming?"
He licked his bruised lips. "Yeah."
Nervously she turned toward the door, opened it, and stepped through. The sky was no longer black, she noticed, but dark gray, so that the silhouettes of all the vehicles and people showed up against it. The air was already hot and dry. There was a light wind, carrying sand that abraded her skin as it blew across her.
She took a few steps before glancing back. Ronnie had his hand on the door, ready to push it open. There was no sign of a weapon in his hand. Don't do anything harmful now, Ronnie. You're home free.
Ahead, waiting for her, she could make out Galloway.
Mr. Davison. Gully. Sheriff Montez.
And Doc. He was there. Standing a little apart from the others. Tall. Broad-shouldered. Hair lifting in the wind.
From the corner of her eye she saw the SWAT team herding Two into the back of a van under heavy guard.
The door was slammed closed and the van sped from the parking lot with a screech of tires. Juan had been confined to a gurney, where paramedics were tending to him.
Tiel's glance had just moved past him when she did a double take. He began wrestling against the paramedic trying to insert an IV needle into the back of his shackled hand. Like a madman in a straightjacket, he twisted his body, his head, his arms. His mouth was moving, forming words, and she wondered why she found that so puzzling.