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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.
