Sandra Brown - Standoff

"If they surrender, we'll get her to a hospital pronto.

They have my guarantee."

"I'm afraid that's not a contingency."

"Davison won't let her go?"

"No," Tiel said. "She refuses to leave."

"Shee-ut, what a mess," he expelled on a heavy sigh.

"Okay, I'll see what I can do."

"Sheriff, I can't impress on you enough how badly this young woman is suffering. And…"

"Go ahead, Ms. McCoy. What?"

"The situation is under control," she said slowly. "For the time being everyone is calm. Please don't take any drastic measures."

"I hear what you're saying, Ms. McCoy. No grandstanding.

No fireworks, SWAT teams, and such?"

"Precisely." She was relieved that he understood. "So far, no one has been injured."

"And we'd all like to keep it that way."

"I'm very glad to hear you say that. Please, please, get a doctor here as quickly as you can."

"I'm on it. Here's the number of the phone I've got with me."

She committed the number to memory. Montez wished her luck and hung up. She replaced the telephone on the countertop, glad to note that it was an older model and didn't have a speaker-phone feature. Ronnie might wish to listen in on future conversations.

"He's working on getting a doctor here."

"I like the sound of that," Doc said.

"How soon before he gets here?"

Turning to Ronnie, she replied, "As soon as possible.

I'm going to be honest with you. He guessed your and Sabra's identity."

"Oh, hell," the boy groaned. "What else can go wrong?"

"They've been located!"

Russell Dendy nearly knocked down the FBI agent who happened to be standing in his path when the shout came from the adjacent room. He didn't apologize for causing the agent to spill scalding coffee over his hand. He barreled into the library of his home, which, since that morning, had been converted into a command post.

"Where? Where are they? Has he hurt my daughter? Is Sabra all right?"

Special Agent William Galloway was in charge. He was a tall, thin, balding man who, if not for the pistol riding in the small of his back, looked more like a mortgage banker than a federal agent. His demeanor wasn't consistent with the stereotype either. He was calm and soft-spoken-most of the time. Russell Dendy had put Galloway's pleasant disposition to the test.

As Dendy stalked into the room blurting questions, Galloway signaled for him to pipe down and continued his telephone conversation.

Dendy impatiently punched a button on the telephone and a woman's voice filtered through the speaker. "It's called Rojo Flats. Practically in the middle of nowhere, west-southwest of San Angelo. They're armed. They tried to rob a convenience store, but it was thwarted. Now they're holding hostages inside the store."

"Damn him. Damn him!" Dendy ground his fist into his opposite palm. "He turned my daughter into a common criminal! And she couldn't understand why I objected to him."

Galloway once again signaled him to keep his voice down. "You said they're armed. Are there any casualties?"

"No, sir. But the girl is in labor."

"Inside the store?"

"Affirmative."

Dendy cursed lavishly. "He's holding her against her will!"

The disembodied woman said, "According to one of the hostages who spoke to the sheriff, the young woman refuses to leave."

"He's brainwashed her," Dendy declared.

The FBI agent from the Odessa office continued as though she hadn't heard him. "One of the hostages ap parently has some medical knowledge. He's seeing to her, but a doctor has been requested."

Dendy thumped the top of the desk with his fist. "I want Sabra the hell out of there, do you hear me?"

"We hear you, Mr. Dendy," Galloway said with diminishing patience.

"I don't care if you have to blast her out of there with dynamite."

"Well, I care. According to the spokesperson, no one has been injured."

"My daughter's in labor!"

"And we'll get her to a hospital as soon as possible. But I'm not going to do anything that will endanger the lives of those hostages, your daughter, or Mr. Davison."

"Look, Galloway, if you're going to take a limp-dick approach to this situation-"

"The approach I take is my call, not yours. Is that understood?"

Russell Dendy had the reputation of being a real son of a bitch. Unfortunately, meeting him hadn't dispelled any myths or changed Galloway's preconceptions of the millionaire.

Dendy exercised despotic supervision over several corporations.

He wasn't accustomed to relinquishing control to someone else, or even to giving anyone else a vote in the way things were managed. His businesses weren't democracies, and neither was his family. Mrs. Dendy had done nothing all day except weep into her hankie and second her husband's answers to the agents' probing questions about their family life and their relationship with their daughter. She hadn't offered a single opinion that differed from his, or voiced any personal observations.

From the start Galloway had doubted Dendy's allega tion of a kidnaping. Instead he leaned heavily toward the more viable version: Sabra Dendy had run away from home with her boyfriend in order to escape her domineering father.

Galloway's dressing-down had left Russ Dendy practically spitting with fury. "I'm on my way out there."

"I don't advise that."

"As if I give a rat's ass what you advise."

"There's no room in our chopper for extra passengers," the agent called to Dendy's retreating back.

"Then I'll take my Lear."

He stormed from the room and began shouting orders to his band of flunkies who were ever present, as silent and unobtrusive as pieces of furniture until Dendy's strident commands jump-started them. They filed out behind him. Mrs, Dendy was ignored and not invited to go along.

Galloway disengaged the speaker phone and picked up the receiver, so he could hear the other agent more clearly. "Guess you heard all that."

"You've got your hands full, Galloway."

"And then some. How're the locals out there?"

"From what I understand, Montez is a competent sheriff, but he's in way over his head and is smart enough to know it. He's getting backup from the Rangers and highway patrol."

"Will they resent our presence, you think?"

"Don't they always?" she came back dryly.

"Well, it came to us as a kidnaping. I'm leaving it at that until I know better."

"Actually, Montez will probably be glad to land the problem in our lap. His chief concern is that there be no heroics. He wants to avoid bloodshed."

"Then he and I are on the same page. I think what we've got here is a couple of scared kids who've got themselves trapped in a situation and can't find a way out.

What, if anything, do you know about the hostages?"

She gave him the breakdown by gender. "One's been identified by Sheriff Montez as a local rancher. The cashier is a fixture at the convenience store. Everybody in Rojo Flats knows her. And that Ms. McCoy who talked to Sheriff Montez?"

"What about her?"

"She's a reporter for a TV station in Dallas."

"Tiel McCoy?"

"So you know her?"

He knew her and mentally formed an image: slender, short blond hair, light eyes. Blue, possibly green. She was on TV nearly every night. Galloway had also seen her outside the studio among reporters at the scenes of crimes he'd investigated. She was aggressive, but objective. Her reports were never unfairly inflammatory or exploitative.

She was a looker and utterly feminine, but her delivery merited credibility.

He wasn't thrilled to hear that a broadcast journalist of her caliber was at the epicenter of this crisis. It was a compounding factor he could easily have done without.

"Great. A reporter is already on the scene." He ran his hand around the back of his neck, where tension had begun to gather. It was going to be a long night. He predicted the previously unheard-of Rojo Flats would soon be swarmed by media, contributing to the mayhem.