"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."