Tiel, realizing that they intended take the agent's pistol, had kicked it beneath a freezer chest out of reach.
"Get back! Get back!" Ronnie had shouted at them. He fired again for emphasis, but aimed well above their heads. The bullet pinged into an air-conditioning vent, but it stopped their rush toward him.
Now they all remained in a frozen tableau, waiting to see what happened next, who would be the first to move, to speak.
It turned out to be Doc. "Do as he says," he ordered the two Mexicans. He held up his left hand, palm out, signaling them to move back. His right hand was clamped over his left shoulder. Blood leaked through his fingers.
"You're shot!" Tiel exclaimed.
Ignoring her, he reasoned with the two Mexican men, who were obviously reluctant to comply. "If you go charging through that door, you're liable to get a belly full of bullets."
The language as well as the logic escaped them. They understood only Doc's insistence that they remain where they were. They rebuked him in rapid-fire Spanish. Tiel picked up the word madre several times. She could only imagine the rest. However, the two did as Doc asked and skulked back to their original positions, muttering to each other and throwing hostile glares all around. Ronnie kept his pistol trained on them.
Donna was making more racket than Sabra, who was clenching her teeth to keep from crying out as a labor pain seized her. Doc ordered the cashier to stop making the god-awful noise.
"I'm not gonna live to see morning," she wailed.
"The way our luck's going, you probably will," Gladys snapped. "Now shut up."
As though her mouth had been corked, Donna's crying ceased instantly.
"Hang in there, sweetheart." Tiel had resumed her place at Sabra's side and was holding her hand through the contraction.
"I knew…" Sabra paused to pant several times. "I knew Daddy wouldn't leave it alone. I knew he would track us down."
"Don't think about him now."
"How is she?" Doc asked, joining them.
Tiel looked at his shoulder. "Are you hurt?"
He shook his head. "The bullet only grazed me. It stings, that's all." Through the tear in his sleeve, he swabbed the wound with a gauze pad, then covered it with another and asked Tiel to cut off a strip of adhesive tape.
While he held the square in place, she secured it with the tape.
"Thanks."
"You're welcome."
Up to this point no one had given any attention to the unconscious man. Ronnie approached, transferring his pistol from one hand
to the other and drying his damp palms alternately on the seat of his jeans. He hitched his chin toward Cain. "What about him?"
Tiel considered that a very good question. "I'll probably get years in prison for doing that."
Doc said to Ronnie, "I recommend that you let me drag him outside, so his buddies in that bad-ass van out there will know he's alive. If they think he's dead or wounded, it could get ugly, Ronnie."
Ronnie apprehensively glanced toward the outside and gnawed on his lower lip while considering the suggestion.
"No, no." He looked over at Vern and Gladys, who seemed to be having as good a time as two people on a theme-park thrill ride. "Find some duct tape," Ronnie told them. "I'm sure the store sells it. Bind his hands and feet."
"If you do that, you'll only be digging yourself in deeper, son," Doc warned gently.
"I don't think I could get in any deeper."
Ronnie's expression was sad, as though he was just now fully comprehending the enormity of his predicament.
What might have seemed a romantic adventure when he and Sabra ran away had turned into an incident involving the FBI and gunplay. He had committed several felonies.