Page 13 of Gentle Persuasion

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Vendors lined the boardwalk, hawking their food and souvenirs, their sun block and umbrellas, until Cole thought they’d never make it to the beach. Debbie was entranced by everything and had to see and sample all that was offered. It took them twenty minutes to get from the car to the middle of the vendors’ walkway, and during that time, she’d downed a corn dog, a lemonade, and was beginning a frozen yogurt.

“You’ll have to wait forever to get in the water,” Cole teased.

Debbie shrugged. “It’s okay,” she said. “We’ve got all day.”

He sighed. That’s what worried him.

The people walked in twos and threes and sometimes bunches of eight—families and friends out for a good time and some sun and surf. Long-legged beauties sporting string bikinis and roller blades skated through the crowded throng with skilled precision, announcing their approach by the rumble of wheels on the boardwalk.

Body builders, greasy and brown as a bag full of fries, bulged appropriately whenever anyone was watching, and sometimes just for their own satisfaction.

Skateboards swished and swooped, their lone occupants performing dangerous yet graceful acrobatics, defying the law of gravity, as they came and went through the crowds with unpredictable regularity.

“Clinton, Oklahoma, was never like this,” Debbie muttered.

Cole grinned. He knew what she meant. He’d spent just enough time on Case Longren’s ranch to get an appreciation of the peace and quiet the people in rural Oklahoma took for granted. It had been something of a culture shock to him when he’d first seen all that wide, open space and all those cows. But by the time he’d left, the culture shock had been reversed, and it had taken him a week to reacclimatize himself to the sounds of sirens day and night and the growing numbers of people with which he had to contend on a day-to-day basis.

A trio of young males came swooping past, wearing cutoff jeans, frayed and frazzled, with white strings dangling to just above their knees, their bare arms and chests gleaming in a rich array from dark chocolate skin to pink and peeling. Their means of locomotion—the latest fad in skating—roller blades.

Debbie was jostled as they passed. She grabbed at her bag as her sunglasses fell to the pavement. Cole caught her just in time, preventing her from following her glasses’ descent.

Something about the trio’s frenetic movements alerted Cole. He frowned. They were pushing the limits of what constituted beach etiquette. Granted, it was crowded, but they were still plowing their way through the people with no concerns save their own. A young man staggered as the trio rolled past, and a woman yelled a rude obscenity and flashed a following gesture.

“Are you all right?” he asked sharply.

“I’m fine,” Debbie said. “It was just an accident.” Wasn’t it? The last of her statement remained unspoken.

She sensed Cole’s uneasiness as she picked up her sunglasses and stuffed them in her bag. She took one quick look at his face. He was watching the trio sweep a path through the crowd.

Suddenly, the boy in the middle did a 360-degree turn around an elderly couple and, before her eyes, snatched the huge beach bag off the lady’s shoulder.

“Cole!” Debbie gasped, but it was an unnecessary warning. He’d already seen it coming.

“Wait here,” he ordered. He turned to a hot dog vendor and yelled, “Call the police!”

The vendor quickly assessed the situation and grabbed a briefcase from out of a cabinet beneath his stand. A cellular phone appeared in his hands, and he quickly began to dial.

The boy laughed, almost thumbing his nose at the dismay and destruction he left in his wake and gave one last, third-fingered salute to whomever cared to look.

For whatever reason, call it fate, call it bad luck, but the thief’s eyes connected with the shocked expression on Debbie’s face. For one slow moment in time, everything suspended, movement ceased, motion stopped. There was only Debbie staring into the dark, fathomless eyes of one who’d ceased to care. The connection was unwelcome to both, but it had happened. Debbie shivered, and the moment passed as quickly as it had begun. And then all she could see was Cole running and people screaming as someone called the police.

***

Cole’s first thought as he dashed through the crowd, trying to keep the thief’s bare brown backside separated from the other near-nude pedestrians, was that his service revolver was safety locked in the car back in the parking lot. That he was unarmed and chasing a perpetrator gave him second thoughts, but he didn’t stop.

The trio was moving fast. Cole knew it was almost beyond hope that he’d ever catch up. He was fast on his feet, but no match for wheels. And the density of the crowd through which he was running hindered him even more. One thing was in his favor; he didn’t think they knew they were being followed. He could see them yelling back and forth between themselves, and then he saw the woman’s bag drop to the ground.

Hell! he thought. They’ve already stripped it!

Before his eyes, they split and moved in three different directions. Cole muttered a helpless curse as he noticed something else. They’ve taken off their skates! Now they were no longer forced to stay on firm surface to make their getaway. This obviously wasn’t their first snatch.

They disappeared into the crowd, leaving Cole to retrieve the only thing he could catch: the woman’s bag. He bent down and picked it up, frustrated by the fact that they’d gotten away. The wallet was missing…of course. They were after cash. The rest of the stuff scattered on the street would only have been excess baggage to someone in need of a quick getaway.

He shoved the articles back into the bag and started through the crowd. For the first time since the incident began, he remembered that he’d left Debbie standing in the midst of strangers, witness to a part of his world that he’d learned not to share. He began to trot, anxious and uneasy. She would probably be either mad or frightened or a combination of both. A slow, sick feeling began to grow inside him. I don’t want to lose her. And then reality surfaced. He couldn’t lose something he didn’t have.

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