�Hi Val. I�m going to ask you not to do what you are about to do. It�s important--for both of us.�
He had sat down at the small round table and with a firm touch took both of her hands that were resting on either side of the open book and the lidded paper cup of fragrant coffee.
Val looked at this old man peculiarly. He didn�t appear to be a loony or a derelict off the street but she was relatively sure she had never met him before. And she had no idea what he was talking about. At the moment she didn�t have plans to do anything except drink her cinnamon latte and read her text book in preparation for the test tomorrow. For a moment she wondered if he was a professor at MU, not from Social Sciences, she knew all of those, but perhaps from another department of the school or maybe a clerical worker. How else would he know her name? He was well dressed in a brown suit jacket and white collared shirt. His thinning hair was combed demurely, his white beard was close and neatly trimmed making him looked distinguished, her first image of a teacher growing stronger. She peered down at their contrasting hands, clasped together in the middle of the table as if they were lovers. His were hard and pale, thick, wrinkled yet warm while hers were slender, rich mahogany brown and felt icy even to herself. Possibly the comfort of his hands around hers was the only reason that her first instinct was not to yank them free. She puzzled the face through her brain once more and came up empty.
�I�m sorry, do I know you?� she asked embarrassed.
�Introductions later, right now we�re going to have to take shelter under the table.�
And with that he brusquely yanked her off her chair tossing the coffee and text book into flight.
At that exact moment a man wearing a woolen ski mask pulled down over his face charged into the Cup Of Joe Caf� and waving a gun screamed for everybody to get down, this was a robbery. Every other occupied table was spilling their coffees performing the same maneuver they had just done a second earlier. The man pirouetted up to the counter looking wildly in every direction, swinging the gun to follow his glare before training it on the young kid behind the register.
�Gimme all the money. Put it in a bag. FAST! Or you�re DEAD.�
Fumbling with the plastic security card on a strap around his neck for a long tense moment the startled youth finally seized it, slid it through a slot on the register, punched some buttons and the drawer popped open. Grabbing hand full�s of bills he jammed them into a takeout bag. The criminal was so intent on watching the clerk�s actions to make sure all the money went in, that he didn�t notice the thirty-something woman with short blond hair, two tables in back of him, pull her service revolver from her ankle holster. But Val did.
From her spot, trundled onto the floor in a heap by the stranger, she was about eight feet behind and to the right of the off duty policewoman�s table and could see the whole event playing out before her as if she were watching it on a movie screen. It was surreal, in Technicolor production, and frightening. The woman pointed the gun and stood up shouting, �Police! Drop the--�
That�s all that she said because she had miscalculated her bearings by an inch. As she was rising she was bringing her second hand up to cradle the gun in the proper firing stance but she was too close to the table and the barrel caught on the edge just as her other hand was coming into contact with the weapon and the piece flipped from her fingers, spiraling in a polished steel pinwheel to the floor. She had now presented herself as a target, drawn the gunman�s attention and lost her only defense.
The man in the mask turned and even through the small holes in the fabric Val could see that his eyes were panicked and he was about to fire. Without thinking she went to raise her hand to prevent the disaster but realized suddenly that her hands were still grasped by the old man�s. She whirled to look into his eyes and he sadly shook his head. Anger and puzzlement slitted her intense scowl at this interloper into her immediate future. Three seconds later the room was filled with the echo of the blast and the acrid smell of gunpowder residue, the woman was tumbling back over a chair and then the assailant was fleeing out the door without the money. Screams over screams echoed through the small store and mad shuffling followed, some in retreat, some to the aid of the fallen officer. The boy behind the counter, still holding the bag of crumpled bills, unwillingly released his bladder and collapsed into the shelving behind him that held the extra cup lids. Cell phones began chirping emergency services calls. And all Val could do was stare at the old man.
How could he have known? And if he knew, why did he stop her?
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