Married To The Mob. Ginny Aiken

attitude of yours. Don’t get me wrong. I’m familiar with it. J.Z. and David, another agent at the Bureau, believe as you do. But I…I don’t get it.”

      She stared at him for a moment, her gaze piercing and, he suspected, perceptive. He wriggled in his seat.

      “I was in that place not so long ago,” she said. “And it wasn’t all that great an address. The loneliness hurt more than any other pain I’ve known.”

      “But I’m not lonely,” he argued. “I’ve got friends—David and J.Z., for instance—and I’m always surrounded by people, suspects and colleagues.”

      Her smile spoke of secrets. “Um-hmm, I know what you mean. But what happens when you go to bed at night, when you close the door to all those ‘friends and colleagues,’ when it’s just you in the dark?”

      The question hit a private corner of his heart. He shrugged, somewhat defensive. “I’m like everyone else. We’re all alone when you strip away the outside world.”

      “Oh, no. We’re not all alike.” This time she reached out, put her hand on his shoulder. “Not if we realize we don’t have to be alone.”

      “If you’re suggesting marriage or a dog, you might as well forget it.”

      “Don’t be so blind on purpose.” She shook her head. “You know where I’m going, and I won’t let you pull that kind of dumb act. You have Christian friends. You know they’re where I am on this. We’re not alone in the dark.”

      “Now you’re going to tell me I have to come to Jesus, to be born again, to fall on my knees, a broken-down man.”

      “If you would just cut out the sarcasm, maybe then we’d get somewhere.”

      “Don’t you understand?” He spared her a sideways glance; her irritation made him even more uncomfortable, more resistant, more determined to get his point across. “There’s nothing out there for me to see, to cling to when the loneliness hits.”

      Another shake of her head, this one accompanied with a look filled with pity. “Have you even tried? Have you ever reached out to God, to see if He did or didn’t answer?”

      “Of course not. I’d feel ridiculous talking to something I couldn’t see or feel.”

      She chuckled. “That, Danny Boy, is what’s called faith. We reach out and trust that something we can’t see or feel. And that’s exactly when God comes and meets us, at our most fragile moment, when we have no safety net under us.”

      He shrugged. “I’m not ready to take that fall.”

      “He won’t let you fall. God will catch you in the palm of His hand, and never let you go.”

      “It must be nice to have that kind of image to hold on to.” Somewhere inside him, an even greater gaping hole than that of the private loneliness made its presence known. “I’ll admit I sort of wish I could believe. And I get what makes you tick these days. But I can’t join you on this. I can only count on myself.”

      “And you think you can…oh, let’s say, go into the lion’s den, armed only with your self-reliance and your gun, and beat my family and all their connections? One other Daniel didn’t think that was so smart.”

      He blushed. “Well, if you put it that way, it does sound kind of arrogant.”

      “Yep. That’s just a teeny-tiny little bit like seeing yourself as equal to God.”

      “Hey, I never said that.”

      “No, but that’s the attitude that, like you said, makes you tick.”

      His squirming got worse. He’d never thought of himself as arrogant, just a confident, self-sufficient man. “Look, all I know is that the federal government spent a bundle to train me. I’m an expert at what I do, and I’m highly motivated. Not only is success the goal in the job I love, but I’m personally sold out here, in your case.”

      “What do you mean?”

      “I owe you for what you did. You saved J.Z.’s wife—my partner’s future wife back then. That means a lot to me.”

      “So you only see me as a job, a duty to repay a debt.”

      “A crucial job, one that demands commitment at a higher level than most, and it’s an obligation I’ll gladly undertake, no matter how great the responsibility. After all, it’s in my hands, my alertness, my response to danger, whether you live or die.”