She looked up through her lashes with a withering expression. “Yeah. I wouldn’t be bragging about my negotiation skills if I’d just spent three years locked up.”
“Negotiating business deals is different from evading the law.”
“Right.” She scribbled something on the napkin. “Anything else.”
“Keeping my mouth shut.”
“Ah, yes. I recall you were unwilling to become an informant for a lighter sentence. Good for you. Or should I say, good for your friends who got to go on with their lives while you took the punishment.”
Zach leaned over the table, and Lauren had the decency to move back. “If I’d ratted, I’d be dead. Prison doesn’t save you from that.”
Lauren’s shoulders sank. “The cycle doesn’t break unless one of the links decides to let go. You’re holding onto a life that hasn’t done you any favors. Your first thirty years have been about survival. Wouldn’t you like to spend the next thirty actually living?”
Zach bit the inside of his cheek. “Not as easy as it sounds.”
She crossed out whatever she’d written on the napkin. “Let’s move on to your previous work experience. Have you ever had a job? Not the family business, but a job where you had to pay taxes from your income?”
“Nope.”
She slammed her pen on the table. “What is the family business?”
Zach leaned forward to whisper. “Can you be quiet? You’re drawing more attention.”
“What is the family business?” she whispered back.
“Moving guns. Trade. Distribution.”
Lauren rolled her eyes. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Not at all. I’m a logistics manager. Let’s say I was in upper management.”
She grabbed the pen and wrote furiously on the napkin. “Forget the past. Let’s find something new. The future is wide open ahead of you.”
“Yes. Rainbows and butterflies will be waiting at my new job as a garbage man.”
She slid the napkin across the table and clicked her pen closed.
Zach didn’t reach for it, but the letters were big and bold enough to read.
“Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: Forgetting what lies behindand straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
When he finished reading the weird paragraph, he looked at her. “What does that mean?”
“It’s from the book of Philippians in the Bible. Paul wrote a letter to the church in Philippi. Do you know who Paul was?”
Zach let out a short laugh before reaching for his coffee. “You assume I’ve ever read a book.”
“Paul was a man who devoted his life to finding and torturing people who believed in Jesus Christ. One day, he met Jesus on the road, and his life changed forever. That’s a watered-down version, but basically Paul was a ruthless man who humbled himself and changed the course of his life once he realized he’d been working for the wrong side. More than that, he changed the world for all of us by spreading the word about Christ.”
“You’re comparing me to an ancient man who gave up his life of crime and got good? I think you’re giving me too much credit. I’ll break the law again before tomorrow morning.”
Lauren gritted her teeth and let out a slow breath. “I’m saying you have a chance to change. Make a difference. Leave the past behind.”
Her optimism was completely unrealistic. She’d get the hint and quit harping, eventually. “Yeah. I’ll consider it.”
The waitress appeared beside their booth with twoheaping plates of food. “Let me know if you need anything else.”
Lauren closed her eyes and bowed her head. A few seconds later, she lifted her head and picked up her fork. A melancholy expression lingered on her face as she ate in silence.
