Twisted Twenty-Six (Stephanie Plum 26)

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Do you have a direction?”

“No.”

“Babe.”

“Yeah, I’m a mess.”

“You aren’t a mess,” he said. “You’re just a little burned out.”

“It’s more than that. I’m stagnant. There’s no growth in my life.”

“That’s okay as long as you like what you’re doing. Not everyone needs to keep moving up the ladder.”

“You moved up the ladder.”

“I discovered that I had certain talents, and I found a way to use them to my best advantage. There’s very little gray in my life. I see things as black or white, and sometimes the dividing line isn’t always the norm for other people. I can be ruthless and aggressive. I have qualities that allow me to take advantage of people and situations. You don’t have any of those qualities. You have the talent and intelligence to go wherever you want to go, but you aren’t driven. The truth is that you’re much too sane. You’ll probably never amount to anything.”

I threw a cookie at him, and he caught it one-handed.

“You weren’t serious, were you? Do you really think I’ll never amount to anything?”

“You’re already more successful than I am. You’ve accomplished more.”

“What have I accomplished?”

“You’re a nice person.”

“So are you.”

Ranger shook his head. “I’m many things. Nice isn’t one of them.”

“You’re nice to me.”

“You’re an experiment. I’m trying to learn.”

“You’re full of crap,” I said.

That got a smile out of him.

“What I know about

success in business is that it helps to have a passion,” Ranger said. “I feel passionate about tracking down bad people and protecting good people. It’s not a job for me . . . it’s a calling. And I’m willing to wade through some ugliness to do it.”

“Don’t you get tired of the ugliness?”

“Yes, but you deal with it. And you hope you’re helping to make things better.”

“I don’t have a passion.”

“Sometimes it takes a while to figure it out,” Ranger said.

Rex came out of his can to see what was going on in the kitchen. I gave him a piece of butter cookie, and he scurried back into his soup can with it.

“Life is easy when you’re a hamster,” I said to Ranger.

“It looks boring. I’ll take ugly over boring.”