Desirée pressed back against the dark wall of yet one more building empty of life. Her eyes were awash with tears and the terror of running for one’s life.
The shots had been stopped for a while, but just then the sound of Lonigan’s gun fired once more. With teeth biting her full lower lip to the point of bleeding she debated about what to do.
Should she go back? A shot sounded out then that echoed through the city streets as if a small cannon had gone off and reflexively Desirée cried out with anguish knowing what that shot meant. Her friend and only compatriot this past year of discipleship was dead.
Crying with heartfelt abandon she sank to her knees, as the grief she felt over the loss of the one man who had ever actually truly loved her for who she was, apart from some attraction of the flesh, echoed loudly throughout all her heart and culminated in a wale of, “Oh Jesus what do I do? Why have You abandoned me this night? Why???” She cried out as she pitched over onto her face.
Peace enveloped her and with it came the urging to stay where she was, but that made no sense. Why stay here and die in this place?
It didn’t matter though what she could fathom, as the ways of God are higher than those of men, and she felt certain that she was to stay where she was and it was ever within her redeemed heart to be obedient to the voice of her Heavenly Father.
“Abba Father give me strength to endure.” She whispered against the cold hardness of the concrete beneath her cheek.
Then in sudden inspiration she asked quietly in the spirit, “Jesus will I see you soon?”
“Yes.”
Suddenly dying didn’t matter as all fear of it was stripped from her. Pushing off from the concrete she wiped her eyes as peace continued to pour through her in an affirmation of her faith in God being proven true.
She silently waited there still on her knees, but no longer crying. She felt him, his presence rather than actually hearing him and looking up she saw him standing there before her a short distance away.
He regarded her curiously, as if wondering why she wasn’t running from him, and the huge gun still idly hanging by his side seemed to echo to that quandary. He really wasn’t what she had expected.
He fit the role of a killer well, but seemed to be a misfit somehow in terms of working for who she knew that he did. Kind of like her in a way, when she’d been ensconced in her old life of sin.
She saw resolve strengthen within his cold gaze that bored down at her through a pair of glasses that looked bulky and out of place on his clean-cut face of cold somberness. He took a step nearer and looking deeply into the ice of his gaze she made her last request, “I ask that if you could find it within your heart, please, just pull the trigger and don’t do anything more than that.” Her lips closed and she waited in expectation of what would happen next.