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and very appealing to her as a man. Ellen decided to wave a white flag of surrender and start all over again. “In my business, I deal with the less visible, the unseen,” she murmured.
    Cochrane slid her a quizzical glance. “You practice psychobabble at OIG?”
    â€œActually,” she said, relieved that his tone was less acidic and hard, “I worked for the FBI for four years before taking the job at the DOD about a year ago. My specialty as a Jungian analyst was to help them reworkcriminal profiles, mainly of bank robbers. When my husband, Mark, died unexpectedly of a heart attack at age forty, I quit the Bureau. We had met there, and I just couldn’t deal with the memories. And to tell you the truth, I’d had it with criminal profiles.”
    â€œI see,” Cochrane murmured. He glanced out of the corner of his eye at her.
    Heartened by his mild expression of interest, Ellen dived in. “I had met June Catter, a senior investigator with the DOD. She was the one who suggested the analyst position with the OIG. It turned out to be a good fit. I had written my Ph.D. dissertation on the impact of job stress on military families. The service is a pretty terrorizing place for women and children. Especially those that have never been exposed to such a rigid way of living.”
    â€œIsn’t that the truth?” His hands tightened on the steering wheel.
    Ellen waited, but realized he wasn’t going to add anything. Cochrane’s generous mouth was thinned again, the corners pulled in as if he was experiencing some kind of secret pain. His voice had an undercurrent of emotion. She almost asked what he was feeling, as was her custom as a psychologist, but her intuition warned her against it. He would take her interest as intrusion into his space.
    Plunging ahead, Ellen said, “After graduating with a masters in psychotherapy, and while working for the FBI, I’ve continued following about seventy militaryfamilies and their lives for the last five years. I’ve done extensive, ongoing interviews with them. Right now, I’m in the process of writing a book. I hope to get a Jungian-oriented publisher to print my findings.”
    â€œWhat’s ‘Jungian,’ anyway? I’ve heard of a lot of other breeds of shrinks, but not this particular variety of polecat.”
    Ellen rolled her eyes and laughed lightly. He was teasing her, and hope blossomed in her heart. Maybe he would soften a little. “Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatric pioneer. He worked with Freud, but went on to see the world a lot differently. In our training, we put great stock in dreams, intuition, symbols, myths and archetypes.” She paused for a moment. “I can tell you don’t have much respect for therapists as a whole, Jungian or not.”
    He eyed her critically. “My experiences with shrinks leave me a little jaded, Agent Tanner. I’ve seen these professionals act as ‘expert witnesses,’ pumping out whatever the defense or prosecution wants a jury to hear. These so-called ‘degreed’ people who eagerly testify are nothing more than trained hound dogs, in my book.” He shook his head. “I don’t like psych types. I think they’re in the business to straighten out their own screwed up heads and lives, if you ask me.”
    Ellen resisted feeling angry at his critical comments. Her brain told her to stay objective. Her heart, however, was pounding. She felt assaulted by his nasty view of her profession. She steeled herself. “I see. Does that same analogy apply to your world, too?”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    Ellen shrugged delicately. “Did you became a lawyer to understand right from wrong? To ensure justice to the limits of the law?”
    â€œMy view on shrinks is just that, Agent Tanner. I don’t like them. They deal in fluff as far as I’m concerned. I deal with facts. It’s that simple, so don’t