The concrete blonde - By Michael Connelly Page 0,101

betrayed. It was himself. He had betrayed himself. And maybe living with that is punishment enough. I don't think I need to add to it.”

He thought about what he had said to Edgar at the Red Wind and decided he would have to stop him from going to Pounds for the transfer.

“Betrayed how?”

“Uh, consorting with the enemy, I guess you'd call it.”

“Honey Chandler?”

“Yeah.”

“How bad is it?”

“Not too bad, I guess. It's just that he did it that matters. It hurts, I guess.”

“Is there anything you can do? Not to him, I mean. I mean to limit the damage.”

“No. Whatever damage there is, it's already done. I only figured out it was him tonight. It was by accident, otherwise I probably would have never even thought of him. Anyway, don't worry about it.”

She caressed his chest with the tips of her fingernails.

“If you're not worried, I'm not.”

He loved her knowing the boundaries of how much she could ask him, and that she didn't even think to ask him who it was he was talking about. He felt totally comfortable with her. No worries, no anxieties. It was home to him.

He was just beginning to fall off when she spoke again.

“Harry?”

“Uh huh.”

“Are you worried about the trial, how the closing arguments will go?”

“Not really. I don't like being in the fishbowl, sitting at that table while everybody gets their chance to explain why they think I did what I did. But I'm not worried about the outcome, if that's what you mean. It doesn't mean anything. I just want it to be over and I don't really care anymore what they do. No jury can sanction what I did or didn't do. No jury can tell me I was right or wrong. You know? This trial could last a year and it wouldn't tell them everything about that night.”

“What about the department? Will they care?”

He told her what Irving had told him that afternoon about what effect the trial's outcome would have. He didn't say anything about what the assistant chief had said about knowing his mother. But Irving's story crossed through his mind and for the first time since he had been in bed he felt the need for a cigarette.

But he didn't get up. He put the urge out of his mind and they lay quietly for a while after that. Bosch kept his eyes open in the dark. His thoughts were now about Edgar and then they segued to Mora. He wondered what the vice cop was doing at the same moment. Was he alone in the dark? Was he out looking?

“I meant what I said earlier today, Harry,” Sylvia said.

“What's that?”

“That I want to know all about you, your past, the good and the bad. And I want you to know about me… . Don't ignore this. It could hurt us.”

Her voice had lost some of its sleepy sweetness. He was silent and closed his eyes. He knew this one thing was more important to her than anything. She had been the loser in a past relationship where the stories of the past were not used as the building blocks of the future. He brought his hand up and rubbed his thumb along the back of her neck. She always smelled powdery after sex, he thought, yet she had not even gotten up to go into the bathroom. This was a mystery to him. It took him a while to answer her.

“You have to take me without a past… . I've let it go and don't want to go back to examine it, to tell it, to even think about it. I've spent my whole life getting away from my past. You understand? Just because a lawyer can throw it at me in a courtroom doesn't mean I have to …”

“What, tell me?”

He didn't answer. He turned his body into her and kissed and embraced her. He just wanted to hold her, to pull back away from this cliff.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you,” he said.

She pulled herself closer to him and put her face in the crook of his neck. Her arms held him tightly, as if maybe she was scared.

It was the first time he had said it to her. It was the first time he had said it to anyone as far back as he could remember. Maybe he had never said it. It felt good to him, almost like a palpable presence, a warm flower of deep red opening in his chest. And