"Did you lay it all on me?"

"As planned. He fumed and fussed but what's he going to do? I don't want to talk about him right now."

"Then what?"

"Well, for starters, do you have another one of those?"

She meant the beer.

"Actually, no. I was just finishing this one and was going to take off."

"Then I'm glad I caught you."

"You want to split it? I'll get you a glass."

"You said you wouldn't trust the glasses here."

"Well, I could wash-"

She reached over for the bottle and took a sip from it. She handed it back, her eyes staying on mine. She then turned and pointed to the box. "So you're leaving."

"Yeah, back to L. A. for a while."

"You'll miss your daughter, I guess."

"A lot."

"You'll come back to see her?"

"As often as I can."

"That's nice. Anything else?"

"What do you mean?" I asked, though I thought I knew what she meant.

"Will you be coming back for anything else?"

"No, just my daughter."

We stood there looking at each other for a long moment. I held the beer out to her but when she came forward it was for me. She kissed me on the lips and then quickly we put our arms around each other.

I know it had something to do with the trailer, our nearly dying together out there in the desert, that made us press so hard against each other and move toward the bed, that made me reach over and put the beer bottle on the table so I could use both my hands as we pulled at each other's clothes.

We fell onto the bed and made survivors' love. It was quick and maybe to some degree even brutal-on both our parts. But most of all it satisfied the primal urge in both of us to fight death with life.

When it was over we were entwined on top of the bed covers, she on top of me, my fists still tangled in her hair.

She leaned to her left and reached for the beer bottle, knocking it over first and spilling most of what was left on the bed table and floor.

"There goes my security deposit," I said. There was enough left in the bottle for her to take a draw and then pass it to me.

"That was for today," she said as I drank.

I gave her the rest.

"What do you mean?"

"After what happened out there, we had to do this."

"Yeah."

"Gladiator love. That's why I came here. To catch you."

I smiled, thinking of a gladiator joke from an old movie I liked. But I didn't tell her and she probably thought I was smiling at her words. She leaned down and put her head on my chest. I held up some of her hair, more gently this time, to look at the singed ends. I then moved my hands down and rubbed her back, thinking it was strange that we were being so gentle with each other now, just moments after being gladiators.

"I don't suppose you'd be interested in opening a branch of your private investigations office in South Dakota, would you?"

I smiled and stifled a laugh in my chest.

"How about North Dakota?" she asked. "I could be going back there, too."

"You have to have a tree to have a branch."

She hit me with a gentle fist on the chest.

"I didn't think so."

I shifted my body so that I came out of her. She groaned but stayed on top of me.

"Does that mean you want me to get up and get off and get out of here?"

"No, Rachel. Not at all."

I looked over her shoulder and saw that the door was unlocked. I had a vision of Mr. Gupta coming up to see if I had left yet and finding the two-backed monster on the bed in the supposedly empty unit. I smiled. I didn't care.

She raised her face up to look at me.

"What?"

"Nothing. We left the door unlocked. Somebody could come in."

"You left it unlocked. This is your place."

I kissed her, realizing I had not kissed her lips during the entire time we had made love. Another strange thing.

"You know what, Bosch?"

"What?"

"You're good at this."

I smiled and told her thanks. A woman can play that card anytime and every time and always get the same response.

"I mean it."

She dug her nails into my chest to underline her point. With one arm I held her tightly to me and we rolled over. I figured I had at least ten years on her but I wasn't worried about it. I kissed her again and got up, gathering my clothes off the floor and walking over to the door to lock it.

"I think there's one last clean towel in there," I said. "You can use it."

She insisted I take the first shower and I did. Then while she showered I left the unit and walked across Koval to a convenience store to pick up two more beers. I was going to limit it to that because I was driving that night and didn't want alcohol to slow me down getting to the road or while on it. I was sitting at the dinette when she came out of the bathroom fully dressed and smiling when she saw the two bottles.

"I knew you'd make yourself useful."

She sat down and we clicked bottles.

"To gladiator love," she said.

We drank and just were quiet for a few moments. I was trying to figure out what the last hour now meant to me and to us.

"What are you thinking about?" she asked.

"About how this could get complicated."

"It doesn't have to. We can just see what happens."

That didn't sound the same to me as being asked to move to the Dakotas.

"Okay."

"I better get going."

"Where to?"

"Back to the FO, I guess. See what's shaking."

"Did you hear what happened to the fire barrel out there after the blast? I forgot to look."

"No, why?"

"I looked in it when we were out there. For just a minute. It looked like he had been burning credit cards, maybe IDs."

"The victims'?"

"Probably. He burned books in it, too."

"Books? Why do you think he did that?"

"I don't know but it's strange. Inside the trailer he had books all over the place. So he burned some and some he didn't burn. Seems strange."

"Well, if there is anything left of the barrel the ERT will get to it. Why didn't you mention it before, when you were interviewed out there?" "Because my head was ringing and I sort of forgot, I guess."

"Short-term memory loss associated with concussion."

"I don't have a concussion."

"I meant the blast. Could you tell what books they were?"

"Not really. I didn't have time. There was one I picked out. It was the least burned of what I could see. It looked like it was poetry. I think."

She looked at me and nodded but didn't say anything.

"What I don't get is why he burned the books. He set the whole trailer to go up but he takes the time to go out to the barrel and burn some books. Almost like…"

I stopped talking and tried to put the pieces together.

"Almost like what, Harry?"

"I don't know. Like he didn't want to leave the trailer thing to chance. He wanted to make sure those books were destroyed."

"You are assuming that both things are together. Who knows, maybe he burned the books six months ago or something. You can't just connect the two things."

I nodded. She was right about that but still the incongruity bothered me.

"The book I found was near the top of the barrel," I said. "It was burned the last time the barrel was used. There was also a receipt in it. Half burned. But maybe they can trace it."

"When I get back I'll check it out. But I don't remember seeing that barrel after the blast."

I shrugged.

"Neither do I."

She stood up and so did I. "There's one other thing," I said as I reached into the inside pocket of my jacket. I pulled out the photo and handed it to her.

"I must've grabbed it while I was in the trailer and then sort of forgot about it. I found it in my pocket."

It was the photo taken from the printer tray. The two-story house with the old man out front next to the station wagon.

"Great, Harry. How am I going to explain this?"