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best conversation I’d had in a long time. We looked at each
other for long periods of charged, erotic silence, and often
broke out laughing at the same time.
In the trunk of my car one day, I found a book of
Shakespeare’s sonnets. The book had been a gift from an
FBI agent with whom I’d worked last year on the Gerry
Glynn case. Special Agent Bolton had given it to me while
I was locked in the throes of depression. He told me it would
provide comfort. I didn’t believe him back then, and I tossed
it in my trunk. In Maine, though, while Angie showered or
slept, I read most of the poems, and though I’d never been
a big fan of poetry, I took a liking to Shakespeare’s words,
the sensuous flow of his language. He certainly seemed to
know an awful lot more than I did—about love, loss, human
nature, everything really.
Sometimes at night, we’d bundle up in the clothes
358 / DENNIS LEHANE
we’d bought in Portland the day after we arrived, and let
ourselves out through the back door of our bungalow onto
the lawn. We’d huddle together against the cold and work
our way down to the beach, sit on a rock overlooking the
dark sea, and take as full a measure as possible of the beauty
laid out before us under a pitch-black sky.
The ornament of beauty, Shakespeare wrote, is suspect.
And he was right.
But beauty itself, unadorned and unaffected, is sacred, I
think, worthy of our awe and our loyalty.
Those nights by the sea, I’d take Angie’s hand in mine and
raise it to my lips. I’d kiss it. And sometimes as the sea raged
and the darkness in the sky deepened, I’d feel awe. I’d feel
humbled.
I’d feel perfect.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My deepest gratitude to Claire Wachtel and Ann Rittenberg
for finding the book within the manuscript, and not letting
up on me until I found it, too.
What little I know about field-stripping a semiautomatic
handgun, I learned from Jack and Gary Schmock of Jack’s
Guns and Ammo in Quincy, Massachusetts.
What I couldn’t remember about the St. Pete/Tampa area,
the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, and specific points of Florida
law was filled in by Mal and Dawn Ellenburg. Any remaining
mistakes are mine.
And thanks, as always, to those who read the early versions
and gave me honest feedback: Chris, Gerry, Sheila, Reva
Mae, and Sterling.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DENNIS LEHANE is the author of A Drink Before the
War, which won the Shamus Award for Best First
Novel; Darkness, Take My Hand; Sacred; Gone, Baby,
Gone; Prayers for Rain; and the New York Times
bestsellers Mystic River and Shutter Island. A native
of Dorchester, Massachusetts, he lives in the Boston
area.
www.denislehane.com
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tion on your favorite HarperCollins authors.
Praise
Acclaim for New York Times
Bestselling Author
“Lehane’s voice is an original he turns the hard-boiled
detective novel into an elegiac treatise on the
corruption of the soul.”
Michael Connelly
“A stunning good novelist, one of our very best.”
James Patterson
“One of the best writers of his generation, period.”
Cleveland Plain Dealer
“[Dennis Lehane is one of] the very best young
mystery writers.”
Esquire
“Lehane’s voice, original, haunting, and straight from
the heart, places him among the top ranks of stylists
who enrich the modern mystery novel.”
Publishers Weekly
Books by
Dennis Lehane
SHUTTER ISLAND
MYSTIC RIVER
PRAYERS FOR RAIN
GONE, BABY, GONE
SACRED
DARKNESS, TAKE MY HAND
A DRINK BEFORE THEAR
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue
are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed
as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead,
is entirely coincidental.
SACRED. Copyright © 2006 by Dennis Lehane. All rights reserved
under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By
payment of the required fees, you have been granted the
non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of
this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced,
transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored
in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system,
in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical,
now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written
permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader August 2006
ISBN 0-06-124474-0
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