Cast the First Stone (The True Lies of Rembrandt Stone 1)

“Sheesh, Rem. Give the ladies a break.”

I spin at the voice. Too fast, because the coffee I now realize I’m holding in my hands slams right into—

Oh God, what is happening? Because I’ve just doused Andrew Burke with some version of a latte, given the color soiling his shirt.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” Burke says and I can’t get my eyes off him because he has hair. And he’s slimmer, by about twenty pounds, wiry, and wearing a hint of a soul patch, a dusting of black fuzz.

I mocked it until he shaved it off.

Now it’s like a tether, reeling me in.

I scrape up words, anything that might sound coherent when the radio at his belt crackles and a voice scratches through the line.

I don’t catch it all, but one code sears into my brain.

10-80.

Explosion.

Just off Franklin.

It’s only when Burke grabs my jacket—I’m wearing a freakin’ suit—and pulls me toward the door that the recognition locks in.

I’m in 1997, and somehow my nightmares have found me.

Chapter 5

Eve Mulligan did not want to live in a war zone one more minute. The chaos of remodeling—the current casualty being the plumbing—just might drive her to murder.

Or at least bodily harm, directed at her younger brother.

“Sams! Turn the flippin’ water back on!”

Eve fumbled for the towel, her hand snaking outside the flimsy curtain of her claw-foot tub, suds running into her eyes. She found the towel, grabbed it and shoved it into her face, cleaning out the soap, then turned to fiddle with the faucets. Yes, full on, but not a drip of water from the overhead spigot. “Samson Mulligan, turn on my water!”

She nearly fell out of the tub, grabbed her robe and tied her hair up before flinging the door open. Sunlight streamed through the stained-glass transom, casting light down into the upstairs bedroom of her story-and-a-half bungalow. The sound of a saw rumbled up from the kitchen. The dust and the odor of plumber’s glue, not to mention freshly stained wood, could turn her woozy.

Her feet ground into the sawdust despite her recent sweep of the stairs, and she barreled down, one hand holding her towel and barged into the kitchen to find—oh no. Not her brother Samson bent over his workbench but an unknown plumber, crack and all, leaning over a piece of plastic piping.

A stranger.

In her house.

At 6-freaking-o’clock in the morning.

Her father would have a coronary. And right about now, he might agree with her decision to get a conceal and carry. After all, just because she worked CSI didn’t mean she wasn’t a cop.

The plumber stood up, eyes wide as he took her in—fluffy bathrobe, her hair dripping water down her neck. And not a hot plumber, either, although that might not have changed her indignation. This guy looked about fifty and nursed a beer paunch.

“What are you doing here?”

“Your brother sent me. Told me to get working on your kitchen plumbing…”

Nice. Now she would have to murder her brother. And she wouldn’t escape because they’d easily pin motive on her.

She turned, ignored the debris of her unfinished living room, and took the stairs two at a time. Twenty minutes later, she pulled into her parents’ driveway. Samson’s construction truck took up most of the space.

She took a breath. Tried to remember he was helping. Giving her a cut rate.