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

Everything about this is weird, though, right? In the gathering crowd, I recognize faces, men I haven’t worked with in years. Including Jim Williams, the beat cop who I lost—will lose?—my job over in about seventeen years. And in the far corner, in the back, Inspector Danny Mulligan, who’s come over from downtown to help us sort this out.

It’s exactly like seeing a ghost. Danny, Eve’s dad, along with her brother, Ash, were murdered just a few weeks after we met. A Fourth of July shooting that forever shut down that holiday for us. We never shoot off fireworks, never barbecue hot dogs.

I caught Danny’s gaze on me today as I walked in, as if sizing me up. I don’t remember that from before, but maybe I’m not as shook up this time around.

Or maybe I just know that all this chatter won’t matter. Not unless it leads to a perp in the next sixteen hours.

We’ve interviewed twelve witnesses, just Burke and I, and I’ve outsourced the rest of the interviews to others in my department. None of the witnesses, so far, saw anything unusual, but this is before the if-you-see-something, say-something era, so no one is actually looking.

Wow, we thought we were safe back then. Or now. Whatever.

I’m standing off to the side, holding up a wall with my shoulder while the fire chief gives us an update. On the overhead is a diagram of the attack, and Dayton is drawing on the view film, indicating the preliminary scene reports.

“The arson investigators will confirm, but we believe the blast came from inside the shop.” He points to the layout of the store. “Given the damage to the front of the store, the bomb was probably placed near the brewed coffee machines.”

He draws a line across one side of the store. “There was a row of help-yourself coffee thermoses here, with overflow under the counter. The current theory is that one of those might have been a decoy.”

“And housed the bomb?” Burke asks. “So, how did the bomber get it there?”

“Could have been someone who works there,” says Danny from the back where he’s standing, his arms folded and hands tucked under his armpits. He’s radiating a sort of fury fed by the energy in the room. We’re all angry, and getting more so with every victim identification. “Maybe a disgruntled employee?”

“We’re running down the backgrounds of all the current employees, but it would need to be someone who knew explosives, like a Gulf War veteran, perhaps?” Booker interjects this from his position near the windows.

We tracked down every surviving employee over the course of the year after the final bombing—no one had the background that Booker is suggesting, but maybe we missed something, so I stay silent.

However, I’m antsy, because none of this conversation hastens the suspicion that the bomber was on a timer. That he might have been nearby.

We don’t know to look at the…photographs. The photographs Eve took. This time, we can get them developed.

“This is taking too long,” I say under my breath to Burke. I dump my coffee in the trash bin and am pushing out the nearby door when I hear Burke stifle a word and fall in behind me.

We’re out in the hallway when he grabs my arm. “Where are you going?”

Because this is just a dream—a very rich, vivid dream, for sure, but a dream nonetheless, I say, “We’re running out of time. There’s another bomb out there, and we have to find it.”

Burke’s mouth opens, and he stares at me like I’ve just told him the Vikings are going to win the Super Bowl.

Burke drags me toward the men’s room. He pushes me inside, and I sort of bounce off the tile, rounding on him fast. “What’s your problem?”

“What’s yours?” Burke says. “You’re running this investigation, but instead of helming it, it’s like your mind is somewhere else. And I’m starting to figure out where. Did you get a tip that you’re not sharing with the rest of us? About another bombing? Why are you keeping the rest of us in the dark? A toddler died, Rem. If you know something—”

“Step back.” I give him a shove. “I don’t know anything.” Which, frankly, isn’t a lie. We just didn’t get that far into the investigation before the trail went cold, just like that, nothing else to go on.

We have stop him this time, because I can’t wake up to another case gone frigid. “I just…I have a hunch, okay?”

Burke’s eyes narrow.

And that’s when I get a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

You’ve gotta be kidding me.

I’m staring at the twenty-eight-year-old version of myself.

A very young, bright-eyed, and way-too-confident version, thanks to my New York Times bestseller run. My hair is shaggy and top-heavy, with a oh-so-90s lock over my face. I’m wearing a black suit jacket and a white shirt, but my tie—it’s wide, red and it has baseballs on it. Whose idea was this? Yeah, probably mine, but Burke is wearing a normal gray, striped number that I barely noticed.

I rip off the tie and shove it in the trash, but the next thing I notice is…I have my body back. The one I spent way too much time honing.

I liked this body.