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

She nods, then shakes her head. “I bought this cute bungalow off—

Webster Ave South.

I nearly say it, but something inside me cuts me off. A weird gut feeling I can’t put a name to.

“Webster and Lake. It was built in 1941, so the plumbing is archaic. I don’t know why I agreed to a full-on remodel, but—”

“You like a challenge,” I say quietly, smiling.

She meets my eyes, something playful in them that I like.

Burke is rolling his eyes. He’s finished with his brat and I’m guessing the photos have processed by now, so I signal to the waiter for the check.

We’re back in the photo lab thirty minutes later and Eve lays out the pictures on a massive work table. “Which ones do you want enlarged?”

I lean over her, aware that she smells good for a woman without a shower, and point to the twenty or so of the crowd.

Meanwhile, I’ve asked Burke to get that list of coffee shops together because I’ve been wracking my brain for hours and I still can’t pull up the location of the second bombing.

While my subconscious tracks it down inside my dream, I’ll drive around, maybe help the memory surface. Once I find it, I’ll just grab a table inside, study the pictures and wait for the bomber to show up.

The hardest part will be convincing Burke that I haven’t lost my mind. I’ve toyed with the idea of simply telling him that we’re in my dream, but I’m not sure that’d make him any more cooperative.

So, I’m back to my gut, my instincts, and hoping that’s enough for my partner of three years.

Eve slides the negatives into an envelope and hands them to an assistant, with the request. “Can I bum a ride back to the warehouse with you? Silas has identified some of the bomb fragments.”

I have to pick up my wheels anyway, so I nod.

We drop her off at the warehouse, and with everything inside me, I want to suggest a get-together, later, at my place, something involving my shower.

But I’ll wait until I wake up. Until it’s real, despite the magic of this dream that allows me to smell the scent of her in Burke’s car when I climb back in.

In this time, this dream, she’s not mine yet, and somehow that thought puts a hand to my heart. Me, trying to be the guy I should have been.

Besides, I have more important intentions.

Dream or not, I have twelve hours before another bomb hits my city. And I plan on being there to stop it.

Chapter 10

"Stone really thinks there’s going to be another bombing?” Silas stood at one of the long tables in the makeshift lab room, sorting bomb debris through a screen. A spotlight shone down on the fragments, the rest of the room under low light to accentuate the features. In one screen, he’d collected the shards of what looked like aluminum from the coffee thermos that held the bomb. In the second, he’d gathered the warped steel edges of a water pipe, the container that housed the low-level explosive materials, which were currently under the gas chromatograph to trace the chemical composition.

“Mmmhmm,” Eve said, picking up a fragment of the pipe. Jagged edges, coated with dark residue. She took a swab of it. “He says it’s a gut feeling.”

Silas looked up at her, raised an eyebrow.

“I know,” Eve said. “But he’s…well, not what I expected. He’s…earnest. And not the dark and mysterious renegade my father—and everyone else—makes him out to be. Part of me wants to believe him.”

“I don’t want to know what that part is,” Silas said, and gave her a gimlet look. “Just watch yourself. I’ve heard stories.”

She dropped the swab into a container and labeled it for processing. “What kind of stories?”

“Just that Rembrandt Stone is not above breaking a few rules to get answers.”

If I give them answers, then maybe they can stop hoping and start figuring out how to live with the wreckage of their lives.

Rem’s words, spoken as he stared into the dark amber of his beer, clung to her. A desperation, perhaps, in his tone that kneaded her own scar tissue. “Maybe sometimes you need to break a few—”