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

The tan carpet is soft against my bare feet, my young man’s body awake for the morning … I’m still here.

In 1997.

“Know what?” I say for the second time.

“A second bombing. It hit the coffee shop on Lyndale and 35th. Five people dead so far. How did you know?”

I’m shaking as I go into the bathroom, turn on the water, splash it on my face. Because that’s what people do when they’re losing it. When they can’t believe the reality thrown at them. When they want, desperately, to wake up.

When they realize that, I don’t know how, but … this is not a dream.

Chapter 12

I rode by Mickey’s bike the first time in my half-frantic, growing panic, my legs churning, my throat stripped from screaming his name.

Only on my second pass up the road did I spot a flash of red. Half-hidden in the grasses, a clump of daisies jutting through the spokes as if in silent sympathy, the bike lay crushed, violated.

Beaten.

It lay in the weeds, tossed haphazardly aside as if a nuisance. A red Mini Viper, with platinum racing stripes on the fender, a foam cushion across the front bar, padded handlebars and dirt-bike wheels. Mickey got it for his eighth birthday only two weeks before he disappeared.

The front tire rim sagged, as if it had hit a boulder, dumping the rider over the handlebars. Dimples marked the paint, and a scrub across the red revealing the silver frame told the story of a struggle against the dirt road.

As if Mickey had scrabbled to his feet, tried to right the bike.

And was taken mid-action.

There’s a hiccup in time when tragedy occurs, a moment before it becomes personal, the information still clinical, still objective before it settles into a person’s brain, trickles into their bones, poisons their blood. It’s in this moment the instinct of disbelief kicks in, an invisible hand that snakes out to stiff arm the truth.

To protect.

To prepare the body for the onslaught of truth.

I felt it as I stared at Mickey’s bike, my breath catching.

I know it now as Burke pulls up to the morning’s carnage in my Camaro—he’s driving—and it’s a good thing because I could barely think enough to put on pants, my soiled dress shirt, grab a suit coat.

Frankly, I only move now because Burke is out of the car and striding ahead, toward Booker, who watches the scene with folded arms.

Burke hasn’t spoken to me since we left my apartment, his question still ringing in my head. How did you know?

I had no answer for him as I walked out of the bathroom, because my only explanation feels pitiful and even irreverent. I dreamed it?

This can’t possibly be a dream.

The pungent odor of burned flesh hazes the air, turning my gut. The smoke bites my eyes, and sirens rend the air. The drizzle of spray coats my neck, and behind the raucousness, I can hear Minneapolis’s finest shouting as they work to douse the fire.

It’s a house turned coffee shop. Why didn’t I remember that? I had all the pieces—the barking dog—not a German shepherd, but a Doberman running the length of the yard across the street, imprisoned behind chain link. And, down the street, an ice cream truck, parked in a driveway. May

be I imagined the bells ringing.

The house is an old Victorian-turned unique venue. Now, it’s simply a house fire, flames consuming the upstairs windows, the porch collapsing, the front windows blown out. Glass glints orange against the flames.

Smoke blots out the skyline, just the finest edge of sunlight through the black.

I’m without words, caught in the catastrophe, one thought like a fist in my still hammering head. I could have stopped this.

Should have stopped this. Right?