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

I feel the passionate, darkly focused Rembrandt I’ve left behind working his way to the surface.

Good. Frankly, I need him.

“Right.” She has her camera and she starts snapping shots, along with Silas.

I return to Burke. He’s interviewed a couple spectators, written down names, and now he’s leaning against the car, staring at the crowd, then back at the pictures, comparing.

“Anything?”

He glares at me, his eyes dark.

“Tell me, right now, that you don’t know anything about this,” he says, low and nearly under his breath. But his tone contains enough of an edge that it leaves a mark.

“Of course not. I told you, it was—is—a hunch.”

He nods then and holds up a picture to the crowd assembled behind the fire trucks.

Why this coffee shop? My question to Booker needles me. It’s not a chain store, rather an artsy hole-in-the wall. I remember donuts being served from the back patio during an art show I attended shortly after I moved to the neighborhood. Donuts and organic coffee.

The explosion has littered said coffee—beans and grounds—along with glass and debris onto the street. A piece of burlap is soaked and tattered on the pavement. My gaze lands on it, and something about the logo—four leaves, four beans—nudges me.

I’m not sure why I pick it up, but a memory sloshes through my brain.

It’s cut off by the sight of a woman advancing on the scene. She’s young, dark hair and with a jolt, I remember her. Only, not from the past, but from my present. My real life.

Mariana Vega, real estate investor and current mayor of St. Louis Park, my district. She’s younger, of course, her hair long and in tangles, but she still possesses the take-no-prisoners approach she lives by in city council meetings.

The kind of stance that can deny a guy a building permit—appeal pending—for a second story on his garage, an addition that would make the perfect office. Maybe a place where a writer’s words wouldn’t get tangled, stuck—

“She looks upset,” Burke says.

She’s yelling at Booker, gesturing to the shop. Her face is streaked with tears, however, and she’s almost sympathetic.

“She’s the owner.”

I’m not sure how I know that, but it feels like the right answer. And, despite our history and my clear memory of her cold-hearted verdict against my muse, I feel a twinge at her distress.

Although, maybe the insurance is her seed money for her massive empire. A random and unlikely motive, but I tuck that information away, and return to the pictures spread out on the Camaro.

“Hey,” Burke says quietly. His tone makes me look up. He’s staring past me, toward Eve, but beyond. “See the guy in the neon green shirt?”

I glance at the man. Maybe in his late twenties, he’s well over six feet, with inky black hair and a dark gaze that is seared on Mariana.

“Does he look like this guy?” Burke points to a man in a shot at yesterday’s scene. The man in the picture is standing across the street from the bombing, holding a coffee cup.

Could be. Dark hair, and although he’s wearing a baseball cap in the picture, the face seems similar.

Everything inside me ignites. Please.

“Close enough,” I growl and in a breath I’m sprinting.

I shoot past Eve even as I hear Burke give a shout. But I’m not slowing down.

I want him. Just to question, to put the pieces together, but my gut is screaming—yes.

Maybe this, right here, is why I’m here. I still don’t know how, but maybe, cosmically, there is a God out there who follows my nightmares, the cold clench the past has on my life.

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