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

“Are you just getting off, or are you starting your shift?”

He dropped the jacket on a nearby folding chair and came over, pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Just getting off and heading home now. We missed you this morning.”

“We have to catch this guy.” She offered him a smile, the best she could give at the moment. After eight hours dissecting the debris from today’s Lyndale bombing, sorting evidence, ordering tests and sketching out a preliminary crime scene, her feet ached, her eyes burned.

“Your poor mother.” He shook his head. “In her head, you’re still thirteen.”

“She’s not the only one who thinks that.” She raised an eyebrow.

“Fifteen, max,” he said and winked. “Why are you the only one here?”

“Silas will be back any minute. He went downtown to drop off samples for testing, but we’re fairly sure the bomber used the same ingredients as the Franklin Avenue bomb—ammonium nitrate, fuel oil, and antimony sulfide.”

She pulled off her rubber gloves, touched her pinky to a black residue on a slide tray. “Taste this.”

“What? No.”

She laughed. “Chicken. If you did, you’d discover it tastes sweet, and a little metallic. That’s antimony sulfide. It’s used in fireworks. And in its pure form, is used in batteries and even bullets.”

“Fireworks, huh?”

“Mmmhmm. This time, the bomb was packed into an old thermos, the kind someone might use for soup in their lunch.” She pointed to the torn, curved metallic shards. “Smaller than yesterday’s, although still deadly.”

She walked over to the scene, sketched out on a grid on a nearby table. “After talking to the fire chief and measuring the burn and blast patterns, we think the backpack was left behind the counter, near the supply of beans.”

“An employee?”

“Or at least someone who had access. Although, according to Burke, he and Rembrandt interviewed all the employees and they all alibied out.”

“Rembrandt. As in Inspector Stone.” Her father’s eyebrow went up. “You’re working with him?”

She grabbed a nearby stool and slid onto it. “Dad. I work in the Minneapolis Police Department. So does he. Of course I’m going to run into Inspector Stone. He’s lead on the case.”

He ran a hand under his chin. “And does that include eating dinner together?”

She gritted her teeth. This was why she needed to move to another state.

“I ate with Inspector Stone and Burke.”

Her father’s mouth tightened into a grim line. “You heard what happened today, at the scene, right? With Rembrandt?”

“That he ran down a possible suspect?”

She hadn’t just heard about it, she’d watched as he tore past her, lean and quick and fierce, the expression on his face sending a spark through her she couldn’t identify.

Not fear, really, but perhaps, well, warning.

The kind that said she might have glimpsed a layer of Rembrandt that accompanied Silas’s accusation.

“He attacked the guy. John’s thinking he might file police brutality charges.”

She sighed and ran a hand behind her neck. Squeezed a muscle there. “The scene was awful, Dad. I’ve seen burned bodies before, but…it’s a terrible way to die. It’s different, you know, to be there. To see it. Again. And to know…well,” She caught her bottom lip in her teeth.

“To know?”

“It’s just…Stone had this hunch that it was going to happen again.” She didn’t want to betray him, but maybe they should all pay a bit more attention to his instincts.

Her father gave a quick frown, just a flicker. “What kind of hunch?”