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

Then, I pull up my manuscript.

The cursor is blinking, taunting.

But the muse is mine, and I’m right beside her as long as she wants to run.

***

Butcher found Gabby leaning over her microscope, her eye pressed to the lens, a dozen slides lined up beside her.

“Any luck?”

“You’d better have coffee when you slink in this late,” she said, not looking up.

“Why aren’t you at home?” He didn’t mean his tone. It just wasn’t always easy to keep his thoughts straight around Gabby. She wore her dark hair back in a ponytail, no makeup. Still captivating despite her shapeless medical garb.

“I found something.” She got up and went over to a table of twisted black wiring, plastic and other bomb debris, all labeled.

“The bomb was on a timer. I found the remnants of an alarm clock. It’s a simple design, but effective.”

Butcher took it apart. “He planted it, then walked away to watch.”

“Mmmhmm.” She leaned a hip against the table. “So why do you think he watched?”

“A bombing is a particular kind of crime. It’s not easy, building a bomb, and a bomber is a meticulous kind of person. He’d want to make sure it went off.”

Butcher wished he’d brought her coffee now, because he liked the way her face lit up when he did. If he played his cards right, they could work all night.

“It gives them a sense of power,” she said, riffing off his theory.

“Even vengeance. It satiates the frustration boiling up inside.”

“What if it’s all of the above?” Gabby said. “What if he’s both meticulous and has an agenda? What if this is about changing the world, making it fit what he wants?”

“And he does this by destroying the thing he hates and starting over?”

“A clean slate,” Gabby said. “He rebuilds the world as he sees it.”

“Without the mistakes that were made the first time.”

“Isn’t that what 9/11 was about? Wanting to remake the world, starting with vengeance, then a takeover of the world with radical ideology?”

I sit back, hands behind my head, eyes sweeping the ceiling.

Yeah, Ramses might have stuck around for vengeance, but Eve’s words—probably my subconscious, let’s face it—linger with me. “I was thinking about the coffee shop bombing, and I was wondering how Ramses or Gustavo might know how to build a bomb. What if they had an accomplice?’”

It’s an interesting thought—one I’ll talk to Eve about in the morning.

I like where the muse is taking me. The idea of rewriting the world, starting over—it feels like my story has a new beginning, this time with an ending I can live with.

And Butcher and Gabby are headed out for a long-awaited dinner.

Chapter 19

My muse is a fickle lover. When she’s on, she’s heat and fire and lightning in a silo and she infuses my body with a sort of ethereal creative power that takes over, rules and defies time.

I’m cast into my story for hours. Lost. The words pouring forth in a creative rush, a frenzy of insight, inspiration, and prose. I feel like I’m in the center of the universe, the exact place I’m supposed to be.

When she is done with me, I’m wrung out and wasted, yet the taste of her leaves me longing for more. But she will not be cajoled, and I know when I’m spent.