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

“I’m just looking—” I see the cases I know too well. The working girl found near one of my favorite bars. A nurse, found in a parking lot in the middle of January. A waitress outside an uptown diner, and the worst—yes, it’s still here.

I pull it out and groan.

The death of Eve’s father, Minneapolis Deputy Police Inspector Danny Mulligan, and her kid brother, Asher. Skinny kid, smart, a hacker.

Asher saw me kiss Eve, and for a second the taste of her is on my lips. I kissed her last night, in her house, the smell of sawdust and summer in the air.

Real. The dream felt, smelled, and tasted real.

“It’s not here.” I set down Danny and Asher’s file and keep looking, just to confirm.

“What’s not there?”

“Ashley—where’s her file?”

Burke is looking at me and now he shakes his head. “Get your head on and get down to the precinct. The Jackson murders aren’t going to solve themselves.” He turns away, runs his hand over his smooth head.

Last time I saw him, he had hair. That thought slides into my brain, and yes, maybe I’m having a nervous breakdown, a split with reality. He looks at me. “I know you’re hurting, Rem, but you’re freakin’ me out.”

Yeah, well, I’m freaking myself out too. But, “Where is Ashley’s file?”

“C’mon, Rem.”

“Tell me!”

“It’s where it’s been for the last two years! With all the other Jackson murders.”

Who’s Jackson? But I don’t ask, because Burke is wearing a thin look. “Listen, I can’t afford to have the head of the task force laying on his bathroom floor, drunk.”

Again, drunk? Although, my gaze goes to my empty glass on the desk. One lousy shot of Macallans and suddenly I’m drunk?

Burke looks a little desperate now and it’s an uncommon expression that unnerves me, too. “We finally caught a break—a survivor—and we need you on your game for this afternoon’s press conference. We’re close, Rem, you told me that yourself.”

I did? But I nod. What I really want to do is bang my head on something, dislodge the memories that are stuck deep inside of a world I don’t know, don’t understand, but have clearly lived in.

He heads for the door. Pauses. “Come in, get to work. Please don’t make me fire you.”

Fire me? Burke is my boss?

I guess that feels right—I always knew he had leadership in him.

He leaves me there, and in a moment I hear his car drive away.

Work? Oh, I’m going to work all right.

To a job I remember quitting three years ago.

So the demons couldn’t find me.

But apparently, I’ll have to face those demons, if I want answers.