No Unturned Stone (The True Lies of Rembrandt Stone 2)

“That’s rough.”

“So, maybe cut him a little slack. My guess is that grief like that might make a guy a little obsessed.”

Silas considered her. Gave a slow nod. “Or a girl.”

She met his gaze. She hadn’t spoken often of her best friend, Julia Pike, murdered at fifteen. But, “Yes.”

“Maybe you two are a good fit,” Silas said, giving her a thin smile.

“There is nothing wrong with wanting justice, right?”

“Right.” He finished his coffee.

“Besides, Burke certainly sticks up for him.”

“Now there’s a guy you should be into. Burke is solid. Honest. Dependable. The kind of guy you could bring home to your Dad without worry that he’ll boot him out of the house.”

“You sound like you have a crush on him,” she winked.

“I’m just saying, as your friend, you could find a guy who wasn’t so…”

“Focused?”

“Intense.”

“I’m intense. Maybe Rembrandt and I are a good match.”

“You’re committed, in a forget-to-eat-dinner, go-without-sleep way. He’s intense, as in, I’ll-run-into-a-burning-building-and-I-don’t-care-what-it-costs-or-whose-lives-fall-apart-because-of-it way. Big difference.”

“He told me today that he’s not like that anymore.”

“Please. Rembrandt Stone has about as much ability to change as your father has the ability to stop hovering over you. Stone will always be a loose cannon, and one of these days, he’s going to get someone killed. Like you.”

She frowned at him, but the conversation wasn’t so different from one she’d had with her father over a month ago when she started working for the 5th precinct.

When he’d warned her stay far, far away from Stone.

Instead, she’d flitted around the man like a moth to fire. Maybe her dad was right. All she knew was that if she showed up with him tomorrow night, fireworks would fly.

Talk about intense.

Probably she should call Rembrandt and tell him that…their house burned down. She’d moved to California. They’d all developed a case of measles.

Great.

“Let me know if we get a call back from Sigma Chi with those names,” she said, and tucked the picture into her notebook.

Silas glanced at his watch. “You’re leaving? It’s only seven thirty.”

“You’re as bad as I am. Get a life.”

She rolled the windows down on her Ford Escort as she headed home, the summer night filtering through her window. She toed off her shoes at a stoplight and drove the rest of the way barefoot.

Maybe Rembrandt would forget she asked. After all, it was Friday night. She’d simply not call him, and then, on Monday…oh, for the love...

It would help if the man didn’t make her lose her common sense.

The buzz of a skill saw fractured the night as she turned down her street, a quaint south Minneapolis neighborhood at the juncture of Webster and Lake. She’d purchased the one-and-a-half story bungalow just a few months ago, in time for Samson, her brother, to decide to quit school and apply his budding remodeling skills to her bathroom, then her kitchen, and now, she hoped, to her backyard deck.