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

I did leave a few things out, however, and I look away. There’s a reason a guy like me can’t believe in happy endings.

All we can hope for are endings we might, somehow, survive.

“I remember that case,” Burke says, reaching for a napkin. “Rem didn’t sleep for three days while we hunted for her.”

I lift a shoulder, but really, how could I? Not with Mickey a ghost in my head. “I promised the family answers.”

“You promise everyone answers,” Burke says, crumpling the napkin and tossing it into the middle of the table. “Someday you’re going to make promises you can’t keep.”

He has no idea. I sigh. “Listen, answers are all they have left. Their lives are permanently shattered and there’s no coming back. If I give them answers, then maybe they can stop hoping and start figuring out how to live with the wreckage of their lives.”

I hear my own jaded history in my words, the fact my parents spent the better part of their lives holding onto a barren hope. I’m not sure why I let this spill out, maybe remnants of the frustration of my waking life, the fact that I still haven’t mended from my own jagged pieces. Maybe you never do, really. Maybe, when tragedy hits, all you have left is the broken shards of happiness.

My sudden morose comment has pushed silence between us, stolen the magic from the dream.

As is her nature, Eve rescues me. “That’s why I became a CSI. Answers.” She offers me a smile. “We’ll find the bomber, Rem.”

I nod, the image of Melinda Jorgenson and her son suddenly in my head.

And, she called me Rem. Nice. We’re making progress.

She grabs a napkin and wipes off her fingers. “I think I’ll get my father your book for Christmas. Maybe you could sign it for me.” She grins, and something about it strikes me as different, odd. Whole, unreserved.

It makes me, ache, suddenly, to see it. Because I really miss that smile, the one without the fractures.

If I could stop her father and brother’s murders, that would also be on my list of items to revisit. Another dream for another day, perhaps.

“No problem,” I say.

Her cell phone rings and she pulls out an ancient, but probably fairly new, Nokia,

presses it on. “This is Eve.”

By her wince, the way her fingers go to her nose, pinching the bridge, I immediately want to leap in and fix whatever the problem is.

Habits.

“Okay, fine Sams. Just get the water on as soon as you can…”

Samson, her younger brother. He’s a big real estate mogul now, but he started out working with his hands. He comes over every now and again and gives me grief about my meager remodeling skills, which frankly aren’t that terrible.

I remember the wretched job he did on her kitchen in that tiny bungalow. Those terrible ice-blue tiles—wait, she must be mid-remodel right now. And, if I’m reading the conversation clues right, without plumbing.

I’m barely stopping myself from offering her the use of my place, because I really do know better, but see, I also know…well, my wife. And how she loves her nightly baths. And more than that, seeing her young, and pretty and without the grief and worry and years and years of frustration that I’m about to put her through…

I’d like to skip that part, please. Get right to the moment I come to my senses and propose. But that’s a good decade from now, so…

Except, this is a dream, right? I can do what I want.

“Yeah, I was there. It was bad.” Her conversation has switched direction, and she glances at me. She’s talking about the bombing. “I can’t discuss the case, Sams—fine. No, I don’t think it was political. Why would it be? It was a coffee shop.”

She’s frowning.

Samson, for all his brawn, started out with a philosophy degree, and has spent most of his life exploring the planet, when he isn’t installing reclaimed wood in new suburban kitchens. Two years ago, he hiked Machu Picchu, and before that spent a summer in the Borneo rainforest working on a clean water project. Eve has always thought it’s his way of living Asher’s dreams.

But his question has my ears perking up. We never nailed down a motive for the bombings. I file it away however when she hangs up, returning to my previous thought.

“You’re out of water?”