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

The dawn has peeled back the night, sun hovers just above the horizon, filtering light along the dusky streets. Gold dew speckles my windshield and a chill slinks through my car. June in Minnesota can still find the temperatures in the low sixties and I shiver, now free of the horror of the dream.

I need coffee. Ironic, I know, but I glance at the shop across the street, wondering if it’s open.

The windows are dark. A car drives up and pulls into the alley, to what I assume is parking in the back.

I glance at the watch. A little after 5:30 a.m. It must be the owner, up at the crack of dawn to care for the early risers. The shop is still dark, the place locked up. I sit up, scrub a hand down my face, the other on the steering wheel. Burke hasn’t called, and I pick up my phone just in case he texted.

Nothing.

Then it hits me.

5:30 a.m. Up at the crack of dawn.

Right now, my father is heading to the barn to feed and milk his small herd of dairy cows before he takes off for work.

Mom is in the kitchen, making his breakfast. By six a.m., Sheriff Rickland will have arrived, and with my father still in the barn, Rickland will accept the cup of coffee my mother offers.

But she’s suspicious, and doesn’t need to wait for my father to know the truth. She’ll guess that Rickland is there with news of my brother’s body recovery, and then time will repeat itself.

Her high blood pressure will burst a vessel in her brain, and she’ll collapse with a hemorrhagic stroke.

Maybe it’s just naive, but I’ve always believed that if my father—or I—had been with her, maybe the stress would have been easier to bear, and she wouldn’t have collapsed.

Wouldn’t today—or at least in my today—be walking with a cane, struggling to speak.

The light in the coffee shop flickers on.

The street is still empty. But I know, and it’s not just my gut, but history, that tells me the bomber will be here. The bomb explodes shortly after 7 a.m. Before, I was in bed, sleeping.

Before, I was awakened by Burke.

Before, I didn’t answer my father’s frantic call as he rode in the ambulance with my mother because I was counting bodies outside 10th Avenue Brew.

I pick up the phone and dial, my gaze scanning the street. Please.

“Hello?” My mother’s voice is cheery and for a few seconds, it jars me to hear it so pure, so unblemished.

I swallow, clear my throat. “Mom. It’s me.”

“Rembrandt. It’s so early—are you okay?”

She doesn’t mean to, but she wears in her voice the terrible fear that something might happen to her only remaining son. “I’m fine. Actually, I’m sitting outside a coffee shop, about to go to work, but…” And my brain is groping for something, anything— “Is Dad around?”

“He’s on his way to the barn—”

“I need to talk to him.”

“I’ll tell him to call you back—”

“Mom?” My voice shakes a fraction. No one else would have noticed, but I know Mom does. I swallow again. “I need to talk to him right now.”

She’s quiet because we don’t do big emotion in our family, but after a second, “All right. Hang on.”

A car pulls up outside the shop and parks in front. A man gets out, in a pair of track pants, a T-shirt, running shoes, and I agree with him. Coffee before exercise, right? He carries nothing, so I let him go.

One minute, two, then, “Hello?”

My father is out of breath, and a streak of guilt goes through me. I don’t want to lie, but I’m not sure what to say. Stay with Mom.