Cast the First Stone by David Warren (booksvooks txt) 📕

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.

The night has waxed into dawn, the finest string of rose gold creeping into my den. I am stiff, and when I rise, I groan.

I love being a writer, the triumph of finishing something that is at once raw and brilliant, almost more satisfying than the thumping gavel of justice. At least with a book, I can write the ending I want; an ending we all want.

This time.

My muse has given me her best. My imagination takes a quick jog and I let the thought settle. I just might have a bestseller on my hands.

When I get up and pad to the door of my office, I notice the voices are gone, but light pulses from the family room. I wander in and see the television has gone to sleep, just the screen saver scrolling up the latest news. Eve forgot to turn off the volume, however, and when I click off the power, the buzz of the late night station vanishes.

I’m tired, but my body hums with the still too vivid memories so maybe I just need a hot shower.

And Eve. But I don’t want to wake her at 5 a.m. Too early. There’ll be time to tell her everything later.

The den used to be a guest room, and the bathroom off the entry is equipped with a shower. I heat it up, get in and stand under the spray, my arms braced against the wall.

Images assault me. Burke, young and with hair, that stupid soul patch.

Asher, and his Guns N’ Roses T-shirt, it’s your funeral. Clearly my imagination is conjuring him up to play a role in my subconscious.

There’s Danny Mulligan and his warning. Maybe a remnant sliver of guilt. I did, technically, get her into trouble.

My mother’s voice, fresh and bright and unslurred on the phone.

Happy Birthday, Dad.

Finally, John Booker. Alive, believing in me.

All pieces of my past, shattered, remade. My subconscious crafting a happy ending.

I soap up, rinse off and when I close my eyes, Ramses is there, his knife slicing into my kidneys.

My hand finds its way to where the wound was in the dream, as if it might be real.

I touch a rumple of flesh, and jerk.

What?

No. Not possible.

I twist my body to see it, but it’s behind me, just above my hip. My hand seeks it again, and yes, something is there. A ridge of flesh, puckered up, but smooth.

Turning off the water, I step out into the humid, steamy air. Take a towel, wipe the sodden mirror and turn around, looking over my shoulder.

I just stare, my brain looping round and round, trying to make sense out of the scar. It’s three inches wide, running at an angle from my hip into my back, thick and jagged and old. Nearly faded, reddened only by the spray of the shower.

Definitely a wound that could have been made by Ramses’ dagger thrust just above my kidney.

My pulse has found my throat.

I grab a towel and wrap it around my waist and take the stairs fast. Ashley’s door is closed, and I head straight for my bedroom.

I know Eve is asleep, but how can I not have a memory of being stabbed?

The bed is dark, just a form huddled along her side, Eve, as usual, wrapped up like a burrito. I tiptoe in and sit down on the edge. Put a hand on her shoulder. “Honey? Wake up.”

My hand sinks into the body-sized wad and it takes only a second to realize that these are pillows, mounded up, as if pushed