Page 12

“Until today,” Isabel pointed out.
That was news, as far as Raisa could tell. Conrad, like plenty of other killers, had proclaimed his innocence even in the face of overwhelming evidence. She’d thought he’d keep doing it right up until his last words. Perhaps she should have read that article further than the headline, but she’d been too angry to even see straight at that point.
“He’s lying,” Raisa said, still confident in that fact. So what if he’d claimed the other victims and not Shay. He was a psychopath, a pathological liar and a man who’d tortured and killed twenty-seven people. His word wasn’t exactly gold. “But I want to know what part you played in it.”
“How about this,” Isabel started, examining her nails in a way that rattled the chains. “An answer for an answer.”
Raisa thought about the way Kilkenny had stormed out of the courtroom, the way he’d lost all the color in his face when the alert came in. Making a deal with Isabel Parker was akin to shaking hands with the devil, but Raisa would still gladly do it if she could get information out of her.
“Fine,” Raisa said. “What did you do to get him to lie about Shay Kilkenny?”
“I gave you a chance to ask an actually interesting question and that’s what you went with?” Isabel tsk-tsked. “He’s not lying. I already told you that. Conrad didn’t kill her.”
“You said an answer for an answer,” Raisa said, nails digging into her thighs through the soft fabric of her pants. “A truthful answer for a truthful answer.”
“No one is forcing you to believe me, but I am being truthful,” Isabel said. “Are you in love with Kilkenny?”
Raisa wanted to throw theand that’s what you went withback in her face. Instead, she looked away, pretending to be embarrassed.
“No.” She let the word linger in her mouth as if she didn’t want to let it go. Then she shifted her eyes back to Isabel, who was grinning as if she’d figured something out.Good.
“My turn,” Raisa said. “Have you been in contact with Conrad?”
“Yes,” Isabel said, and despite the circumstances, Raisa couldn’t help but feel satisfaction at the confirmation. She barely knew Isabel, but she’d been able to readthat, at least. “We exchanged letters once I guessed that he wasn’t the one who killed Shay Kilkenny. I wasn’t the one who convinced him to share that fact with the world, though, if that’s what you’re really asking.” She paused, but only for a heartbeat. “Do you love Delaney now?”
Raisa blinked at her. That was a much more interesting question, she had to admit, especially considering the last time she’d seen Delaney had been that night Isabel had shot Raisa. And Delaney had been holding Raisa at gunpoint only moments before Isabel’s bullet had torn through Raisa’s shoulder.
That had been a fun family reunion all around.
Isabel was obsessed with both of their lives to an unhealthy extent, but she was most possessive of Delaney, who was much closer in age to her than Raisa.
“No,” Raisa answered honestly. Knowing someone had been your sister at birth didn’t automatically create a connection that could withstand everything Delaney had done. But—and Raisa would never admit this, certainly not to Isabel—she didlikeDelaney.
Before the night in the woods, Delaney had been a crucial part of the investigation into Isabel’s latest murders. She had a day job as a content moderator for a social media site but had been something of a dark-web vigilante, outing rapists and other creeps when they posted on those terrible forums Raisa liked to pretend didn’t exist. That was how Delaney had originally started working with Kilkenny—he’d been her contact at the FBI for years before Raisa had met her. When Delaney had flagged a video that Isabel had posted of her crime scene, they’d all just assumed she was helping catch another random bad guy.
Delaney was weird, with odd social graces and an intense mind that saw patterns and logic in a way that would have made her an excellent linguist. She was funny and smart, and for some reason, they clicked when they worked together.
Raisa didn’t have to like that she liked her, though.
“Are you angry she’s not in jail?” Isabel asked, seeming pleased with Raisa’s answer.
“My turn,” Raisa said, feeling like she had the upper hand for the first time since she’d walked into the room. She had to be smarter here. Asking who had convinced Conrad to “confess”—or lie, probably—was pointless. Likely, it had been Kate Tashibi, possibly supplied with information from Isabel, possibly with her own. Still, Raisa couldn’t think of a way into this that would force Isabel to reveal anything of importance. Except ... Isabel had always liked to think of herself as smart.
“What is the question I should be asking?”
Isabel lit up, as Raisa predicted. “Ohhh, finally a hint of intelligence.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“I’m thinking,” Isabel said, and it actually sounded like she was. She hadn’t anticipated these lines in her script. “You clearly already knowwhy I’m screwing with Kilkenny. He messed with my plans and needs to be punished.”
Raisa did know that. She’d been braced forsomethingever since Kilkenny had saved Isabel’s life three months earlier. For anyone else, they would feel nothing but extreme gratitude for Kilkenny, but Isabel hadn’t wanted this. She’d wanted the sweet release of death.
“It also doesn’t really matter when I figured all this out,” Isabel continued. “That was five years ago, by the way. When Kilkenny started working with Delaney. So. What would I ask if I were you?”
After one more beat, Isabel smiled with realization. “Why did I first suspect Conrad hadn’t killed the wife?”
The wiferankled, but Raisa let it go. There were battles to pick here, and that wasn’t one of them. “What was it?”