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She’d been dreading going in alone.
The last time she’d seen Isabel Parker was when the woman had put a bullet into Raisa’s shoulder. Only luck and Isabel’s poor aim had saved Raisa.
And even though Raisa had lodged her own bullet in Isabel, the woman had lived to die another day. Which meant now she was on trial instead of rotting six feet in the ground.
Raisa wouldn’t typically call herself bloodthirsty—she was a linguist, after all—but she wasn’t sure she would have been crying too many tears had Isabel died that night of their standoff.
Even though Isabel was technically her sister.
It wasn’t as if Raisa had known that fact prior to that night. They had been separated when Raisa was only three, after Isabel killed their parents and their brother, Alex, whom she then framed for the deaths. The mini-massacre had kicked off a twenty-five-year-long killing spree that had culminated in Isabel returning to their hometown, Everly, to commemorate the anniversary with even more deaths.
That—and pulling Raisa into the mix—had been her downfall. Today, she would be answering for her crimes, and even if Raisa would prefer that her own bullet had been a few centimeters to the right, she was happy Isabel’s victims were getting justice.
Including herself.
No one expects you to just shrug off a near-death experience,Kilkenny had told her plenty of times in the three months since her standoff with Isabel.
But it wasn’t the bullet that had done the most damage. Instead, what had rocked the ground beneath her feet had been the string ofrevelations that came with it—that Raisa had an entire family she hadn’t known about, that there was a darkness in her past that seemed to newly define who she was as a person. That she had been one of two sisters to have survived Isabel’s massacre, and that the other, Delaney, had been somewhat complicit in Isabel’s murder tour. That the parents she’d loved, the ones who’d taught her to be fair and just andgood, hadn’t really been hers.
For most of her life, she’d prided herself on being tough, on her thick skin and ability to roll with whatever came her way. After her adoptive parents—the ones who’d raised her—had died when she was only ten, she’d been bounced around the foster system, too old to land anywhere permanently. She wasn’t soft; she hadn’t had an easy go of it. And yet this, this, she couldn’t shake off.
At some point in the past three months, Kilkenny had quietly sent her a list of FBI-vetted psychologists, but Raisa hit a brick wall every time she imagined explaining what was wrong with her. She didn’t know how to put into words the way the bottom had dropped out of her world.
Kilkenny smiled at her now from the courthouse steps, his eyes dropping to her shoulder. He’d been the one to find them that night, the three Parker girls, both Isabel and Raisa bleeding out on the ground from each other’s guns, Delaney crouched over Isabel, her loyalties cemented long ago.
Raisa had thought—had hoped—she’d taken Isabel out with her shot, but Kilkenny had brought paramedics with him when he’d tracked them down in the woods. He’d arrived only minutes after Isabel had taken her bullet to the chest and had probably saved her life.
A life she would now spend in prison.
Isabel wasn’t exactly happy about that fate, and as people like her were wont to do, she blamed Kilkenny instead of herself for it.
“You okay?” Kilkenny asked, as they made their way into the courthouse. She probably had that look on her face, the one she knew shegot when she thought too hard about the nest of vipers she’d been born into.
They both knew she was lying when she answered, “Yeah, sorry.”
Neither of them said much as they found seats and settled in. It wasn’t until Isabel was led into the courtroom that Kilkenny tensed beside Raisa.
“What?” Raisa asked.
“She seems ...” Kilkenny trailed off. “Happy.”
He was right. Of course he was.
Kilkenny ran his thumb over his wedding band, a habit that she wasn’t even sure he was aware of. “She’s watching me.”
Again, he was right.
Throughout all the opening statements of the trial, Isabel kept glancing back at them, wearing that same obnoxious smirk from the woods, the one she’d worn when she taunted Raisa with plans for her imminent death.
Raisa wouldn’t have been surprised if Isabel stared at her throughout the whole trial, but she had not once caught her sister’s eyes across the room. Isabel’s attention was locked on Kilkenny.
Like she was waiting for something to happen.
“I don’t like this,” Kilkenny said quietly.
Raisa didn’t, either. The lawyers were talking, but Raisa couldn’t concentrate on what they were saying, her mind working through the possibilities. Isabel was behind bars, had been since that night in the clearing. She had tried to kill an FBI agent. Even if there hadn’t been evidence of her other crimes, she would have been held without bail for that.
Isabel was scary smart, though. Raisa wasn’t sure of the exact number of people she’d killed, and she doubted that even the prosecutors were aware of the full tally. But it had been dozens over a twenty-five-year time span.