Page 1 of By the Time You Read This (Raisa Susanto #3)

Chapter One

Raisa

Day One

FBI forensic linguist Raisa Susanto wanted to go home.

It was a novel feeling, considering she hadn’t lived anywhere that had felt like home in nearly two decades. But six months ago, she’d finally given up her attachment to off-white walls and gray linoleum and moved into a 1930s-era bungalow with wood floors that had more personality than her past six apartments combined.

Putting down roots.

The concept scared her more than she wanted to admit, but on nights like these, driving back to her house exhausted after hunting down a killer, she was glad she’d put on her big-girl panties and applied for that mortgage.

She still had to find time to make it actually feel like hers —including decorating literally any room—but she no longer hated the place she lived.

Baby steps, as her quasi-partner, forensic psychologist Callum Kilkenny, would say. For him, anything that made her a slightly more open, vulnerable human and slightly less of a gremlin with concrete walls around her was a victory.

Even if those walls were well earned.

As Raisa pulled to a stop at a light, her fingers found the place where a bullet had torn through ligament and muscle two years earlier. The ache wasn’t real—she had completely healed from the injury. But it pulsed sometimes, a ghost, reminding her of how far she’d come over the past two years.

How far she still had to go.

Just the thought of it had her checking her rearview mirror, as if Isabel, her psychopathic serial killer sister, were following her through the outskirts of suburban Tacoma well after midnight.

There were plenty of reasons why that idea was ridiculous, but the primary one was that Isabel—on that night she’d put a bullet into Raisa—had finally been arrested after a prolific and violent twenty-five years of an ever-escalating victim count.

When Raisa turned onto her street, her fingers relaxed against the steering wheel, the anxiety that came with thinking about Isabel blessedly releasing her from its grip. Her sister was safely behind bars at a high-security women’s correctional facility serving multiple life sentences. And Raisa? Raisa was home.

It was past midnight and all the houses around hers were dark, everything soft, quiet, and cozy. Tucked in. The silence when she walked into her bungalow welcomed her rather than putting her on edge.

The moonlight shifted and Raisa caught sight of a white envelope that someone had clearly slipped under the door. Her name was written across the front, but that was the only thing on it—there was no postage or return address. Raisa’s heartbeat ticked up a notch, but just as soon as it did, she remembered Alicia from down the street had mentioned sending her a flyer about a block party later that month.

Considering Raisa had been gone for almost two weeks, Alicia’d probably gotten tired of knocking.

Raisa picked the envelope up and dropped it on the side table, along with her keys and purse. She would deal with everything in the morning. What she wanted now, more than anything, was sleep.

She barely managed to drag her clothes off before collapsing into bed.

But she didn’t fall asleep.

Instead, she stared at the ceiling, something itching at her brain. The sensation was similar to wondering if she’d turned off the oven before leaving on vacation.

It was the envelope. It was seeing it right after thinking about Isabel and that night two years ago.

Raisa sat up and grabbed a sweatshirt on her way out of bed. The thing was oversize and worn-in and offered a comfort she shouldn’t be craving right now. She also thought about getting her gun—which would offer a different sort of comfort—but that was probably overkill. Especially if she opened the envelope and found an invitation to a block party.

A few strides later, and she was standing in front of her entryway side table.

She had read plenty of letters in her life as a forensic linguist for the FBI. Bomb threats, kidnapping demands, manifestos, terrorist plots, suicide notes—the list went on. She’d seen the worst humans could write to each other, the words somehow more damning when put down in ink rather than just spoken.

Raisa was never nervous to read any of them. They were problems that needed to be solved, peeks into the darkest souls that satisfied a curiosity in her that she’d had since she was young.

Her heart never raced like this when simply looking at any of them.

Once again, her fingers found the spot where a pink, puckered scar lived.

She was being paranoid, she knew.

But sometimes paranoia was justified.

The first time Isabel had ruined her life, Raisa had been only three years old. Isabel had killed their parents—Tim and Becks Parker—in their bed, too many stab wounds between them to count. She’d maneuvered their brother, Alex, into the claw-foot tub in their parents’ bathroom, slit his wrists, and then left a suicide note “written by him” that confessed to the murders.

Isabel had been fifteen years old.

The second time, Isabel had wanted to see how Raisa, who’d been adopted by kind and loving parents, was growing up. That had kicked off a series of events in which Raisa’s adoptive parents died in a car crash. Raisa had survived a series of progressively worsening foster homes until she’d pretty much landed on the streets, raising herself.

The last time Isabel had tried to ruin Raisa’s life ... well. Raisa had ended up with a scar and the memory of pulling a trigger with the intent of killing her own sister.

There was no reason to think the letter came from Isabel.

And yet, somehow, Raisa knew it did.

The darkness no longer seemed welcoming, but sinister, her home—her haven—now tainted with the presence of a monster.

Raisa fought the urge to call the correctional facility to have them go check to make sure Isabel hadn’t escaped from her cell. Of course she hadn’t. This wasn’t a movie. However this letter had gotten to Raisa, it wasn’t because Isabel was crouching in the bushes outside her bungalow.

The image was enough to break the spell her paranoia had cast. Raisa laughed at the thought of Isabel—who wanted nothing more than to be thought of as brilliant, cool, and mysterious—trying to peek into her window.

Raisa picked up the envelope because it wasn’t a bomb.

Not one that would explode in her hands at that moment, at least.

Whatever was inside might explode her life, but that would be something she would have to deal with whether she stared at it until the morning or ripped off the Band-Aid now.

She glanced at the pane of glass in her door, caught only her reflection, and then dropped to the floor. Anyone outside could see her. Safety procedures were still smart, no matter what the actual threat level was.

Raisa took a deep breath and finally opened the envelope.

There was a single piece of paper inside.

By the time you read this, I’ll be dead.

Beneath that was an address on the Olympic Peninsula, one Raisa didn’t recognize at a glance.

The paper trembled in her hands, surprise overtaking any other emotion.

There was no doubt in her mind that it was from Isabel.

It could be a lie, but what would that accomplish?

It would get Raisa to visit.

She hadn’t seen her sister in more than a year. In fact, Raisa had tried to completely forget that Isabel even existed. She’d blocked her name on all the social media apps, she’d made sure to stay away from the suggested listens on any podcast platform, she even squinted at the home screens of all the streaming services because now was about the time that docuseries were coming out about Isabel’s long and violent killing career.

Maybe Raisa had done too good a job. Maybe there was a reason Isabel was trying to summon her and, having grown frustrated with any previous attempts to do so, went for the shock value.

But Isabel hated looking foolish about as much as she hated being wrong. She would never have sent this note if it weren’t true.

Raisa’s breathing had gone ragged, and she only realized it when black started creeping in from the sides of her eyes.

She didn’t care if Isabel was dead, not like she probably should at losing one of her two remaining family members. Nothing in Raisa’s life would really change at all. And yet the idea of it sent shock waves through her body.

Losing something that was evil was still losing something.

After that night when she and Isabel had aimed guns at each other and both pulled the trigger, Raisa had wondered if her family was simply bad . After all, there had been a moment during the standoff where Raisa had been sure that Delaney Moore, their third sister, would help Isabel get away with killing her.

She had grappled with that idea for a long time—for if Raisa had been born to a family of monsters, what did that make her?

It had really only been after she and Kilkenny had gone to Texas to look into the decade-old death of his wife, Shay, that Raisa had come to realize that she wasn’t defined by her blood. She was defined by the family she chose , not the one she was born into.

Isabel had served as a stark reminder of what Raisa could have become. It had reminded her whenever she wanted to make the lazy choice, the selfish choice, the choice that was unjust, that the road to hell could be paved with those missteps.

The sky lightened, and still Raisa sat on the floor staring at perhaps the last words she’d ever get from Isabel.

There would be plenty of time to dissect them later. Right now, she couldn’t think of much beyond the confusing miasma of relief, joy, grief, anger, fear.

Raisa’s cell phone rang, vibrating on the floor next to her foot. She grabbed for it and checked the screen.

Kilkenny.

She let it go to voicemail, though she offered him a silent apology as she did.

Most of her life had been spent as a loner—beyond the little band of foster kids who’d grown up on the streets alongside her. As one of two forensic linguists employed full-time by the Bureau, she was shipped around the country more often than she was in Tacoma. She became friendly enough with some agents—the ones who didn’t see her as an irritating paper pusher—but she never stayed long enough to transition to actual allies.

That had been before Kilkenny, though. As a forensic psychologist, he was also loaned out to investigations all over the country. Prior to getting to know him, she’d thought him too aloof to care about the fact that they both had lonely jobs. Now that she’d spent the past year being able to call him a friend, she realized they’d both been craving a partner in a way their positions would never allow them to have.

She didn’t want to ignore his call, but she also couldn’t bring herself to answer it. She knew what he was going to tell her.

For just a little longer, she wanted to live in this Schrodinger’s moment where Isabel was both alive and dead. The minute was ruined by a text from Kilkenny anyway.

Turn on the news.

Raisa fumbled for her remote, half-glad and half-irritated that she’d sprung for basic cable when she moved into the bungalow. She knew what she would find, but needed it confirmed.

Needed to see the cat actually dead.

Across the bottom of the TV screen, the chyron read:

Serial Killer Isabel Parker Found Dead in Cell