Page 23 of By the Time You Read This (Raisa Susanto #3)

Chapter Seventeen

Delaney

Day Five

Roan, of the Carolina mountains, tried to linger, but Delaney shoved him on his way. He’d served his purpose—the few hours of mindless relief had been worth the risk. But she wasn’t about to get sloppy now that dawn had broken.

Delaney sat cross-legged on the rumpled hotel bed and pulled her new laptop closer so she could plug in the USB with Isabel’s notes on it.

Even though she had them memorized, she pulled up the first one she’d received, which had set this whole debacle into motion.

Dear Delaney. Let’s play a game. To get the rules, you must come see me.

I know, I know, I know. You don’t want to do that.

But my dear sister, you will not like what happens if you don’t.

She wondered, as she always did when she read these, if Raisa had received her own messages. What was the game Isabel wanted Raisa to play? How did the two of theirs interlock?

Because wasn’t that the important part? It wasn’t what Isabel said the game was—it was what she wanted her sisters to do, for reasons neither of them could know. Delaney had gone to talk to Isabel, had heard the parameters of the “game,” had heard the consequences, and yet she still didn’t know what part she was inadvertently playing on Isabel’s chessboard.

“ Find a killer, ” Isabel had said.

“ Kill the killer, ” Isabel had said.

“ Become as bad as me ” had been silent, but relayed in the space between words.

Delaney still didn’t understand the real why , though. And until she did, she wouldn’t be able to beat Isabel.

The one thing she hadn’t ever been able to do when her sister was alive.

The obvious choice was to simply not play.

But Delaney was pretty sure the consequence of such a decision was Raisa’s life.

Not that her sister would be appreciative.

Normally, Delaney didn’t care what people thought about her; she would have gone crazy a long time ago if she did. She wasn’t particularly likable anyway. She said strange things at strange times—something Raisa had always called her out on. She cared more about numbers and patterns and logic than she did about someone else’s emotions. She never got lonely. Though she had enjoyed the one long-term relationship she’d had, she’d had to break it off because he had been a detective who was too smart for his own good. Yet Delaney didn’t need anyone, not like everyone else seemed to.

But she had built her life around Isabel. Not completely, not as much as Raisa probably thought. There were other people beyond even that one long-term relationship. There had been plenty of men like Roan, one-night stands to fill a need. She’d taken vacations and gone to the beach and swum in the water and walked in forests. When she looked back on her life, though, those were the moments that seemed in between the rest. Her thoughts had always returned to Isabel, how to find her, how to stop her.

There was a space there now, a void she kept returning to and hitting a brick wall when she did.

Isabel was dead.

And every time Delaney had that thought, she felt the tug from Raisa, off in her peripheral vision.

It scared her.

Not because Raisa scared her but because that tendency toward obsession was what had been so terrifying about Isabel. Delaney had the same compulsion—she couldn’t even deny it. Her track record spoke for itself.

But if she couldn’t channel it toward Isabel, why wouldn’t it latch right onto Raisa?

With Isabel, at least, that obsession had been productive; it had let her at least get close to stopping a prolific serial killer.

It would not be productive with Raisa.

And with that thought, Delaney slammed the laptop closed. She slid it into a bag—she wasn’t about to leave anything possibly incriminating behind while Roan knew what room she was staying in—and then dressed quickly.

There was still a game to be played.

“You never told me your name.”

Delaney looked up, pleased to find Gabriela Cruz standing over her table. She was the reason Delaney had come to this coffee shop—the girl had posted stories to her Flik from here at least four times a week—and it had only taken two hours of loitering for Gabbi to do so.

“Kate,” Delaney said, because it was easy and forgettable. Gabbi wouldn’t be able to search it, either.

“Mind if I sit?” Gabbi asked, though she was already pulling out the chair.

Delaney laughed. “Seems like you don’t need my permission.”

Gabbi ripped off the top of the chocolate chip muffin she’d bought, and stuffed it joyfully in her mouth. It almost hurt to look at someone so impossibly young. Delaney had been a world-weary cynic by the time she’d been Gabbi’s age.

“Did your friend’s daughter make it home okay?”

“Yes,” Delaney said. “Did you hear anything about what happened to the girl in the woods?”

“No, I asked around,” Gabbi said, lifting one shoulder dismissively. But Delaney thought she might care more than she let on. She’d shared several date-rape infographics on her Flik page that morning. “No one seems to even know who the blonde was.”

That surprised Delaney. “You didn’t recognize her?”

“Nope,” Gabbi said, popping another chunk of muffin into her mouth.

“What about the boys?” Delaney asked, pretending not to remember their names.

Benny Thompson.

Brad Something.

Benny didn’t have social media, or at least if he did, it was under some other version of his name. Kids were smarter these days about their digital footprint, so she didn’t find that unusual. She hadn’t been able to find a Brad registered with the local college, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything, either.

Delaney had been at that party, too, and she wasn’t exactly a student.

“I don’t know them that well, just friends of friends of friends,” Gabbi said. “All I know is that Brad looks like he’s going to do coke in the bathroom while he’s clerking for a Supreme Court justice. And Benny seems to fit the mold for weirdo high school shooter.”

She made a face. “Sorry, sometimes I use dark humor as a coping method to weather the shitstorm of terribleness in the world, and it doesn’t always come out right.”

A feeling Delaney knew well. “I don’t disagree.”

Gabbi’s face lit up. But she just shrugged again. “Yeah, well.”

Delaney needed to direct the conversation into a certain place, only she wasn’t always very smooth at doing so in person.

“What have you tried?” Delaney asked, probably a little inelegantly, given the immediate confusion on Gabbi’s face.

“What?”

“You said you’ve tried to do something, about Benny and Brad,” Delaney said. “The other night. What have you tried?”

Gabbi’s eyes narrowed as she studied Delaney’s face. “Just stuff like I mentioned. We have DDs—not for driving, just for one of us to be clearheaded if we need to rescue someone.”

“Nothing else?” Delaney asked.

“Like what?”

Delaney pressed a frustrated sound behind her lips. Gabbi wasn’t going to come out and say anything damning to a stranger with just a few soft questions thrown her way. “Like going to the cops.”

Gabbi full-on laughed in disbelief. “They don’t even take on actual rape cases, let alone someone just saying that a couple of dudes make her uncomfortable.”

That was true enough. Even when women showed up with bruises, at most they’d get a worthless piece of paper they could wave at their attacker right before they were killed.

“Sometimes I wish we lived in a comic book,” Delaney said, and Gabbi leaned forward, arms on the table.

Intrigued.

“Why?”

“Vigilantes aren’t actually cool in reality,” Delaney said. “We have a justice system for a reason. But, god, wouldn’t it feel nice just to have someone taking care of these assholes for us?”

“It would scare a bunch of other predators straight, too,” Gabbi said, sitting back in her seat once more. “What kind of powers would you have? If this was a comic book.”

For her, it was a no-brainer. It would be the power of invisibility. She’d wanted that from the time Isabel had them hiding in their childhood attic from Alex and his “attacks.” She wouldn’t do anything terrible or salacious with the power; she would simply be allowed to exist without having to constantly bend to someone else’s wishes.

She thought of her apartment back in Seattle, the one where she’d begun to hang up posters and pictures and put books on the shelves. Then she thought about the eyes on the back of her neck when someone had found her hideaway.

Yeah. Invisibility would be nice.

But as Kate? Kate, who clearly had a background where she or a loved one had been a victim of sexual assault or some other unspeakable trauma? People like Kate didn’t simply dream of disappearing.

“Laser eyes,” Delaney said. “So I could burn the bad guys up and leave not a single trace behind.”

Gabbi grinned and finished the last of her muffin. “Girl, you don’t need superpowers for that.”