Page 36 of By the Time You Read This (Raisa Susanto #3)

Chapter Twenty-Five

Raisa

Day Three

“Where is she?” Raisa asked, nearly coming out of the chair beside Kilkenny’s hospital bed, ready to go confront her sister.

She could hardly believe that St. Ivany really had been able to find Delaney. Maybe she wasn’t so concentrated on flying beneath the radar anymore—now that Isabel was in jail and Delaney had been cleared.

Raisa surprised herself with her next question. “Is she all right?”

“Well, I didn’t actually find her,” St. Ivany admitted. Before Raisa could deflate, she added, “I got her address.”

“In Seattle?” Raisa asked. It wasn’t far away—it would be worth going to check out, even if they weren’t sure she was still there. She glanced outside, and realized the sky had fully darkened while she’d been busy reading. “In the morning, I guess.”

“First thing,” St. Ivany said, and then knocked against the doorjamb to signal her impending departure.

“Hey,” Raisa called. “Someone broke into my hotel room earlier. Ransacked it.”

St. Ivany’s brows shot up. “And you’re just telling me this now?”

Raisa shrugged. She’d been going nonstop since.

“Shit,” St. Ivany said, scrubbing a hand over her face. Then she headed directly toward the chair positioned in the far corner of the room and dropped into it. “Fuck, this has been a long couple of weeks.”

Raisa huffed out a sympathetic laugh. “Yeah.”

“Who broke into your room?” St. Ivany asked.

“The copycat? Protégé, whatever. Whoever killed Peter and Lindsey and Emily,” Raisa said. “They left a message on the wall. ‘Leave.’ No punctuation.”

The corners of St. Ivany’s lips tipped up. “Ever the linguist. What does that tell you about them?”

“They were raised in the southern part of the United States, born sometime in the eighties, and went to school at an Ivy league university,” Raisa said.

St. Ivany’s eyes flew to hers. “Really?”

“No,” Raisa said on a laugh. “I’m fucking with you, sorry.”

St. Ivany made a face at her, but relaxed into the chair.

“It doesn’t tell me much except it feels like a show,” Raisa said. “Or like an afterthought. They didn’t feel any emotion behind it. They just wanted it to look like they were trying to scare me away.”

“Why?” St. Ivany asked, seemingly all she could muster.

Raisa thought back to her conversation with Roan, about the fact that he, like Delaney, had contact with at least two of the victims before their deaths. “His heart wasn’t in it.”

St. Ivany straightened again. “His?”

“Their,” Raisa corrected, too late. She decided to just fill St. Ivany in. She didn’t fully trust the woman, but they were in this boat together right now.

“I talked to a man named Roan Carmichael,” she said, and St. Ivany startled.

“He’s the guy who met with Emily for coffee not long before she died,” St. Ivany said, now watching her with a new intensity. “He said he was a friend of the family passing through.”

“Nope,” Raisa said. “He knows her through the true crime community. She wanted to interview him as the brother of one of Isabel’s victims.”

“Well, Christ,” St. Ivany said. “I should have held him.”

“He was also Isabel’s last visitor,” she said, and St. Ivany almost stood at that. Raisa held up a hand. “He says someone faked his identity.”

“Not easy, but not impossible,” St. Ivany said. “I’ll get a warrant for any security footage from the prison. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

They hadn’t so far, but maybe the tides would change. “Yeah.”

“Should we prioritize him over finding Delaney?” St. Ivany asked.

Where Raisa wasn’t sure if Roan fit into this investigation, she was now sure Delaney would. “No, we need to figure out the missing pieces. I’m pretty sure she has at least a few of them.”

St. Ivany nodded, and then studied Raisa silently.

“What?”

“What if she killed all these people?” St. Ivany asked. “What if she’s involved? Would you be able to arrest her?”

“Gleefully,” Raisa lied through her teeth. It was what she wanted to be able to believe. She just didn’t anymore.

St. Ivany shot her a dubious look.

“Okay, maybe not gleefully,” Raisa admitted. “What are you still doing here anyway? Shouldn’t you be trying to sleep?”

“Did you see pictures of Emily Logan’s crime scene?” St. Ivany asked, in a seeming non sequitur.

Raisa shook her head.

“Yeah, I don’t want to ever see something like that again.”

It took Raisa a second to realize that St. Ivany was guarding her.

“You might not think much of linguists, but I am an FBI agent,” Raisa reminded her, though she didn’t feel as annoyed as she might have.

“Then you can protect me right back,” St. Ivany said. “What are you looking at?”

Raisa pulled out Essi’s book.

“Who is Essi Halla?” St. Ivany asked after squinting toward the cover.

“Self-help guru. I’m trying to further improve my sunny disposition.”

“Think it’s gonna take more than a book.”

“Don’t swing too hard at softballs, it’s not a good look,” Raisa said. “Her father was killed by Isabel—or she thinks he was. Or she just says he was. I don’t know ... Something about her has my back up.”

“You have good instincts,” St. Ivany said, staring at the book harder now, as if she could intimidate it into spilling its secrets. “You think she could be our guy?”

“Let me read this and maybe I’ll be able to tell you.”

St. Ivany waved at her to proceed and Raisa settled in, not letting herself worry about what St. Ivany was going to do to occupy herself.

It turned out Essi had a nice writing voice, which was both conversational and compelling.

Then came a knock, just like so many others in the days before it. I couldn’t stomach one more casserole.

But I answered the door, because if I didn’t one of the ladies who brought the casseroles would probably call the cops.

Everyone knew I was hanging on by a thread.

It wasn’t one of my neighbors at my door, though.

Instead it was a girl. She asked, “Do you know who killed your father?”

And that’s when I found something besides the casseroles to make each day worth waking up for.

Raisa wondered how much of the book was real, and then wondered if it mattered.

Oftentimes it wasn’t the truth that was important.

It was understanding what story the author wanted to tell about themselves.

Raisa woke with a gasp, every part of her achy.

Probably because she’d slept in a hospital chair.

She wiped at her mouth, and blinked the world into focus.

St. Ivany was slumped in her own chair, her head lolling as she softly snored.

Raisa straightened, kicking the book at her feet as she did.

She had barely made it through the first chapter before nodding off.

Next, Raisa’s eyes slid to Kilkenny.

No change. She hadn’t expected it, but still the knowledge stung. It had been almost forty-eight hours since the accident.

She was no doctor, but she knew that couldn’t be a good sign.

St. Ivany mumbled herself awake. “Christ, I haven’t slept in a chair since I was in college.”

“Yeah, we’re not going to feel great,” Raisa acknowledged, standing so she could stretch, a hopeless fight against stiff muscles. “But now we can head straight to Seattle.”

St. Ivany checked her phone. “It’s only five.”

Raisa shrugged. “You said first thing.”

“That I did.” St. Ivany groaned as she pushed herself to her feet.

St. Ivany drove them. Seattle, distance wise, was only an hour away, but with traffic it took them two hours to get into the city and find a parking spot a few blocks from their final destination.

“I looked at the street view earlier this morning—it seems to be an old house,” St. Ivany said. “I searched for expired rental listings, and about a year ago, this address had posted about a basement room.”

“Impressive,” Raisa murmured.

“Don’t sound surprised,” St. Ivany said.

Raisa shot her a grin, but then sobered as they walked toward the house on the corner.

She swallowed hard and told herself that Delaney probably wasn’t there. She would never let herself be found this way if she didn’t want to be.

“If she is involved in all this, she won’t want us to come sniffing around,” Raisa said. “Which means, she probably won’t answer if we knock, and then we’ll lose her for good.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Waiting her out for now,” Raisa said.

St. Ivany nodded. “You know her best.”

Raisa didn’t, but it meant she’d get her way, so that was fine. They walked past the house and then stopped at a coffee shop, where they set up by a window.

The morning passed slowly into early afternoon.

“Do we even know she’s there?” St. Ivany finally asked. They’d sat in silence for the past hour. “We can’t just wait here forever.”

“I’ll go check,” Raisa said and then had to shake St. Ivany’s hand off. “Better me than you. I can say I wanted to check up on her as her sister. You would start getting into dicey territory.”

St. Ivany hesitated, but she had to know Raisa had logic on her side. Eventually, she nodded.

Raisa left her bag with St. Ivany and then headed out of the coffee shop. She eyed the house as she crossed the street at a light jog.

She had a feeling there would be windows somewhere near the ground if the basement had been used as an apartment. Most people wouldn’t rent something without at least a little bit of light.

Tall bushes flanked the sides of the house, and Raisa headed toward them—after checking to see if there were any passersby about to call the cops on her.

When she felt confident she had the all clear, she ducked behind one of the plants. It was substantial enough to completely hide her from the street.

Right where she expected, there was a window. Only about a foot by two feet, not enough to slip through, but wide enough to at least check inside.

Raisa dropped to the ground and water immediately soaked into the knees of her jeans.

She took a deep breath and then shifted to peer through the window.

And there ... there was Delaney.

Her back was to Raisa, but her long braid and profile were distinct enough that Raisa could tell, even at a glance, at this awkward angle, that it was her sister.

As if she’d heard the thought, Delaney whipped around.

Instinct had Raisa flattening herself to the wall, her breathing tight.

Delaney hadn’t seen her, she was sure of it.

But what if she had?