Page 37 of By the Time You Read This (Raisa Susanto #3)

Chapter Twenty-Six

Raisa

Day Four

Raisa had the question answered quickly. Delaney had, in fact, realized there was someone looking in her window.

Or, at the very least, she’d had the sensation of eyes on the back of her neck, and that had sent her into flight mode.

By the time Raisa risked peeking in the window again, Delaney was already pulling down a go-bag from her closet. The computer on her desk had a thumb drive shoved into the port. She was getting ready to burn the place.

Metaphorically, of course. Delaney was many things, but an arsonist she was not.

“Shit,” Raisa murmured and took off, the blood thrumming in her ears.

She nearly skidded to a halt in front of St. Ivany, who was already half-out of her seat, clearly reading the urgency in Raisa’s body language.

“She’s about to run,” Raisa said, grabbing her bag.

St. Ivany didn’t need to be hurried along. “Do we confront her?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Raisa muttered as they sprinted back to the SUV. St. Ivany slid in the driver’s side and got them to where they could see the door to Delaney’s place in under a minute. “She erased her laptop. And there’s nothing to arrest her over. I’m not even sure she’s done anything wrong, but I can tell you if we approach her now, she’s gonna book it.”

“Okay, what do you want to do? Just let her go?”

Raisa looked around. “Do you have an AirTag?”

“Her phone will alert her it’s there, even if you can get it on her,” St. Ivany said, which wasn’t an answer.

“No,” Raisa said, her eyes locked on the door. You know her best. Maybe she did, more than she thought. “She’s gonna drop the phone somewhere. Probably as a ruse to lead whoever is following her out of town.”

“You think she’ll drop it before the phone alerts her there’s a strange AirTag near her?” St. Ivany asked.

“I think we should at least try to figure out a way for her not to disappear off to Mexico, yeah,” Raisa said, and then looked over when St. Ivany made a sound. She was holding an AirTag up, one she’d pulled from her console. Raisa fist pumped. “Officially, un-invite me from the case.”

“You’re officially un-invited,” St. Ivany said, handing the thing over. Raisa wasn’t sure how much of this would hold up as quality police work, but she wasn’t about to let Delaney lose them without a fight. They would figure everything else out later.

Delaney chose that moment to step out onto the sidewalk, her bag slung over her shoulder. There were no keys in her hand, so they might get lucky. She was fleeing on foot.

“What do you want me to do?” St. Ivany asked.

“I’m going to get out and follow her. You’ll be backup in case I lose her,” Raisa said. “Stick with Delaney, not me.”

“You’re chopped liver. Got it,” St. Ivany said, giving her a jaunty salute.

Raisa grabbed her purse this time and left her bag. She had no interest in getting stuck in the middle of Seattle without any money.

She waited until the second Delaney was out of sight and then she hopped out of the SUV, following her at a fast clip. Running would bring attention to both of them, and considering how quiet the street was, she wanted to avoid that if at all possible.

For a brief moment, she considered simply calling out to Delaney. Her fleeing like this wasn’t necessarily a sign of her guilt—Raisa was sure she would have run no matter what as soon as she’d seen someone looking in her window. Maybe if Raisa asked, without the Gig Harbor police force behind her, whether Delaney was currently caught up in another one of Isabel’s schemes, she’d get an honest answer.

But why would Delaney tell her anything, when for two years Raisa had made her feel like she’d be locked up if she ever stepped a single toe over the line?

What if Delaney had been forced to do something heinous because of Isabel? She had visited Lindsey Cousins and left her “rattled.” She had been spotted outside Peter Stamkos’s house. Emily Logan had died the same way their parents had been killed, and Raisa had convinced herself that Delaney would never copy that.

But what if it had been a message to Isabel?

I can kill your protégé and get away with it, too.

It would explain the rage.

So Raisa followed her through the streets. She didn’t know Seattle well, but she managed, apart from two close calls, to keep Delaney mostly in her sights.

The second one happened when they were in the heart of downtown. She rounded a corner to find only tourists and locals swarming on the sidewalks. Delaney must have ducked in somewhere to try to catch any potential tail off guard. Raisa swayed, feeling vulnerable out in the open.

Raisa didn’t know if she course-corrected in time to avoid detection, but when she slid into a coffee shop to regain her bearings, she realized where they were.

Right outside the ferry terminal.

Using the ferry to disappear was smart of Delaney, but Raisa wouldn’t have expected anything less. It, also, thankfully worked in Raisa’s favor.

Raisa patiently waited in the coffee shop until Delaney finally ducked out of the shadows of a skyscraper and headed toward the terminal.

Following her would be way too risky at this point. Instead, Raisa pulled up the schedule on her phone. The next ferry leaving was in twenty minutes, and it was headed to Bainbridge.

She looked around and found three men shooting the shit outside the furniture store to her right. She flashed her badge but also made sure the fifty she’d pulled from her wallet was visible.

“Gentlemen, may I ask a favor?”

She quickly had a taker. After that, all she could do was wait until he came back out, flashing her a thumbs-up. He must have been able to drop the AirTag into Delaney’s bag—or he was lying to her for the money. Raisa would have to wait until St. Ivany picked her up to confirm either way.

Only a few minutes later, St. Ivany pulled to a stop in front of the alley where Raisa had been lingering.

A second later, she was in the SUV’s passenger seat.

“She hasn’t found it yet,” St. Ivany said, handing Raisa her phone, which had a little map of the terminal and the sound beyond it. Delaney—along with the AirTag—was pulling away from the dock.

“Don’t jinx it,” Raisa muttered, and St. Ivany shut up as she started driving south, out of town.

“Should we head to Bainbridge?” St. Ivany asked.

You know her best.

“I don’t think she’s in full flight mode,” Raisa said. “I think she’ll circle back.”

“To Seattle?”

Raisa chewed on her lip. It wasn’t that she knew Delaney best, she realized. It was just that she knew what someone like her—mainly Raisa herself—would do in this situation.

“She’s involved, somehow, in all this up to her eyeballs,” Raisa said. “She’s going to want to stick around and figure out why someone is following her. What they know, and if it can hurt her.”

“Okay,” St. Ivany said.

Raisa shot her a look. “You’re being very cooperative.”

“It hasn’t steered me wrong yet today,” St. Ivany pointed out.

Which made her wonder . . .

“Did you ever think I was a part of this?” Raisa asked. “Like Isabel had gotten to me. Or that I had killed her myself?”

“I might have landed there eventually,” St. Ivany mused. “But I thought you were just being ... stubborn.”

“Diplomatic.”

“Always,” St. Ivany shot back. “Pretty much up until that little disappearing act Delaney just tried to pull, I was still thinking it was the boyfriend who had killed Emily.”

“Delaney leaving convinced you?” Raisa asked, almost surprised. Maybe she was just more familiar with Delaney’s paranoia. “She had a go-bag ready; she was able to leave the apartment within five minutes. I think she’s guilty of something, but that? She’s just like a deer—she catches scent of something and goes into get the hell out of here mode no matter the level of danger she’s in.”

“That’s quite an analogy,” St. Ivany said. “Still on?”

Raisa glanced down. The ferry was halfway across the sound. Delaney hadn’t found the tracker, and it was likely she would drop her phone at any second.

“I think we’re good.”

They both sank back into their seats as some of the tension bled out of the air.

“That was smart thinking,” St. Ivany admitted.

“I’m just glad you had one,” Raisa said. They could have figured out some way to keep eyes on Delaney, but it would have been so much more difficult.

“So, what’s the plan?” St. Ivany asked.

Raisa eyed her and tried to be objective. In her white blazer and with her pretty hair, she didn’t read as a cop. “You go talk to her? Wherever she lands?”

“What’s the goal with that?” St. Ivany asked. “Do we really want to scare her further?”

They were out of the city now, and Delaney was inching closer to the peninsula. “Delaney is smart, but if she’s spooked, she might make an unforced error. We want to keep her unbalanced and anxious.”

St. Ivany nodded and then pulled into the parking lot of the next fast-food restaurant.

When she fully braked, she turned to look at Raisa. “You still don’t think she killed Emily?”

Raisa hesitated, and St. Ivany pounced.

“You’ve changed your mind,” she said.

“No.” Raisa dragged out the denial. “I think if she was angry enough at Isabel for putting her into a bad situation, she might have taken it out on a protégé who was killing people.”

“And that protégé might have been Emily?”

Raisa shrugged. “It’s a theory. She demonstrated poor coping skills by posting the nudes in her boyfriend’s phone. It could indicate she had a broader personality disorder.”

St. Ivany shook her head. “What a way to have to live.”

“What do you mean?”

“I never wondered what it would be like to have a psychopathic serial killer as a sibling, but it sounds exhausting,” St. Ivany drawled.

Raisa stared at her for a long time, until a laugh escaped. Once she started, she couldn’t stop it. St. Ivany joined her—probably because laughter was contagious, not because anything was that funny.

“You have no fucking idea,” Raisa said when she’d finally gotten herself back under control.

St. Ivany was about to say something, but before she could, Raisa held up the phone.

Right now, nothing else mattered.

Delaney was on the move.