Page 4 of By the Time You Read This (Raisa Susanto #3)

Chapter Three

Raisa

Day One

Raisa sat back on her heels and laughed, though there was nothing funny about the news that Isabel was dead.

The shiny-toothed broadcaster on her TV had adopted a very serious expression as he informed the audience that police didn’t believe any foul play was involved.

Isabel had been found unresponsive in her bunk at morning roll call. There had been no one else in the cell with her, and there were no signs of a fight. The medical examiner would proceed with the autopsy, but Raisa, and probably everyone listening, knew it would go to the bottom of the priority list. In another state her death would have been mandated by a jury of her peers. There were few out there who would look at this as anything other than justice served by Mother Nature.

When the broadcaster began detailing Isabel’s crimes, Raisa muted the TV. She was quite familiar with her sister’s body of work.

Raisa crossed to her desk and carefully laid the letter down, before picking up her notebook.

No foul play, the broadcaster had reported.

And Isabel’s note said dead , not murdered . But if the COD had been natural causes, how would Isabel have known to write to Raisa? How would she have known the exact night she was going to die?

Raisa read the note again.

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

The forensic linguist in her noted the use of read instead of get .

Raisa had been working in law enforcement long enough to know that most criminals weren’t the masterminds that TV portrayed them as. They usually stumbled backward into their success if they ever had any. In the case she’d just come from working, a woman’s boyfriend had taken her phone after he’d murdered her and had spent the night texting the woman’s friends to disrupt the timeline.

But he hadn’t tried to sound like the woman over the texts—even using Spanish slang despite the fact that his girlfriend hadn’t spoken the language at all. He’d been arrested ten days after Raisa arrived.

That wasn’t Isabel.

She was the rare exception: a criminal who actually was brilliant. That’s what happened when your parents were two world-famous mathematicians—which seemed to have translated into an extreme proficiency with language patterns in their children.

The difference between read and get was a small thing, but Raisa’s cases were built on small things.

Isabel had help , Raisa wrote in the notebook. That much was obvious just from the method of delivery, but the person who had helped her knew the time she’d be dead by. That was interesting, considering it had been the middle of the night.

Below that note, she scribbled, Suicide?

She almost crossed it right back out again. Isabel was nothing if not dramatic. If she’d died by suicide, the whole world would know.

Raisa bit her lip before writing, Homicide.

No question mark.

Isabel had made plenty of enemies in her life, both outside and—Raisa presumed—inside prison. They’d identified more than a dozen of her victims from her twenty-five-year killing career, and Raisa knew there were ones who had never been found, who would never be found.

A list comprising the families and loved ones of those victims could fill a book.

And this was one of the many things Raisa hated about Isabel. Because if she’d known enough to know the date she was going to die, wouldn’t she have come up with an idea for the motive? Or even the killer themselves?

Why not just send that to Raisa—or better yet, the police?

The worst thing was that Raisa knew the answer to her own question.

Isabel’s main priority wasn’t that her murder would be solved; it was that she once again could make Raisa dance to her tune. There was no way for Raisa to ignore this note, and she was almost certain there would be more coming.

Raisa’s palm connected with a lamp she’d bought at Goodwill that first night in her new place when she realized she didn’t have any overhead lights. Her fingers curled around the neck, and she ripped the cord from the wall as she threw the thing against the fireplace.

Shards of glass sank into carpet that should have been replaced two decades ago.

Breathing hard, she stared at the aftermath of her uncharacteristic rage and flushed hot with shame.

Raisa wasn’t a person who threw lamps. She wasn’t that person—except when it came to Isabel. Her sister had always managed to bring out the worst in her.

To get herself back under control, she returned her attention to the letter on the desk.

A quick Google Map search of the address showed that it was a residence in some harbor town on the peninsula, looking like a dime a dozen in that stretch of the state.

Maybe it was some complicated code instead of straightforward coordinates, but Raisa didn’t think so. She would need to know the key to break any cipher Isabel had sent, and this wasn’t set up like one.

Isabel wasn’t the type for a parlor trick like invisible ink, either. She had wanted to be thought of as clever, using wordplay and manipulation, not through doing something ten-year-olds experimented with in kits bought at Target.

What it might be was the piece of a larger puzzle, the first of many messages Raisa would get over the next several days.

Or maybe . . .

Delaney.

The middle sister, as the press had dubbed her.

Whereas Raisa hadn’t known until recently that she was the survivor of a family massacre when she was a baby, Delaney—who had been twelve at the time—always had. Delaney had spent most of the twenty-five years that followed the killings searching for Isabel, all the while knowing that she was out there racking up more victims.

Delaney had sworn that she’d been on a mission to stop Isabel, but she had not once contacted the police about their sister’s long killing career.

It didn’t matter how Raisa viewed the situation anyway. It mattered what Isabel thought. And Isabel had loved Delaney most, whatever her version of love was.

If Raisa had received a letter, surely Delaney had as well?

As Raisa reached for her phone, a part of her rebelled.

She was doing exactly what Isabel wanted, she was sure of it. Why else send such a cryptic message?

But wasn’t that the genius of her sister?

Even if you knew you were caught in a riptide, there was nothing to do about it but swim toward the ocean.

Delaney didn’t answer her phone.

Raisa tried twice and then sent a text.

She wasn’t surprised that her sister hadn’t picked up. She didn’t even know where Delaney lived. She could be in Bali, actually enjoying the freedom she’d so dubiously preserved, and Raisa wasn’t sure she’d blame her. For that, at least.

When the knock on her door came a second after she gave up on contacting Delaney, Raisa knew it was Kilkenny without even having to look.

He stood on the little stoop, dressed as casually as he would ever get in pressed, tailored jeans and a cashmere sweater. His salt-and-pepper hair was styled perfectly, pushed back away from his face so that his eyes and cheekbones got the spotlight they deserved. Other people would certainly deem him handsome; Raisa just found his face utterly dear at the moment.

They weren’t big on hugging—that wasn’t their relationship. But when he held out his arms, she fell into them gladly, letting him take her weight for a moment.

“You didn’t have to come,” she muttered into his shoulder.

He pinched her arm. “Right. Like you didn’t have to go to Texas for me.”

Raisa hadn’t thought twice about going to Houston the year before when his late wife’s murder case had been unexpectedly reopened. Even if Isabel hadn’t had her fingerprints all over it, Raisa would have done whatever she had to in order to be there for Kilkenny.

It was funny how things could change so drastically in unexpected ways. Two years ago, he’d been just a distant colleague whom she’d thought of as stuffy and judgmental. She’d been intimidated by his quiet confidence, while also being grateful for the respect he’d always shown her, unlike some of his peers. But she would never have thought they’d get to this point, where they had become a little team against the world.

“How are you?” he asked, holding her at arm’s length to get a better look. His eyes flicked to the broken lamp she still hadn’t cleaned up yet, and then back to her face, which she knew was a little rough.

The past ten days had taken their toll, as any intense investigation always did. Her brain was sluggish and her body tired despite the fact that she hadn’t worked in the field at all. Normally, she would take a day or two to recharge before even thinking about homicides and linguistics and maybe even words in general.

“I’m ...,” Raisa started, and then trailed off, pulling away from Kilkenny. She headed toward the kitchen, knowing he would take that nonanswer without pushing her too hard. “Is black okay? I’ve been out of town, so I don’t have any mix-ins.”

“You got your guy,” Kilkenny guessed. It was a thing with them now, the way he was always so sure she’d had a successful trip whenever she was sent out on an investigation. The confidence from him was a welcome change from her career up until then. Agents who were in the field every day didn’t particularly like being told what to do by a linguist—and a female one at that. Through years of head pats and shrug-offs, she’d been conditioned into defensiveness when talking about her cases.

Not with Kilkenny, though.

“I got my guy,” she confirmed, though he hadn’t needed it. He leaned against the counter while she got the coffee started.

“So ... natural causes?” he asked. “For Isabel?”

“Maybe,” Raisa said, turning back to him. “She sent me a letter.”

His brows shot up. “Saying what?”

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

“A suicide letter?” he asked.

That had been her initial thought, too.

“I don’t mean to be the vibes girl,” she said, “but that doesn’t seem like it would be up Isabel’s alley.”

“She would have made a bigger splash,” he agreed. “If it was suicide, why not make sure everyone knew it?”

“That was my thinking,” Raisa said, pleased he’d gotten there as well. If Isabel had ever killed herself, there would have been a lot of blood and theatrics involved. “And how could she have predicted her own death from some kind of rare medical condition? It wasn’t as if she was old or sick.”

“So, she just wanted to screw with you one last time?” Kilkenny asked. “Maybe if that’s the case, she simply paid someone off to watch for news of her death and then slip you this letter.”

“Oh, I’m a hundred percent sure she’s messing with me, either way,” Raisa said, closing her eyes for a moment to enjoy the scent of coffee as it saturated the air. “But this was waiting for me when I got home last night. Way before it hit the media.”

“Still, they might have had an inside source,” Kilkenny said. “A guard who could text them when the body was found.”

Raisa made a noncommittal sound and then straightened. “Actually, speaking of sources, I never did check my Ring footage.”

“Shockingly irresponsible behavior,” he drawled. “It’s almost like you had something else on your mind.”

She threw him a self-deprecating look as she opened the app, though she wasn’t expecting much. Anyone hired by Isabel would have to be smart—and they proved that.

Raisa had been ignoring the chimes for the past ten days—as they’d been mostly the mailman. But there it was. The ping must have come when she was dealing with her luggage.

A person had been on her front porch yesterday.

She held the video out to Kilkenny. It showed a hand sticking duct tape over the camera. There had been enough of a humanlike figure caught on tape—or her alarm wouldn’t have dinged—but they were wearing a black hat, a black hoodie, and they’d kept their face down for the few seconds the video footage hadn’t been obscured. Raisa couldn’t even tell the gender of the person doing it.

“Not their first rodeo,” Kilkenny commented, handing her phone back. “I wonder if it’s someone she paid off to deliver it for her, or if they’re doing it for free.”

Raisa made a face. “How is Isabel the one person who can create loyal servants while in prison?”

“Not the one person,” Kilkenny pointed out.

“I was employing hyperbole,” Raisa said, rolling her eyes. “But, man, if she has minions on the outside ...”

“I’m surprised she didn’t have them running more errands before this,” Kilkenny said.

“I guess she was saving them for the grand finale.”

Kilkenny made a sound of amusement. “So, what are you thinking?”

Raisa sighed and said what she’d been thinking since she’d opened the envelope. “She wants me to find her killer.”

“Classic Isabel,” Kilkenny murmured and Raisa huffed.

“I’m just surprised she didn’t add any more incentives ,” Raisa said. She wouldn’t have put it past her sister to frame Raisa just to make sure she actually tried to solve the murder. “I guess we should add the caveat: if there is a killer.”

“I’m inclined to agree with you,” Kilkenny said. “But it would have had to be something that looked like natural causes.”

“Right.” Isabel had been young and relatively healthy as far as Raisa knew. There were only a few ways to kill someone like that and not raise suspicions. “Didn’t the Bureau just send out a memo about an increase in insulin-related homicides?”

Kilkenny nodded. He was as much a teacher’s pet as she was, and read all those updates, no matter how tedious. “Hard to trace and yet one of the easier substances to get in prison. Someone could have paid off a guard to do the actual injecting—it wouldn’t take much or very long.”

“And if the person who wanted the killing done had paid in cash, there won’t even be a trace,” Raisa said. “But we should tell the facility to look for close, possibly incidental, contact in the hours before roll call.”

The coffeepot beeped, interrupting them, and Raisa poured two hefty doses in her overlarge mismatched mugs. Once she handed Kilkenny his, she waved him into the living room, where she showed him the letter.

He studied it carefully for several quiet moments. “The address?”

“Residential, from what I can tell from a quick search,” Raisa said.

He nodded and then lifted his eyes to hers. She saw the question there, but she made him ask it.

“Have you tried Delaney?” His tone was neutral, but she knew if she said no, he would gently chastise her. The topic of Delaney was the main source of conflict in their friendship.

Kilkenny saw Delaney as a victim of Isabel’s manipulative personality. And he’d worked with her for years before realizing she was Raisa’s biological sister, so he had a past with her that, strangely, was deeper than Raisa’s.

He also liked to remind Raisa that Delaney had helped on the investigation into Shay’s death, and, in his eyes, that had earned her a fair amount of grace.

“No answer.” When he made a considering sound, she asked, “What?”

“You’re not concerned?”

“That she hasn’t responded in the past half hour? No,” Raisa said slowly. “She might not even have my number saved.”

“She does,” he said, sounding more sure than he should be able to. “You might not like that she’s your sister, but she definitely sees herself that way and would act accordingly.”

“Well ...” Raisa trailed off, not sure what else there was to say. “I’m sure she’ll respond eventually.”

“Hmmm.”

A tiny voice she didn’t want to listen to whispered that if Isabel had been a target, Delaney could be one as well. Someone out there seeking vengeance might have taken the same stance Raisa had—that Delaney should have paid more for her role in Isabel’s killing career.

“Do you know where she lives?” she asked, a bit resentful that she was being dragged into caring.

“Seattle, but that’s the extent of it,” Kilkenny said, and Raisa didn’t know why she was surprised. Delaney, a tech wizard and all around odd-girl would fit in perfectly in the city. Maybe because she’d thought Delaney would try to put as much space between herself and their hometown as possible. “I can try to send out some feelers.”

“Thanks.”

“So, what do we do next?” Kilkenny asked.

She hid her smile with another gulp of coffee. She liked that she finally had someone on her team, no questions asked.

“The correctional center first,” she said when she reemerged from her mug. “But then that address.”

“Doing what Isabel wants,” Kilkenny said, neutrally again.

“You have a better idea?”

“No, I just want to make sure. Do you want to do this?” he asked quietly. Seriously. “We don’t have to say anything to anyone. We can just pretend you never got this letter. No one else has to know.”

The thought hadn’t even occurred to her, but she knew the answer immediately. After Raisa had found out who her biological family was, had found out what kind of darkness ran in their blood, she had been thrown off balance for a while, worried that perhaps her moral compass wasn’t infallible, either. But she’d also realized how much power that gave her—to wake up every day and make a choice that she would uphold justice, she would do what was right when she could, and she would never become complacent about her own choices.

If someone had killed Isabel—or paid to have her killed, really—they deserved to be held accountable for their crime, whether Isabel technically deserved justice or not. When you started making exceptions to who was protected under the law, you got into slippery areas that never seemed to end well.

Maybe in a perfect world, Raisa wouldn’t have to be the one to solve the crime. In a perfect world, she’d hand over her information to the local detectives and wish them luck.

This wasn’t the perfect world, it was just theirs, and Raisa would do what she had to do to make sure Isabel didn’t ruin that from the grave.

“I need to find whoever did this,” Raisa finally said and Kilkenny didn’t look even a little bit surprised.

“I wanted to make sure you realized you had the choice.”

Raisa laughed at that, and he shook his head, still earnest.

“Hey,” he said, waiting until she met his eyes. “You have a choice. No matter what Isabel wanted, no matter what tricks she set in motion before she died. You can just walk away.”

“And go do what? Take a vacation where shirtless men serve me pretty drinks and I sit by the pool all day?” Raisa asked, and let herself imagine it.

“Would that be so terrible?” Kilkenny asked. “Our demons feel inevitable until we simply turn our backs on them.”

Raisa swallowed her first—sarcastic—reply, the one that came from the girl who’d survived her teenage years in a shitty foster care system and emerged as one of the country’s top forensic linguistic experts.

It might have come out something like, How much do you charge for that insightful advice, doc? And that wasn’t fair to Kilkenny.

Instead, she went with honesty, making herself vulnerable to one of the few people she trusted not to make her pay for that. “Don’t you see? The fact that I have a choice is why it’s so important that I do it.”