Page 44 of By the Time You Read This (Raisa Susanto #3)

Chapter Thirty-Two

Raisa

Day Six

Black closed in from the sides of Raisa’s eyes.

Everything went hazy and distant—like she was a long way away from the car rental shop.

She heard the thump of metal against flesh. Smelled copper in her nose.

Delaney had hit Kilkenny. She’d tried to kill him.

Bile rose in her throat. She had thought Isabel had threatened Delaney with Kilkenny’s death, but she had been so stupid. Delaney didn’t care about anyone but herself—and Isabel.

“Thank you,” St. Ivany said to Letitia, who obligingly printed them off the official documents they needed to confirm Delaney had made the rental. Then St. Ivany shepherded Raisa out of the store. “Don’t do anything stupid.”

Raisa leaned against the brick wall and closed her eyes. That was a mistake. All she could see was Kilkenny hitting the ground. She could feel his cracked skull beneath her fingers.

She took a shallow breath and then a deeper one. She counted to five and then ten and then twenty.

“Agent Susanto.” St. Ivany’s voice came from a distance, and Raisa stared down at her hands to focus herself.

They were curled into fists, her nails biting into her flesh.

“She should have been in jail,” Raisa managed. “This wouldn’t have happened if she had been in jail where she belongs.”

Any hesitation was gone. Raisa could hardly even believe that she’d thought about hiding incriminating evidence against the woman who had nearly killed Kilkenny. Who, for all they knew, could still be responsible for his death.

Her stomach rolled at that thought, and she had to hum to stop herself from throwing up.

This is your attachment disorder speaking, Kilkenny said calmly, from the hospital.

Raisa shook her head. “It’s called fucking friendship, you asshole.”

“Uh,” St. Ivany said, stepping closer, pausing, and then stepping back.

It was enough to bring Raisa fully back to the moment. “Sorry, I’ve developed a habit of talking to Kilkenny.”

“Oh.” St. Ivany didn’t seem reassured, so Raisa waved her hand.

“I’m not hallucinating, I know he’s not here.” This had gotten so absurd, it had actually helped. “Ignore me. Anyway, we must have enough to arrest Delaney now.”

St. Ivany sighed. “I’m sorry, but probably not.”

Raisa whirled on her. “Why the hell not?”

“Raisa, think like an FBI agent instead of Kilkenny’s friend,” St. Ivany said, and Raisa wanted to hate her for that. But she didn’t. “This is enough to question someone, but there’s no definitive proof she was behind the wheel.”

Anger coiled tightly around Raisa’s rib cage, and she took three deliberate breaths to calm herself down.

“She was spotted outside of Peter Stamkos’s house,” Raisa said. “It seems like she scoped Lindsey Cousins out at work. She came here— here —when she was cornered instead of fleeing to Mexico. Why? Because she had unfinished business.”

“Maybe that unfinished business is finding whoever killed Isabel,” St. Ivany said. “Exactly like you’re doing.”

Raisa exhaled again. “No, they were communicating before Isabel died. Whatever Isabel wanted her to do, it’s something else.”

“Yes, but Isabel is dead,” St. Ivany pointed out. “Which means Delaney might disregard whatever the previous instructions were and hunt down her killer.”

“Delaney wouldn’t do that. She’s listened to Isabel all her life.” Raisa said. “Where is she?”

St. Ivany’s eyes went shifty. “I’m not telling you.”

“Why the hell not?” Raisa said, all but vibrating with anger now.

“You need to calm down,” St. Ivany said, yelling the last two words.

Raisa wanted to tell her that no one who’d been told to calm down had ever, in the history of the world, actually calmed down. Instead, she walked away.

“This is what Isabel wanted,” St. Ivany called. “You said it yourself. She wanted to break you.”

Raisa stopped, though she didn’t turn around.

“You know, this is the first time Isabel has ever been wrong about us,” she said, so softly she wasn’t sure St. Ivany would even hear. “She said we weren’t broken, like her. But she took care of that a long time ago.”

Raisa spent the rest of the day searching for Delaney, with no luck. She also tried finding Roan Carmichael, but there wasn’t a trace of him, either.

So, as night fell, she went to the hospital.

“Why did you trust her?” she asked an unconscious Kilkenny after sitting beside him for several hours in silence. They’d had this conversation a million times—she could do his answer by heart.

She didn’t want to say I told you so. She wanted him to wake up so they could have it for the millionth and one time.

But he wouldn’t. He might never wake up again.

Because of Delaney.

A knock on the door pulled her from the well of rage just as she was re-dipping her toes in.

She turned to find St. Ivany standing there, looking as rough as Raisa probably did.

“I haven’t had any luck today,” she said. “Come get food with me.”

Raisa might have been annoyed with her, but she was also hungry.

So she went.

St. Ivany drove them to a classic fifties-styled place about as far off the main drag of tourist restaurants as you could get.

The waitress filled their basic white mugs with coffee and then left them alone.

Raisa pulled Essi’s book out of her bag.

“Why are you so obsessed with that thing?” St. Ivany asked her.

“I’m missing something in it.”

“You think Essi has something to do with Emily’s death?”

“No,” Raisa said honestly. “I know it’s a cliché, but it feels like an itch I can’t scratch. Something I read in here lodged in my brain, but it’s buried beneath way too much other information.”

“And you think reading it again and again is going to shake it loose,” St. Ivany said, drumming her fingers on the table. She was all nervous energy, just like Gabriela had been earlier.

“No,” Raisa said, before pushing it over to St. Ivany. “You read it.”

St. Ivany’s brows raised, before she flipped open the cover. Her eyes moved over the page.

“Out loud,” Raisa said, kicking her under the table.

“Oh, right.” St. Ivany laughed at herself. “‘I’ll never be able to eat casseroles again.’”

Raisa closed her eyes as she made it through those first few pages.

“‘It wasn’t one of my neighbors at my door, though,’” she said. “‘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 reached out and grabbed St. Ivany. “Holy shit. It worked.”

“What?” St. Ivany asked, staring down at where Raisa’s fingers dug into her skin.

This, finally, was the question her brain had been screaming at her to answer.

“Who the fuck was the girl?”