Page 45 of By the Time You Read This (Raisa Susanto #3)

Chapter Thirty-Three

Raisa

Day Seven

St. Ivany just stared at Raisa. “I don’t know who the fuck the girl was. Essi probably made her up to tell a better story.”

But Raisa was already dropping her bills on the table. “Let’s go ask her.”

“It’s past midnight.”

Raisa didn’t care for facts. “Which means Essi will be on her boat.”

St. Ivany hesitated one second longer, then pushed herself out of the booth. Raisa took off toward the door.

“Emily?” St. Ivany suggested as she beeped open the SUV.

“Essi said she’d never met her,” Raisa said, sliding into the passenger seat. “She could be lying, but then why include the encounter in the book?”

St. Ivany shrugged. “Gabriela?”

“She was trying to exonerate Isabel,” Raisa said. “Why would she try to find people who would make that tally higher?”

“Delaney?” St. Ivany offered, though she sounded hesitant.

“No one in their right mind would call Delaney a girl,” Raisa said. “Well, maybe a man in his eighties or something. But Essi wouldn’t have called Delaney a girl.”

“Then I’m all out of girls,” St. Ivany said, as she pulled to a stop at the harbor gates. They both leaped out of the SUV and took off toward Big Deck Energy .

St. Ivany slowed as she reached the boat. “The rules are different with boats.”

“I wonder if she’s staying on one because they’re harder to search,” Raisa said. They had both fallen into a slow walk.

“No,” St. Ivany said. “They’re actually easier to search.”

She leaped on board and knocked on the cabin door. The thin piece of wood flew open beneath the pressure.

A hollow pit opened up in Raisa’s belly.

“Is she ...” Raisa didn’t finish the thought.

“No, it’s empty,” St. Ivany said, and Raisa exhaled. She hadn’t necessarily liked Essi—there was something too mercenary about her for Raisa’s liking—but she didn’t want to see the woman dead.

Raisa dropped down onto the bench near the rudder. It was a full moon, so she could see the disappointment on St. Ivany’s face.

“It’s strange that she left,” Raisa said.

“Maybe Mildred told her she lent you the book,” St. Ivany said, plopping down onto the bench across from Raisa. “Why did the girl thing stick out to you?”

Raisa thought about it fully now. “Because ... because that’s why Essi is here at all, right?”

“What do you mean?”

“If we take Essi’s book at face value,” Raisa said. “The reason she knew why her father died was because some girl—who she never mentions again, by the way, which seems like bad editing—told her about Isabel. And knowing about Isabel is what brought Essi to Gig Harbor at the same time I’m in Gig Harbor and Delaney is in Gig Harbor, and it is too much of a coincidence to think all of that just happened . Out of nowhere. Don’t you think?”

“Well, Christ,” St. Ivany said on a sigh. “When you put it that way ...”

Raisa huffed out a laugh and then sank lower, her eyes sliding up to the moon, then back along the masts of all the gently bobbing boats.

And then she saw . . .

What . . .

Something . . .

Raisa straightened.

“St. Ivany,” she murmured, already going for her gun.

She didn’t wait for the detective to react. Raisa was already on her feet, and then she was on the dock.

The moon was bright, but the shadows were deep, and she stuck to them.

It was probably nothing.

It was nothing.

Raisa crept forward, her pulse steady.

She sensed, more than heard, St. Ivany behind her.

Watching her six.

Raisa ran along the pier lightly, her boots slapping against the wood.

Blood.

She had seen blood.

It was easy to recognize the thick, dark pool of it.

“Here,” she murmured to St. Ivany.

They both paused, twenty-five feet from the boat.

They both saw the hand, dangling over the side.

Lifeless.

“Shit,” St. Ivany muttered, before she pulled her walkie-talkie from her belt. She was still murmuring orders when Raisa boarded the boat.

And there, lying on the bow, was Declan O’Brien.

The pervy professor, sprawled in all the indignity of death.

One hand was still curled around a revolver.

Raisa dropped her own weapon to her thigh.

There would be a note.

Because Isabel always left a note when she staged a suicide.