Page 5 of By the Time You Read This (Raisa Susanto #3)

Melody Stevens : Hey, hey, murder-fiends! I think you’re going to adore this episode—it has everything you guys love, love, love. Abuse, triple homicide, a family torn apart. Secrets. An FBI agent and her hunky partner. Yes, yes, yes, you heard that right. So buckle up while I take you back to the teeny, tiny town of Everly, Washington.

The year is 1998. It was a hot summer day when the three Parker sisters came home to their parents, Tim and Rebecca “Becks” Parker, murdered in their bed. Let’s just say the scene was ... not pretty. We’re talking over forty stab wounds here.

The culprit?

Alex Parker, the only boy of the four siblings and the oldest at that. He was found dead in the parents’ bathtub—claw-foot, I checked—with a note beside him confessing to the murder-suicide.

Easy-peasy for the local cops, huh?

Hold. The. Phone.

The real story is even messier than that.

But first, let me introduce you to the girls at the heart of this narrative. The three sisters.

Larissa Parker is our baby. She was only three years old when her parents were killed. She’ll play a bigger role later, so remember her.

Next is Lana Parker. The middle child, age twelve at the time of the deaths. She was smart, so smart, and also a bit of an odd duckling, bless her. That wasn’t anything notable in a family of math geniuses—I’m not using that word as hyperbole, either, folks. The parents were world-renowned.

And then there was Isabel Parker. The oldest at fifteen.

She viewed herself as the other girls’ protector, their big sister. She was the shield between them and Alex Parker, who reportedly had signs of his father’s schizophrenia and a vicious temper peeking through.

From all accounts Tim and Becks Parker were neglectful parents, not so much hateful or abusive, but too wrapped up in each other and their careers to ever have time for their children.

After the alleged murder-suicide, the three girls were given new names to protect them from the media circus surrounding the scandalous incident. Then they were put into three different foster homes. And again, that could be the end of the story.

But ladies, gents, and nonbinary folks? It’s not.

We’re just getting to the juicy parts. But first, a word from our sponsors, Bountiful Bras for that blessed beauty in your life!

Stevens : And we’re back! We just have to fast-forward here twenty-five years. No, I did not stutter. Twenty. Five. Years. Remember baby Larissa? Well, she grew up to become FBI forensic linguist Raisa Susanto. Now this lady is a badass. She worked her way off the streets to finish her doctorate in linguistics in record time. She could have played it safe and gone the academic route, but, no, our girl wanted to go into law enforcement even though she didn’t know anything about her own history. It does make you wonder, you know? Like The Body Keeps the Score says. Trauma lives in our bones.

Now, Lana, the quintessential middle child, became Delaney Moore, vastly underperforming in life, given her potential. She was working the overnight shift as a content moderator at Flik. Imagine the kinds of things that poor girl saw day in and day out. I swear.

Well, Miss Lana herself flags a video to the FBI that shows two people dead on a bed, posed just like Tim and Becks were all those years ago.

And where did this video originate, you ask?

Everly, Washington.

The next thing you know Raisa, Delaney, and—here we go, I know y’all were waiting for this one—our hunky FBI forensic psychologist Callum Kilkenny, ride into Everly thinking there’s a copycat on the loose.

See the thing is, everyone still thinks it was Alex Parker who killed his parents and then himself.

But, my babies, my fiends, that was not how it went down at all.

Find out what happens next by slamming that “Subscribe” button.