Page 50 of By the Time You Read This (Raisa Susanto #3)

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Raisa

Day Seven

St. Ivany ran toward her down the long pier, her phone held up to her ear even though she was close enough to hear Raisa in person. “What? What?”

Raisa shoved her phone back in her pocket as she took off toward where they’d parked their cars. “Call whoever is guarding Kilkenny and make sure the guard is on high alert.”

St. Ivany was keeping pace behind Raisa, running even without knowing why.

They really had become allies.

Raisa skidded to a stop beside St. Ivany’s SUV and held up her palm. St. Ivany tossed her keys toward Raisa, all the while on the phone with her guy at the hospital. Raisa slid behind the wheel and pressed the gas even before St. Ivany’s door was closed.

Gabriela had disappeared, and had the advantage in terms of local knowledge of the streets. But Raisa had ...

“Pull up the AirTag we dropped on Delaney,” Raisa said, and St. Ivany did so without question. The dot was moving fast.

“Is this Gabriela?” St. Ivany breathed out. Then without waiting for an answer: “She’s heading to the cliffs.”

Raisa’s heart thudded against her ribs as she thought of that look in Gabriela’s eyes when Delaney had threatened to pull the trigger. In this kind of light, it might have been mistaken for relief.

St. Ivany and Raisa glanced at each other, and then Raisa pressed her foot to the floor. There were coves all along the shoreline, but in between those were jagged rocks that dropped off into the ocean. They weren’t as dramatic as cliffs in other parts of the country, but they would absolutely offer a way out for a girl looking for one.

They found Gabriela’s car first, the driver’s-side door open.

“Shit,” Raisa muttered. She pulled to a haphazard stop, already running as her feet hit the ground, taking the pine needle–strewn path toward where she could hear the waves slamming into land.

St. Ivany was only a few paces behind her.

Raisa’s lungs burned, as did her thighs, but she pressed forward, desperate for a reason she couldn’t even make sense of.

The day was almost too clear and lovely for the sight they came upon when the trees finally opened up.

Gabriela stood at the very edge of the world, her arms spread wide. There should’ve been a storm brewing in front of her to match her clear turmoil.

“Gabriela,” Raisa cried, her voice scratchy. “Stop.”

Gabriela turned, cocked her head. “How did you find me? Delaney?”

“She dropped an AirTag on you,” Raisa confirmed, as she stepped closer, making sure not to pressure Gabriela into shifting back. “Come away from there.”

“No, I don’t think I will,” Gabriela said, with a small smile. “You know, all I wanted was a better world.”

“I know,” Raisa said, because that was what you did for someone standing at the edge of a cliff. You appeased her. Raisa held out her hand. “Come away from there.”

Gabriela stayed where she was, swaying back and forth. “I didn’t think killing would feel like that.”

“What do you mean?”

Gabriela met her eyes and smiled. “Good.”

Raisa inhaled sharply.

“Didn’t expect that, huh?” Gabriela said, seemingly pleased. “You wanted me to be some helpless soul, transfixed by the evilest monster you could ever imagine. But I’m just me. And I liked killing Peter and Lindsey and Emily and Declan.”

“And Isabel,” Raisa couldn’t help but point out. Before she shook her head. “Come away from there. We’ll talk about all of this some more.”

“You don’t want to talk,” Gabriela said. “You want to lock me in a psychiatric ward.”

That was true enough.

“You think you see yourself in me, don’t you?” Gabriela said, taunting. But most of the edge was gone from her voice. This wasn’t the smug mastermind from the boat. This was just a sad, lost girl. “That’s why you chased me here, that’s why you want to save me.”

“No,” Raisa said. She took a step closer. “Come away from there, Gabriela.”

“You see yourself in me,” Gabriela said, stubborn now. “You were the one who chose law enforcement. You were the one who always wants justice. You’re the one who is one bad decision away from burning down the world.”

“No,” Raisa said, and believed it for the first time in two years. “I’ve never wanted the world to burn.”

“You think that until you get a taste for it,” Gabriela said. “And then you’ll crave it.”

“No,” Raisa said again, staring at this terrible product of a monster’s hand.

Broken by Isabel.

“You see yourself in me,” Gabriela said again, this time sounding so desperate. “You see Isabel in me.”

Raisa shook her head. Isabel was nothing like this girl, who would never see that as the compliment it was.

“No, darling,” Raisa said softly, so that only the two of them would hear. And she finally admitted to the reason she was standing on this cliffside begging this girl not to throw herself into the ocean below. “I see Delaney.”

Confusion and then rage and then betrayal flickered in and out of her expression. “But she’s pathetic.”

“Aren’t we all?” Raisa asked with a smile. “At least a little?”

“No,” Gabriela said, and then she screamed it again into the sky. “No.”

Then in one quick movement, she whirled.

But Raisa was close enough.

She leaped forward, catching Gabriela by the arm just as she went to jump.

The momentum carried them both forward, Raisa’s boots skidding against dirt and loose pebbles, her fingers desperately clinging to the material they’d grabbed. She fell forward, the wind getting knocked half out of her.

Gabriela slid mostly over the edge, and the weight of it was taking them both over.

Raisa tried to get herself to her knees, tried to get leverage.

“Let me go,” Gabriela screamed. “Let me go.”

“No,” Raisa roared, just as St. Ivany grabbed the back of her shirt.

They both pulled until Raisa had better purchase.

They were going to save Delaney.

Gabriela.

Gabriela, not Delaney. They were going to save her. Raisa just needed to pull. Just a little harder.

But then Gabriela began to fight.

“She’s going to take us all over,” St. Ivany huffed in Raisa’s ear. “You have to let her go.”

“I can’t give up on her,” Raisa said, even as Gabriela kicked out against the rock, swinging her body so that she could actually pull against them. “I can’t ...”

She was out of breath, out of energy. Gabriela stared up at her, seeming to sense that Raisa was losing her grip.

“Make the world a better place,” Gabriela said. “Let me go.”

Raisa would never be able to say if it was a conscious decision. But in that moment her hands failed her. They spasmed, and then ...

She let go.