Page 52 of By the Time You Read This (Raisa Susanto #3)

Chapter Forty

Delaney

Day Eight

Delaney had thought about killing Isabel a thousand times.

She’d thought about it while standing in line at the grocery store, and thought about it while on a run, and thought about it while watching a movie. It didn’t even have to be a film with a serial killer in it. In fact, Delaney’d had a particularly vivid vision of cutting Isabel’s throat once during a romantic comedy’s unexpected musical number.

All that planning and fantasizing, and she had never believed she could do it. Not realistically.

But Isabel had known just how to push her over the edge of anything she’d ever thought would be doable.

“I’m never going to stop, you know,” Isabel said, when Delaney went to stand up from the table in the visitation room. “I have the taste of blood in my mouth.”

Delaney stared at her.

“You know. Like a dog, when they say it breaks skin on a human,” Isabel said. “They have to put it down.”

For forty years, Delaney had worn Isabel’s attention, love, jealousy, adoration, hate, around her neck. The weight of it had pressed down on her chest so that she’d never been able to fully breathe.

As she stood on the pier looking out over the water, she finally filled her lungs to the brim.

That morning, Delaney had called her landlord in Seattle and given her notice on the lease. She scheduled a moving company to pack up her apartment and put it all in a storage container. Maybe she would come back for it; maybe she wouldn’t.

The medical examiner had finally come down with a decision in Isabel’s death. Inconclusive.

St. Ivany hadn’t seemed interested in pursuing the case further.

Raisa had been a potential wrench. Delaney should have guessed she would try to figure out who had killed Isabel—even if Isabel hadn’t sent her messages to get her curious.

But she didn’t seem like she wanted to pursue charges any further, either.

Still, Delaney had bought new clothes that morning—yoga pants without pockets, a tank top. She’d gotten rid of everything but her wallet, which contained exactly two driver’s licenses—one with her name and one with someone else’s—and the prepaid credit cards she liked to stock up on.

She had also tucked the last note she’d received from Isabel in the coin pocket.

Delaney had thought it sarcastic when she’d first received it. But now, she thought she might understand.

You are the very best of us.

Anyone with half a brain could argue that honor was, in fact, Raisa’s. But Raisa would never have been able to kill Isabel outside of self-defense. She wouldn’t have been able to logically, coldly, arrange to make the world a better place. And yet, Delaney would never have that taste of blood in her mouth like Isabel did, either—she would never need to be stopped, because she had been born to take exactly one life.

So maybe she didn’t deserve to believe that she was the very best of the Parkers. But she believed that Isabel had believed it.

“So you’re going to disappear into the wilds?”

Delaney spun to see Roan of the Carolina mountains, standing behind her. “Yes.”

He laughed lightly. “You want company?”

“Hardly ever,” Delaney said, eyeing him.

“Does that mean you sometimes want company?”

“Yes, that is what it means.”

For some reason, that made him smile fully. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a set of keys.

“Do you want to spend that sometimes with me on a boat?”

“I thought you were the pauper, not the prince,” Delaney said, though she felt an unexpected kick in her belly. Happiness, maybe? She had never been able to make a relationship work before, not with Isabel and all the secrets that went along with her as baggage. But now?

“I may have lied to you on that one,” Roan said. “I’m pretty sure you lied to me, though, too. So, even?”

“It won’t be the last time,” she warned. Because she wasn’t perfect. She was the best of the Parkers, but that didn’t mean she was the best of humankind. It was a low bar she was passing.

“I think I’ll risk it,” Roan said.

Delaney studied him and then turned back to the water.

Happiness had been elusive, something she had never wanted to grasp for because it could all be taken away so easily. So she’d buried herself on the dark web, paying for her crime of silence by exposing herself to the worst of humanity in hopes of battling it. She had taken a job as a moderator at Flik for the very same reason.

Anything good in the world could be used against her as a weapon.

But Isabel was gone.

This was just Delaney. No more safety net, no more excuses.

Happiness was a fragile, possibly devastating thing.

Finally, though, she felt ready to try for it.

She glanced back at Roan and studied his face.

“I think I’ll risk it, too.”