Page 4 of The Truth You Told (Raisa Susanto #2)

CHAPTER THREE

Raisa

Now

Raisa didn’t tell Kilkenny about her encounter with Kate Tashibi.

She wondered if Kate had gotten through to him, but of course she hadn’t. If Kate had been successful with Kilkenny, she wouldn’t have had to come after Raisa.

Kate had framed her interest in Raisa through the lens of Raisa’s expertise. She’d wanted a linguist to talk about the Alphabet Man’s letters, about what might have been done differently had there been someone like her on staff at the FBI at the time.

But Raisa knew what Kate was really after.

An interview with Callum Kilkenny. The man whose name would forever be tied to Nathaniel Conrad’s. The man who’d spent five years hunting the monster, only to lose his wife to the very killer he had been chasing.

What a coup that would be for Kate’s miniseries.

She must have thought she could get Raisa to talk about Kilkenny. That wouldn’t be nearly as powerful, but at some point, beggars couldn’t be choosers.

Raisa just hoped Kilkenny had completely blocked out the fact that the documentary existed in the first place.

They had other things to think about, after all.

Her shoulder ached, but she ignored it as she headed to the courthouse. Kilkenny would be waiting for her there, on the steps, so she wouldn’t have to go in alone.

She’d been dreading going in alone.

The last time she’d seen Isabel Parker was when the woman had put a bullet into Raisa’s shoulder. Only luck and Isabel’s poor aim had saved Raisa.

And even though Raisa had lodged her own bullet in Isabel, the woman had lived to die another day. Which meant now she was on trial instead of rotting six feet in the ground.

Raisa wouldn’t typically call herself bloodthirsty—she was a linguist, after all—but she wasn’t sure she would have been crying too many tears had Isabel died that night of their standoff.

Even though Isabel was technically her sister.

It wasn’t as if Raisa had known that fact prior to that night. They had been separated when Raisa was only three, after Isabel killed their parents and their brother, Alex, whom she then framed for the deaths. The mini-massacre had kicked off a twenty-five-year-long killing spree that had culminated in Isabel returning to their hometown, Everly, to commemorate the anniversary with even more deaths.

That—and pulling Raisa into the mix—had been her downfall. Today, she would be answering for her crimes, and even if Raisa would prefer that her own bullet had been a few centimeters to the right, she was happy Isabel’s victims were getting justice.

Including herself.

No one expects you to just shrug off a near-death experience, Kilkenny had told her plenty of times in the three months since her standoff with Isabel.

But it wasn’t the bullet that had done the most damage. Instead, what had rocked the ground beneath her feet had been the string of revelations that came with it—that Raisa had an entire family she hadn’t known about, that there was a darkness in her past that seemed to newly define who she was as a person. That she had been one of two sisters to have survived Isabel’s massacre, and that the other, Delaney, had been somewhat complicit in Isabel’s murder tour. That the parents she’d loved, the ones who’d taught her to be fair and just and good , hadn’t really been hers.

For most of her life, she’d prided herself on being tough, on her thick skin and ability to roll with whatever came her way. After her adoptive parents—the ones who’d raised her—had died when she was only ten, she’d been bounced around the foster system, too old to land anywhere permanently. She wasn’t soft; she hadn’t had an easy go of it. And yet this, this, she couldn’t shake off.

At some point in the past three months, Kilkenny had quietly sent her a list of FBI-vetted psychologists, but Raisa hit a brick wall every time she imagined explaining what was wrong with her. She didn’t know how to put into words the way the bottom had dropped out of her world.

Kilkenny smiled at her now from the courthouse steps, his eyes dropping to her shoulder. He’d been the one to find them that night, the three Parker girls, both Isabel and Raisa bleeding out on the ground from each other’s guns, Delaney crouched over Isabel, her loyalties cemented long ago.

Raisa had thought—had hoped—she’d taken Isabel out with her shot, but Kilkenny had brought paramedics with him when he’d tracked them down in the woods. He’d arrived only minutes after Isabel had taken her bullet to the chest and had probably saved her life.

A life she would now spend in prison.

Isabel wasn’t exactly happy about that fate, and as people like her were wont to do, she blamed Kilkenny instead of herself for it.

“You okay?” Kilkenny asked, as they made their way into the courthouse. She probably had that look on her face, the one she knew she got when she thought too hard about the nest of vipers she’d been born into.

They both knew she was lying when she answered, “Yeah, sorry.”

Neither of them said much as they found seats and settled in. It wasn’t until Isabel was led into the courtroom that Kilkenny tensed beside Raisa.

“What?” Raisa asked.

“She seems ...” Kilkenny trailed off. “Happy.”

He was right. Of course he was.

Kilkenny ran his thumb over his wedding band, a habit that she wasn’t even sure he was aware of. “She’s watching me.”

Again, he was right.

Throughout all the opening statements of the trial, Isabel kept glancing back at them, wearing that same obnoxious smirk from the woods, the one she’d worn when she taunted Raisa with plans for her imminent death.

Raisa wouldn’t have been surprised if Isabel stared at her throughout the whole trial, but she had not once caught her sister’s eyes across the room. Isabel’s attention was locked on Kilkenny.

Like she was waiting for something to happen.

“I don’t like this,” Kilkenny said quietly.

Raisa didn’t, either. The lawyers were talking, but Raisa couldn’t concentrate on what they were saying, her mind working through the possibilities. Isabel was behind bars, had been since that night in the clearing. She had tried to kill an FBI agent. Even if there hadn’t been evidence of her other crimes, she would have been held without bail for that.

Isabel was scary smart, though. Raisa wasn’t sure of the exact number of people she’d killed, and she doubted that even the prosecutors were aware of the full tally. But it had been dozens over a twenty-five-year time span.

Isabel hadn’t operated that long without having a few tricks up her sleeve, even while wearing orange.

She was a planner, she was experienced, and she hated when things didn’t go her way.

And she blamed Kilkenny for her current predicament.

All that meant Raisa’s entire body was tensed, waiting for some shoe to drop.

It didn’t take long.

Kilkenny’s phone pinged, loud enough for the judge to shoot a warning look in their direction. The hunger on Isabel’s face was clear and terrifying.

Raisa couldn’t help but glance at Kilkenny’s screen.

On it was a headline.

SEVENTY-TWO HOURS BEFORE EXECUTION, SERIAL KILLER SAYS FBI AGENT’S WIFE WASN’T ONE OF HIS VICTIMS

Beneath it, the subheadline read:

While giving an interview for an HBO documentary, the Alphabet Man admits that Shay Kilkenny, the wife of the FBI agent who eventually caught him, didn’t die by his hand.

Rage burned bright and hot in Raisa’s veins. It wasn’t enough for Kate Tashibi to make sure that monster’s name lived on long after he was put down. No, she had to upend Kilkenny’s life in the process, and for what? A lie and some ratings.

“Kilkenny,” Raisa said, though she wasn’t sure if it was in warning or to comfort him.

It didn’t matter, because Kilkenny pushed to his feet, the courtroom door banging behind him a moment later.

Raisa met Isabel’s eyes across the distance that separated them.

Isabel smiled, a victorious thing that confirmed exactly what Raisa suspected. She wasn’t sure how Isabel had managed to get Nathaniel Conrad to lie about Shay.

But she knew, without a doubt, that her sister’d had a hand in it.

There was no reason to stay around to watch her gloat. Raisa slipped out of the room in a slightly less dramatic fashion than Kilkenny had, but she knew there would be people noting her exit, just as they had his.

Kilkenny had been faster than she would have given him credit for, though. When she searched the area around the courthouse, she came up empty. She called in a favor to get his address, then checked at the FBI office as well. Three texts went unanswered, as did two phone calls.

She wondered if Kilkenny was hiding from the world, hiding from her, or a little bit of both. She wasn’t arrogant enough to think she was front of mind for him right now. Kilkenny had been pulled into her family’s mess on his own—or rather, through Delaney—but it was still Raisa’s viper nest of a family that had played a role in this.

Or a suspected role, at least.

Raisa wouldn’t blame him if he held her a little bit responsible, even if that wasn’t a completely rational reaction.

She did recognize a brick wall when she ran headfirst into it for several hours in a row, though.

“Shit,” she breathed out.

Because if she couldn’t reach Kilkenny, there was only one other place to turn.

Prisons didn’t make Raisa nervous.

The muffled clang of bars, the guards with guns, the shouts—none of that was what had Raisa’s hands shaking.

It was knowing what she had to do, being terrified to do it, and then sucking it up anyway.

The Styrofoam pieces Raisa had picked off the rim of her coffee cup were tucked in her clenched hand as if she could hide her own nerves the same way.

Turned out, she would march into hell for a person who, three months ago, she had barely considered anything more than a distant colleague.

“Agent Susanto?”

Raisa glanced up to find a guard in front of her, the woman’s face impatient, like that hadn’t been the first time she’d called Raisa’s name.

“Sorry.” Raisa scrambled to her feet, shoving the remaining bits of Styrofoam in her pocket and dropping the cup discreetly in the trash before the woman could see the dents she’d made.

The guard directed Raisa to an interrogation room, and it took only another minute for the door to open again.

Once upon a time, Isabel Parker had reminded Raisa of a punk-rock superstar, her neon-pink hair accented by metal in every imaginable piece of skin. She’d been compelling, magnetic. Now, stripped of her punk-glam makeup and at least some of her hardware, she just looked unremarkable.

This was why Isabel would have rather taken a bullet than be locked up. She’d lived her life as the main character, not because she’d been beautiful but because she’d been interesting. Now Raisa couldn’t imagine her turning a single head.

The guard made quick work of securing Isabel to the table and then left as swiftly as she’d come.

Raisa didn’t wait for whatever clever remark Isabel had locked and loaded. “What did you do?”

Isabel laughed. “I killed our parents. I was somewhat responsible for the death of your adoptive ones. I planned on killing both you and Delaney and then framing her for your murder. You’ll have to be more specific, darling.”

The list had probably been meant to rattle Raisa. But all it did was make her realize how much she’d been building Isabel up into some sinister puppet master in her memory.

Here, under the harsh prison lights, she was just as ridiculous as any captured mastermind, declawed and defanged but too used to having all the power to realize that she no longer did.

For the first time in what felt like three months, Raisa exhaled and she remembered. She remembered not the press of the gun to her spine, but just how silly she’d found Isabel’s posturing on the long walk to the clearing. There had been short bursts of time when it was clear Isabel was dangerous—she’d killed dozens of people and had the moral makings of a sociopath. But most of the time, she’d just come off as a kitten playing at a feral cat.

“You know what I’m talking about,” Raisa said.

Isabel smirked. “Can I buy a vowel?”

“Cute.” Raisa’s eyes narrowed. “You just can’t help yourself, though, can you? If you were going to pretend not to know what I was talking about, that just disproved it.”

Isabel’s mouth twisted like she couldn’t decide if she wanted to retaliate, banter, or move to the portion of the conversation where she got to brag about all the ways she’d schemed and manipulated people to produce this outcome.

The impulse to do the latter won.

“The Alphabet Man,” Isabel drawled. “Yes, well, let me think, what did we talk about? Oh, I remember.”

Whatever was coming next would be provocative, that much was obvious. Raisa controlled her expression accordingly.

“We compared notes about that feeling we get when we’re snuffing the light out of someone’s eyes,” Isabel said, her own eyes hungry on Raisa’s face.

All of it was so predictable, though. Why had she been so scared to come here?

“Yes, yes, you’re very big and bad.”

Rage flashed into Isabel’s expression. “Why don’t you ask your beloved Kilkenny how he feels about me right now?”

At the reminder, anger flooded in, making everything sharper. The lights, the smell of sweat and bacteria on Isabel’s skin. The color of her eyes and the distant hum of the heat kicking on in the room.

“You got Nathaniel Conrad to lie for you,” Raisa said, done with playing around. “How?”

“Why do you think he’s lying?” Isabel shot back.

“Because a serial killer with his record wouldn’t claim someone else’s victim as his own.”

Kilkenny might be the psychologist between the two of them, but even Raisa could guess that.

“Yes, but Conrad has always been different,” Isabel pointed out. “And he never took credit for her kill.”

“Semantics,” Raisa said. “He didn’t take credit for any of the victims.”

“Until today,” Isabel pointed out.

That was news, as far as Raisa could tell. Conrad, like plenty of other killers, had proclaimed his innocence even in the face of overwhelming evidence. She’d thought he’d keep doing it right up until his last words. Perhaps she should have read that article further than the headline, but she’d been too angry to even see straight at that point.

“He’s lying,” Raisa said, still confident in that fact. So what if he’d claimed the other victims and not Shay. He was a psychopath, a pathological liar and a man who’d tortured and killed twenty-seven people. His word wasn’t exactly gold. “But I want to know what part you played in it.”

“How about this,” Isabel started, examining her nails in a way that rattled the chains. “An answer for an answer.”

Raisa thought about the way Kilkenny had stormed out of the courtroom, the way he’d lost all the color in his face when the alert came in. Making a deal with Isabel Parker was akin to shaking hands with the devil, but Raisa would still gladly do it if she could get information out of her.

“Fine,” Raisa said. “What did you do to get him to lie about Shay Kilkenny?”

“I gave you a chance to ask an actually interesting question and that’s what you went with?” Isabel tsk-tsked. “He’s not lying. I already told you that. Conrad didn’t kill her.”

“You said an answer for an answer,” Raisa said, nails digging into her thighs through the soft fabric of her pants. “A truthful answer for a truthful answer.”

“No one is forcing you to believe me, but I am being truthful,” Isabel said. “Are you in love with Kilkenny?”

Raisa wanted to throw the and that’s what you went with back in her face. Instead, she looked away, pretending to be embarrassed.

“No.” She let the word linger in her mouth as if she didn’t want to let it go. Then she shifted her eyes back to Isabel, who was grinning as if she’d figured something out. Good.

“My turn,” Raisa said. “Have you been in contact with Conrad?”

“Yes,” Isabel said, and despite the circumstances, Raisa couldn’t help but feel satisfaction at the confirmation. She barely knew Isabel, but she’d been able to read that , at least. “We exchanged letters once I guessed that he wasn’t the one who killed Shay Kilkenny. I wasn’t the one who convinced him to share that fact with the world, though, if that’s what you’re really asking.” She paused, but only for a heartbeat. “Do you love Delaney now?”

Raisa blinked at her. That was a much more interesting question, she had to admit, especially considering the last time she’d seen Delaney had been that night Isabel had shot Raisa. And Delaney had been holding Raisa at gunpoint only moments before Isabel’s bullet had torn through Raisa’s shoulder.

That had been a fun family reunion all around.

Isabel was obsessed with both of their lives to an unhealthy extent, but she was most possessive of Delaney, who was much closer in age to her than Raisa.

“No,” Raisa answered honestly. Knowing someone had been your sister at birth didn’t automatically create a connection that could withstand everything Delaney had done. But—and Raisa would never admit this, certainly not to Isabel—she did like Delaney.

Before the night in the woods, Delaney had been a crucial part of the investigation into Isabel’s latest murders. She had a day job as a content moderator for a social media site but had been something of a dark-web vigilante, outing rapists and other creeps when they posted on those terrible forums Raisa liked to pretend didn’t exist. That was how Delaney had originally started working with Kilkenny—he’d been her contact at the FBI for years before Raisa had met her. When Delaney had flagged a video that Isabel had posted of her crime scene, they’d all just assumed she was helping catch another random bad guy.

Delaney was weird, with odd social graces and an intense mind that saw patterns and logic in a way that would have made her an excellent linguist. She was funny and smart, and for some reason, they clicked when they worked together.

Raisa didn’t have to like that she liked her, though.

“Are you angry she’s not in jail?” Isabel asked, seeming pleased with Raisa’s answer.

“My turn,” Raisa said, feeling like she had the upper hand for the first time since she’d walked into the room. She had to be smarter here. Asking who had convinced Conrad to “confess”—or lie, probably—was pointless. Likely, it had been Kate Tashibi, possibly supplied with information from Isabel, possibly with her own. Still, Raisa couldn’t think of a way into this that would force Isabel to reveal anything of importance. Except ... Isabel had always liked to think of herself as smart.

“What is the question I should be asking?”

Isabel lit up, as Raisa predicted. “Ohhh, finally a hint of intelligence.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“I’m thinking,” Isabel said, and it actually sounded like she was. She hadn’t anticipated these lines in her script. “You clearly already know why I’m screwing with Kilkenny. He messed with my plans and needs to be punished.”

Raisa did know that. She’d been braced for something ever since Kilkenny had saved Isabel’s life three months earlier. For anyone else, they would feel nothing but extreme gratitude for Kilkenny, but Isabel hadn’t wanted this. She’d wanted the sweet release of death.

“It also doesn’t really matter when I figured all this out,” Isabel continued. “That was five years ago, by the way. When Kilkenny started working with Delaney. So. What would I ask if I were you?”

After one more beat, Isabel smiled with realization. “Why did I first suspect Conrad hadn’t killed the wife?”

The wife rankled, but Raisa let it go. There were battles to pick here, and that wasn’t one of them. “What was it?”

“You already asked your question,” Isabel said, smug. “My turn.”

Raisa tilted her head in acknowledgment.

“Do you have nightmares about me?” Isabel asked.

Dark woods, a cold stream. The clearing. Pain and then black. Sweat-damp sheets and screams that died in her throat. A fervent hope that her neighbor was a deep sleeper.

She kept her expression neutral. “I don’t think about you at all.”

“Uh-uh,” Isabel said, a scold in her voice. “If you lie, the deal’s off.”

Raisa looked away. That had been careless, the lie too obvious. She should have spun something more believable.

“Yes,” she gritted out. Because it would make Isabel chatty, and Raisa had already admitted the worst of it, she tacked on, “Most nights.”

“Delicious,” Isabel purred. “The idiolect in the letters written to Kilkenny from ‘Conrad’ during the time Shay was supposedly being held don’t match earlier letters Conrad sent.” She gestured as best she could to Raisa. “Linguistically speaking.”

“What?” Raisa asked, even though she’d heard.

“Someone else sent them,” Isabel said, lifting one shoulder in a lazy shrug. “They were forged to make it look like Shay was a victim of the Alphabet Man.”

“How did the linguist not notice that?” Raisa asked, mostly to herself.

“Another interesting question,” Isabel said, signaling for the guard. “But I’m all out of answers.”