Page 103 of By the Time You Read This

Raisa whirled on her. “Why the hell not?”

“Raisa, think like an FBI agent instead of Kilkenny’s friend,” St. Ivany said, and Raisa wanted to hate her for that. But she didn’t. “This is enough to question someone, but there’s no definitive proof she was behind the wheel.”

Anger coiled tightly around Raisa’s rib cage, and she took three deliberate breaths to calm herself down.

“She was spotted outside of Peter Stamkos’s house,” Raisa said. “It seems like she scoped Lindsey Cousins out at work. She came here—here—when she was cornered instead of fleeing to Mexico. Why? Because she had unfinished business.”

“Maybe that unfinished business is finding whoever killed Isabel,” St. Ivany said. “Exactly like you’re doing.”

Raisa exhaled again. “No, they were communicating before Isabel died. Whatever Isabel wanted her to do, it’s something else.”

“Yes, but Isabel is dead,” St. Ivany pointed out. “Which means Delaney might disregard whatever the previous instructions were and hunt down her killer.”

“Delaney wouldn’t do that. She’s listened to Isabel all her life.” Raisa said. “Where is she?”

St. Ivany’s eyes went shifty. “I’m not telling you.”

“Why the hell not?” Raisa said, all but vibrating with anger now.

“You need to calm down,” St. Ivany said, yelling the last two words.

Raisa wanted to tell her that no one who’d been told to calm down had ever, in the history of the world, actually calmed down. Instead, she walked away.

“This is what Isabel wanted,” St. Ivany called. “You said it yourself. She wanted to break you.”

Raisa stopped, though she didn’t turn around.

“You know, this is the first time Isabel has ever been wrong about us,” she said, so softly she wasn’t sure St. Ivany would even hear. “She said we weren’t broken, like her. But she took care of that a long time ago.”

Raisa spent the rest of the day searching for Delaney, with no luck. She also tried finding Roan Carmichael, but there wasn’t a trace of him, either.

So, as night fell, she went to the hospital.

“Why did you trust her?” she asked an unconscious Kilkenny after sitting beside him for several hours in silence. They’d had this conversation a million times—she could do his answer by heart.

She didn’t want to sayI told you so.She wanted him to wake up so they could have it for the millionth and one time.

But he wouldn’t. He might never wake up again.

Because of Delaney.

A knock on the door pulled her from the well of rage just as she was re-dipping her toes in.

She turned to find St. Ivany standing there, looking as rough as Raisa probably did.

“I haven’t had any luck today,” she said. “Come get food with me.”

Raisa might have been annoyed with her, but she was also hungry.

So she went.

St. Ivany drove them to a classic fifties-styled place about as far off the main drag of tourist restaurants as you could get.

The waitress filled their basic white mugs with coffee and then left them alone.

Raisa pulled Essi’s book out of her bag.

“Why are you so obsessed with that thing?” St. Ivany asked her.

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