Page 50 of By the Time You Read This

She brought up the website for the local community college and ignored the incoming call from St. Ivany.

Raisa narrowed the available classes down to the psychology department—since that was the one specialty Emily had mentioned—and then scrolled until one jumped out at her.

Media Ethics: Fandoms and the Cult of Celebrity.

The phone rang again.

St. Ivany.

Raisa ignored it and found the name of the professor. Declan O’Brien.

The pervy professor.

The first death that Raisa accredited to Delaney—even if Isabel had done the killing—had been a professor. He’d targeted Delaney when she’d been a precocious high schooler taking college classes for credit.

She didn’t know why that thought had popped into her head. But just like Delaney and Isabel, Raisa was good at spotting patterns, in writing and in life. That didn’t always mean that they were important, but it was good to acknowledge they existed.

The swinging doors to the ICU opened, but the nurse who walked out was wearing a jacket and fiddling with her phone. She was off shift, clearly.

Raisa watched her, hoping against reason that the woman would turn around and tell her Kilkenny was going to be just fine.

Her stomach rolled as the nurse disappeared into the elevator and she went back to her phone.

A few minutes later, she found O’Brien’s schedule. He had a night class that was set to end in forty minutes. If she was lucky, he would stop by his office after.

First, though, she had to bring herself to leave.

Raisa crossed to the nurses’ desk. The man behind it glanced up, his expression sympathetic. “No news.”

“Is he ...?” Raisa trailed off, not even knowing what to ask to try to shake loosesomethingfrom these guard dogs, who had been tight-lippedall afternoon. They’d informed her at some point that he was out of surgery, but there had been no updates since then.

“Listen, why don’t you go get some sleep,” the nurse suggested, somehow both gentle and firm. “Your partner is going to need you in the morning.”

Raisa swallowed and nodded, getting the message.

She wasn’t about to go sleep, but she probably wasn’t going to be let back there tonight. Unless anything catastrophic happened in the next hour or two, she wasn’t about to miss an opportunity to go sit with Kilkenny.

“You have my—”

“Number,” he said, with that same kind smile. “Yes, we’ll make sure to call you right away with any updates.”

A helpless anger flared in her chest at being interrupted. She knew there was no actual reason to be mad at this man; she knew this feeling stemmed from frustration and fear and was simply searching for an easy outlet. But if she didn’t walk away in that moment, Raisa wasn’t sure she could maintain the generally positive relationship she had with the guard dogs.

So, without saying anything, she turned and left.

Kilkenny’s SUV was back at the hotel, so when she got outside, she called for a car.

While she waited for the ride, she did a simple search on O’Brien. He had several research papers published and even a few videos popped up—a sure sign of someone who was on the TED Talk circuit. The thumbnail picture of him revealed that he was young and handsome, with dark hair and blue eyes.

All his work concentrated on parasocial relationships between public figures and the worshipping masses, along with the ways that social media blurred the boundaries on what should and could be expected from each side.

In another situation, Raisa would have found the topic fascinating, but now, her eyes kept being drawn to the hospital lights.

Her biggest fear right now was that Kilkenny was going to die in there.

Alone.

The thought was almost enough to drive her back into the building. But that would do nothing to help catch the person who had put Kilkenny in there. And maybe tracking down a professor in a class that may have a weak link to Isabel and one of the other victims wasn’t doing much, either, to catch whoever had been driving the SUV, but it felt like forward movement.

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