Page 61 of By the Time You Read This

“Agent Susanto here,” she said, picking it up.

“Hi, this is Julia Davis, calling from Washington State Department of Children, Youth, and Families.”

Raisa punched the air in victory. “Julia, thanks for getting back to me. I’m looking into a homicide that might have a connection with Peter Stamkos. Is there anything you could tell me about the case?”

“Oh, well, it was as clear-cut as day,” Julia said. She had a warm, gossipy voice. “Between you and me, I’m glad he didn’t take his daughter with him when he killed himself.”

Julia went on to provide details Raisa could have gotten on a public request, which were helpful but not necessarily enlightening.

“Did anyone suspect it was anything but suicide?” Raisa asked.

“Oh no, honey, not for a minute,” Julia said, and then seemed to catch up to the question. “Wasit?”

“No, no, I’m just checking boxes,” Raisa said.

“Well, the only strange thing to note was the woman,” Julia said.

Raisa’s heart stuttered against her rib cage. “What woman?”

“According to the very nosy neighbor, there was a woman who sat outside watching Peter’s house for a few days before he shot himself,” Julia said. “Should I have gotten more info about her? It seemed like a coincidence.”

“Did they give any details?” Raisa asked, hardly daring to hope.

“Just that she was middle-aged and wore her hair in a braid,” Julia said, sounding like she was reading off notes. “They called her a hippie. I always like to take some initial impressions down, but I didn’t actually include any of that in the report.”

“So helpful, thank you, Julia,” Raisa said, glad she didn’t have to control her expression in person.

“Of course, hon, good luck.”

Raisa hung up and stared at that stupid crack in the ceiling.

“Delaney,” Raisa murmured into the empty room. It was strange, this. Raisa had spent the past two years wanting Delaney to step over the line so she could arrest her. Now that she might have, Raisa wanted more than anything to find out that Delaney really was in Fiji, that she’d dropped her phone into the ocean, that she’d forgotten Raisa’s number and name and the very state of Washington.

A hippie, a middle-aged woman with a braid. Sure, that could describe a lot of people, but it definitely described Delaney.

Still ... her sister sitting outside Peter Stamkos’s house didn’t necessarily mean that Delaney had been the one to kill him in a fashion startlingly familiar to Isabel’s preferred method.

What if Isabel had been using Delaney to extend her own reach outside that prison cell? Delaney had grayscale morals, and Isabel knew that already. Why not take advantage of it?

Raisa’s stomach turned. Even if Isabel had been the one directing Delaney, Delaney was an adult. She could have warned Kilkenny or Raisa if Isabel had threatened either of their lives. At the very least, Kilkenny would have believed her.

It was never better to take a life—even if that life wasn’t worth the oxygen it took to survive.

A sudden knock on the door had her eyeing the safe where she kept her gun.

She dismissed the instinct as paranoia and crossed the room.

The bored teenage girl who worked the boutique hotel’s front desk stood there, holding an envelope by two of its diagonal corners so that it spun in an idle circle. “Mail.”

Raisa took it with a “Thanks. Did you see who dropped it off?”

“Nope,” she said. “It was waiting there when I came back from the bathroom.”

The teenager held out a hand and Raisa nearly laughed at the chutzpah. Instead, she went to get a five-dollar bill before sending the girl on her way.

The envelope just had her name written across the front.

Raisa opened it.

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