Page 86 of By the Time You Read This

I can kill your protégé and get away with it, too.

It would explain the rage.

So Raisa followed her through the streets. She didn’t know Seattle well, but she managed, apart from two close calls, to keep Delaney mostly in her sights.

The second one happened when they were in the heart of downtown. She rounded a corner to find only tourists and locals swarming on the sidewalks. Delaney must have ducked in somewhere to try to catch any potential tail off guard. Raisa swayed, feeling vulnerable out in the open.

Raisa didn’t know if she course-corrected in time to avoid detection, but when she slid into a coffee shop to regain her bearings, she realized where they were.

Right outside the ferry terminal.

Using the ferry to disappear was smart of Delaney, but Raisa wouldn’t have expected anything less. It, also, thankfully worked in Raisa’s favor.

Raisa patiently waited in the coffee shop until Delaney finally ducked out of the shadows of a skyscraper and headed toward the terminal.

Following her would be way too risky at this point. Instead, Raisa pulled up the schedule on her phone. The next ferry leaving was in twenty minutes, and it was headed to Bainbridge.

She looked around and found three men shooting the shit outside the furniture store to her right. She flashed her badge but also made sure the fifty she’d pulled from her wallet was visible.

“Gentlemen, may I ask a favor?”

She quickly had a taker. After that, all she could do was wait until he came back out, flashing her a thumbs-up. He must have been able to drop the AirTag into Delaney’s bag—or he was lying to her for the money. Raisa would have to wait until St. Ivany picked her up to confirm either way.

Only a few minutes later, St. Ivany pulled to a stop in front of the alley where Raisa had been lingering.

A second later, she was in the SUV’s passenger seat.

“She hasn’t found it yet,” St. Ivany said, handing Raisa her phone, which had a little map of the terminal and the sound beyond it. Delaney—along with the AirTag—was pulling away from the dock.

“Don’t jinx it,” Raisa muttered, and St. Ivany shut up as she started driving south, out of town.

“Should we head to Bainbridge?” St. Ivany asked.

You know her best.

“I don’t think she’s in full flight mode,” Raisa said. “I think she’ll circle back.”

“To Seattle?”

Raisa chewed on her lip. It wasn’t that she knew Delaney best, she realized. It was just that she knew what someone like her—mainly Raisa herself—would do in this situation.

“She’s involved, somehow, in all this up to her eyeballs,” Raisa said. “She’s going to want to stick around and figure out why someone is following her. What they know, and if it can hurt her.”

“Okay,” St. Ivany said.

Raisa shot her a look. “You’re being very cooperative.”

“It hasn’t steered me wrong yet today,” St. Ivany pointed out.

Which made her wonder . . .

“Did you ever think I was a part of this?” Raisa asked. “Like Isabel had gotten to me. Or that I had killed her myself?”

“I might have landed there eventually,” St. Ivany mused. “But I thought you were just being ... stubborn.”

“Diplomatic.”

“Always,” St. Ivany shot back. “Pretty much up until that little disappearing act Delaney just tried to pull, I was still thinking it was the boyfriend who had killed Emily.”

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