Page 41 of By the Time You Read This

Dates were numbers, and those were Delaney’s purview.

What if theherhadn’t been Raisa?

She straightened, and ripped a fresh piece of paper from her own journal. She wrote down the numbers that comprised each of the dates.

1-7-2-5

3-6-2-5

When she had all twelve lines written, she crossed out the years. Anything that was a common factor could either be used as an anchor—unlikely in a situation like this one—or could be discarded.

Then she went to the journal, to the first date. January 7. She looked at the first sentence, and then the first letter of the seventh word in that sentence.

Please.

P.

Raisa typed that into her computer and flipped to the March 6 entry. She found the sixth word in the third sentence.

Exist.

E.

She repeated the process for all the letters from Isabel’s Biggest Fan.

When she finished, she sat back and huffed out a breath.

P.E.T.E.R. S.T.A.M.K.O.S.

Peter Stamkos—the single father who had abused his daughter and then died by suicide after a CPS visit.

He had died months after the date on the first journal entry.

Raisa chewed on the inside of her cheek, trying to figure out what this all meant.

The only way Isabel could have made all that line up was if she’d written the journal out completelyaftershe’d received the Biggest Fan letters. The journal wasn’t meant to detail her life or be a record of the final months before her death; its sole purpose was meant to confirm that Isabel had known who Peter Stamkos was, he was linked to the Biggest Fan letters, and both were important to figuring out who had killed her.

“Fuck you, Isabel,” Raisa said, and felt immediately better. If her sister was going to create an entire journal out of thin air just to play simple word and number games, she could have simply written:these are the people who want me dead the most.

Sick of it all, Raisa slammed the thing shut. If, as a person, she were slightly stronger or slightly weaker, she would’ve packed her bags right now and left at dawn.

Instead, she took a shower and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

In the morning, she looked up the number for the CPS office that had visited Peter Stamkos and left a message along with her badge number.

She was playing with fire, introducing herself as an FBI agent even when she wasn’t working an official investigation, but she was mostly convinced she could get St. Ivany to invite them on to consult. Especially once the medical report came back that Isabel’s death might’ve been a homicide, which it would.

After she got dressed, she collected Kilkenny, and they walked to the coffee shop a block away. Raisa filled him in on the dates and letters after they got their drinks.

“So Stamkos’s death does have something to do with Isabel,” Kilkenny mused. They were back outside, meandering along the walkway that had been built up next to the water. Raisa looked for Essi’s boat, but a few more had come in overnight and it was blocked from view.

“Or, or, or, what if she saw his obituary and just decided to mess with me?” Raisa asked, and then let out a frustrated, though muted, yell. “I hate this second-guessing whenever it comes to Isabel. She’s a mastermind until she’s not. She’s an opportunist and a genius and kind of a dumbass sometimes and I never know which side of her we’re getting.”

“As long as we keep in mind that she’s trying to manipulate you, I already think we’re ahead of the game,” Kilkenny said. “Or at least better than we have been before when it comes to Isabel.”

“I wondered . . .”

When she didn’t finish, he nudged her. “Wondered what?”

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