Page 40 of By the Time You Read This

A chair and desk by the window overlooked the harbor.

The sun was just dipping below the horizon, the day long this deep into summer.

Boats rocked gently against the pier and Raisa thought of Essi Halla.

Sleek.

That was the word that came to mind. She was a lawyer, she had measured every word she’d said to them, even if she had come across as casual during parts of the conversation.

Raisa would kill for a sample of Essi’s writing.

She did a quick search and found that Essi had a book coming out in two weeks. When she did a broader search for an excerpt, though, she came up blank.

Maybe she would be able to ask Essi for an early copy.

For now, Raisa put her out of her mind and turned her attention to the Biggest Fan letters.

Look at the dates.

She did. She logged them all on a spreadsheet. Nothing jumped out at her, though.

Codes were fine and dandy, but if one person—Isabel—actually wanted to communicate to another—Raisa—she would have to give some guideposts that mattered.

Look at the dates.

Raisa shook her head, ignoring Isabel for now. Her sister had an agenda, always, and Raisa didn’t need to follow it anymore.

Instead, she read through the letters, one by one, without trying to run any analysis. The messages were frustratingly dull, but Raisa got a feeling for the pattern of them.

An update on the weather, and then a mention of a hiking trail, every time. Raisa googled all the trails mentioned, but there were no common similarities among them. The author said they’d summited a mountain in New Zealand one day, and a week later they were in the Alps, and then in California, and so on.

Of course, they weren’t just hiking trails. Isabel would never have kept these letters if there wasn’t some kind of secret communicationgoing on in them. And the killer thing was, she absolutely wanted Raisa to figure them out.

Isabel didn’t do things by accident.

The letters always wrapped up with a signature fromYour Biggest Fan.

Raisa slumped into the chair and rubbed at her eyes, tired from the day, tired from Isabel’s games.

Tired of being the puppet at the end of a string that had outlasted the puppeteer.

She checked her phone again, but really didn’t have to. Delaney hadn’t responded. She wasn’t going to respond. Still, because Kilkenny’s sad face haunted her, Raisa tried one more time. The call went to voicemail.

Raisa shot off a quick text and then tossed the phone back on the desk, staring at papers spread out on the desk once more.

She wished she had Isabel’s responses.

The journal.

Raisa let the legs of the chair fall back to the floor, hardly believing she hadn’t thought of it before. She had Isabel’s journal.

It didn’t take long to find it and then match up the letters with the corresponding dates.

On the surface, the journal entries were tame by Isabel’s standards. But Raisa thought about codes, thought about messages. Thought again that Isabelwantedto communicate something here.

To a linguist.

Or ...Tell her to look at the dates on the letters.

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