Page 59 of By the Time You Read This

Raisa clicked into it. There was so much information, so many numbers that could have pulled her attention.

Instead of scouring any of that data, she scrolled down. There, at the bottom of the page, was a place for hikers to leave their reviews.

“Holy shit,” Raisa breathed again. It really was as easy as that.

The trail wasn’t a popular one. There were hikes in a sidebar that had 20,000-plus reviews, but the Muddy Waters Conservatory outside Macon, Georgia, had 126 total, and only 32 from the current year.

Raisa scrolled down until she found the posts near the time of the first Biggest Fan letter.

Her heartbeat ticked up and she laughed, incredulous.

Because there, posted the same day as the letter was dated, was a review from a user who went byBecks P.Their mother’s name.

Terrible hike. This whole trail all I could think about was how much I wanted Isabel to stop going close to the edge. I wanted to remind her that if she fell, she would probably pull me down with her. Not that she cared. She would do what she wanted. One star.

There were a few comments underneath noting that maybe the user got confused about which hike they did, because there were no cliff edges on the trail. But no one had taken it down.

Raisa was almost stunned at the simplicity of it all.

She reread the message and then, slowly, she worked her way through all the letters. They didn’t all have reviews—possibly a safeguard to anyone from the correctional facility deciding to randomly check this website. It became clear, though, that whoever was writing the “reviews” wanted Isabel to stop playing some kind of game. It had not worked out well for the letter writer before, and said author was nervous and resentful about the fact that she was going to get dragged back into whatever Isabel was doing.

The “Biggest Fan” was, it turned out, an ironic sign-off.

Raisa brought up her text thread with Delaney, and couldn’t ignore the fact that her sister hadn’t responded. She couldn’t ignore the fact that this method was similar to how Delaney had communicated with Isabel before. Couldn’t ignore the fact that she could easily see Delaney being dragged into a game even if she hadn’t wanted to be.

She shook her head.

She might want Delaney to face consequences for the way she’d sat on the sidelines for so long, but she couldn’t see her sister getting within a hundred miles of Isabel’s bullshit again.

Delaney wouldn’t.

Except . . .

She toggled back to that first review. Becks P. She couldn’t ignore the fact that it was their mother’s name the poster had used.

Raisa swallowed hard.

She found the last review and read through it again. It had been posted under the nameMagdaline, which was the street Emily Logan had lived on.

Great hike, but I have to tell y’all, my daughter screamed the whole time. “I won’t do it, I won’t do it. You can’t make me.”

A few commenters commiserated beneath the post. And then there, in black and white, was a post from “Isabel.”

My daughter’s the same way. I always give her a choice. She can either do it or she’ll pay the price for not doing it. She’s never had to ask what the price is—she knows it will be devastatingly steep.

St. Ivany cleared her throat, and Raisa yelped, nearly throwing the computer. As calmly as she could, she closed the lid, not wanting to share what she’d just discovered. “You scared the crap out of me.”

“You found something,” St. Ivany said, in a soft voice. There was a strange expression on her face.

And this, this must have been how Delaney had felt all those years. Because Raisa knew exactly what sheshoulddo, which was tell the law enforcement agent standing in front of her exactly what she’d unearthed. What her gut was screaming at her to do, though, was to think on it for longer, make certain she was sure it really had been Delaney communicating with Isabel.

“No, just more nothing,” Raisa said, her fingers clenching against the edges of the laptop.

St. Ivany cocked her head. “Oh yeah, is that right?”

How long had she been standing there? Raisa glanced toward the door, and only then realized she didn’t have a clear line to it. Was it locked? She couldn’t remember if St. Ivany had thrown a dead bolt.

“Yeah,” Raisa said, standing. “I think I’m going to call it a night, too.”

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