Page 78 of By the Time You Read This

The man jerked his head toward his car, and Gabbi nodded.

“Shit,” Delaney breathed. She wouldn’t be able to follow them if they got in. She thought about stopping them in some way, even running over to Gabbi to force an introduction.

Instead she watched helplessly—as she had all her life—as Gabbi climbed into the passenger seat and buckled up.

They drove by only a handful of feet away from where Delaney was hiding, and she could see the suggestion of Gabbi’s hand resting on the man’s knee.

Maybe this wasn’t exactly what she thought it was.

Maybe this was just an affair between a professor and his much younger student. That might not be a healthy relationship, but it certainly wasn’t worth calling the cops about.

As she watched the taillights disappear, though, she wondered if she would ever talk herself out of all her maybes and do something for once in her goddamn life.

The police radio app Delaney downloaded on her burner phone crackled to life at 3:00 a.m.

Apparent suicide, over by the harbor.

Male, midforties.

They didn’t say, but Delaney guessed he had dark hair and a strong jawline, along with the ghost of a young woman’s touch on his thigh.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Raisa

Day Three

Raisa couldn’t shake the feeling that she was missing a crucial piece of evidence because she hadn’t given herself time to truly sit with all the written communication she had from the case.

When she left Roan and the pub behind, the evening was settling in around her. The place had been close enough to forgo the SUV, and she was glad for the walk back now. She would grab everything they’d gathered over the past couple of days and then head to the hospital.

She wanted to see Kilkenny. Even if that meant sneaking past the guard dogs at the nurses’ station to do so.

That made her think about Emily’s boyfriend, who worked at the hospital. She wondered what he did there, then dismissed him from her mind. It didn’t matter.

A block away from the hotel, she glanced in the coffee shop she and Kilkenny had stopped in before his accident, and caught sight of someone familiar.

Mildred ... something. Raisa didn’t remember her last name, but she remembered that she’d praised Essi for helping her get through the loss of her dog.

And now here she was reading a book.

The very one Raisa was eager to get her hands on.

Mildred was pleased as punch—in her own words—to see Raisa.

“Is that Essi’s book?” Raisa asked, cutting into Mildred’s recitation of her next week’s worth of plans. Something about Essi poked at Raisa. She wasn’t always good at reading people, and Essi was clearly a master at crafting her own image. But idiolects were harder to mask. Essi was sure to reveal more about herself in this book than she would ever want to. Maybe it wouldn’t help the case itself, but maybe it would. Essi was as tangled up in all this as anyone they’d talked to.

Mildred beamed. “Oh, yes. She gave me an early copy. She’s always doing sweet things like that. I’ve already read it through once, but I’m making notations this time around.”

“Could I borrow it?” Raisa asked, expecting a fight.

Mildred’s fingers tightened around it. “Um, well, dear ...”

“Please, it’s for official purposes,” Raisa said. “I’ll make sure it’s returned to you in perfect shape.”

Mildred did not want to hand it over. She licked her lips, her eyes darting side to side, as if she were desperately crafting a good lie to cover why she just absolutely had to keep the thing.

In the end, she surrendered it to Raisa, along with her home address.

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