A Reagan Keeter Box Set: Three page-turning thrillers that will leave you wondering who you can trus Reagan Keeter (most difficult books to read TXT) 📖

Liam collapsed against the fiberglass wall behind him, pulled his knees to his chest, and cried. He stayed like that for an eternity, remembering Alice as a baby, a child, a teenager. He imagined what her life would have been like as an adult. He pictured her graduating from high school and then college. In his mind, he was there, in the front row, beaming as Alice walked across the stage to accept her diploma. Then she was even older, with a child and family of her own, working a job she loved, maybe following in Liam’s footsteps, becoming her own boss, and still—always and forever—too little in his eyes to be doing any of it.

Liam pounded his shivering fist against his forehead, which made the pain worse. He had to get these thoughts out of his head. It felt selfish—taking his mind off his daughter to think about himself—but he didn’t know Alice was dead, did he? And what good would it do him thinking that way in here?

Here. Again, he was forced to use that mysterious pronoun.

Where was he?

The rocking was not a trick on his equilibrium. Liam was sure of that now. He was moving. Not the way he would be if he was in a car or a truck, though. This was something else. This was . . . a boat.

Why was he on a boat? What did Chris and his friend have planned?

Sooner or later, he was going to find out. They were going to come get him. Then what? When Chris and his friend had confronted Liam at the hotel, they’d demanded he hand over “it.” But they weren’t asking Liam for “it.” They were asking Rick. What would they do when Liam couldn’t give it to them? Kill him? Dump his body overboard?

Liam assumed it was still night. He imagined something not much bigger than a sailboat out on Lake Michigan, alone in the dark, and was forced to admit that, yes, maybe they would.

Was this the reason Rick had given Liam a fake ID with his name on it?

It could be.

Think it through.

What did he know?

Rick had sought him out after Liam had been charged with Elise’s murder. He had put Liam up in a hotel and given him a fraudulent plane ticket. Rick must have known the plane ticket would lead to Liam’s arrest if he tried to use it, although perhaps he never thought Liam would get to the airport to find out. Maybe he had only given it to Liam to keep him in line, thinking that, ticket in hand, Liam had no reason to risk leaving the hotel until late tonight. And maybe, if all that was true, Chris hadn’t shown up at the hotel when he did by chance.

Liam could feel pieces falling into place.

Rick had put Liam in a hotel to make sure his apartment was empty and to give him a place to hide. He wanted Liam out of jail for a little while so that when he transferred the money out of Liam’s accounts from Liam’s computer and in Liam’s apartment, it would look to the police like Liam had done it.

But Liam wasn’t the only one Rick had robbed, was he? He had also robbed Chris. And whatever Rick had taken was worth enough to Chris to kill for.

Had Chris been the one to break into Rick’s apartment? Had he gone looking for what Rick had stolen?

If so, perhaps that was what tied this all together.

Clearly, Chris didn’t know what Rick looked like. Thus, the fake ID and social media accounts in Rick’s name. Rick wanted Chris to believe Liam was the man he was looking for and probably figured the best way to do that was with a picture on Facebook. (Rick couldn’t have expected Liam to go to Chris’s office. But, in retrospect, that had only helped Rick’s cause. It gave Chris a chance to see Liam up close and match his face to the name Liam had given to security.)

Then what? After Rick had robbed Liam, had he tipped off Chris to Liam’s location? Maybe he was hoping Chris would kill him. If he did, Rick would have gotten away scot-free.

As long as Rick killed Alice too.

Liam could feel his heartrate picking up. He was starting to panic again. He closed his eyes, took several deep breaths, urging himself to calm down. That theory was close, but it wasn’t right. It depended too much on what Chris would do when he found Liam, and he doubted that was something Rick could control.

Then there was a clank of metal and the door opened.

Felix Winkler

“St. Mathew’s Passion” clocked in at almost three hours. Felix did not plan on moving from the sofa until he had heard the whole thing. As the music swirled around him, he waved his hands in the air, conducting an imaginary orchestra with an imaginary baton. He knew the Bach piece so well that, even though he did not speak German, he was able to mirror the opera singers by approximating the words.

Felix had sometimes wondered if he should look up the translation, ultimately deciding against it. His lack of understanding did not diminish his appreciation for the music. If anything, it enhanced it. He felt, by not understanding, he was able to listen with his heart instead of his mind.

The orchestra crescendoed and fell back. The opera singers dropped out and returned.

As Felix’s whole being responded to the raw emotion infused into the music, his mind drifted. Dark waters soothed the stress of the day. Tomorrow, he would oversee the repairs to the first-floor restroom. Tomorrow, he would call Northwestern to find out if Roland Burris was still in ICU. Tomorrow, he would sort through resumes to find a replacement for the nurse who quit. But for the next hour and forty-eight minutes, he would think about only the music.

Normally, he would think about only the music.

Tonight, thoughts of Richard’s fake ID kept rising above the dark