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) 📖

Chris told himself not to worry. A pickpocket wouldn’t have any interest in a safety deposit box or any way to get into it. They were opportunists, that was all. He’d have taken the cash. Bastard. Perhaps he’d have charged up the credit cards if he’d had the chance. But a key? It would have gone in the trash with everything else.

Chris decided he would stop by the bank in the morning and replace it. Everything would be fine.

But it wasn’t fine. The personal banker went pale when Chris told her he needed to replace the key to his safety deposit box. She called her manager over. They spoke privately for a while, and he took the brunt of Chris’s explosion. Nobody knew whether the man posing as Chris Bell had taken anything out of the safety deposit box; they only knew he’d been inside it.

Chris didn’t have to check the box to know the ring would be gone, but he did anyway.

“Certainly the ring is insured,” the manager said, huddling with Chris and the personal banker in her office.

“I thought it was safe here,” Chris snapped. He wanted to break something. He wanted to hurt someone. Fifty-three thousand dollars—gone. Emma should have agreed to sign a damn prenup.

“Okay, relax. We’ll call the police. We have security cameras. I’m sure they can get to the bottom of this.”

The police reviewed First National’s CCTV footage. Views of their suspect were obscured by a Cubs baseball cap, a mop of hair they thought might be a wig, and glasses they weren’t sure he needed. Dusting the safety deposit box for prints only turned up ones that matched bank employees.

The police put the photo out on the wire anyway because, as one officer said, “You never know.”

Chris could tell he wasn’t optimistic and spent the next two days on a slow burn. He blamed everyone: the police, the bank, the thief, but most of all, he blamed Emma. This was her fault, after all. If she’d agreed to sign a damn prenup, none of this would have happened. Finally, he told her as much.

The confrontation happened in the living room. It was nearing midnight and they’d both had too much beer. He paced the room, decorated with black leather sofas and a multicolored rug with no discernable pattern.

Sitting on the sofa closest to the fireplace, Emma let Chris talk until he had nothing left to say. He called her stupid and selfish. He could tell a part of her was delighted that he’d gotten so close to a proposal he’d bought a ring, and that only made him angrier.

When he was done, she waited a beat, letting the tension in the room defuse a little, then got to her feet. “Honey, you should have come to me about this sooner. We’re a team.”

“What could you do about it?” he spat.

“You said the guy who stole the ring is the same guy who stole your wallet, right?”

“So?”

“Did you tell the police that?” Emma asked, gently placing a hand on Chris’s arm.

He shook her off. “Of course I told the police.”

She took a step back. “You shouldn’t have done that.”

“Why not?”

“What do you think is going to happen if they arrest him? He’ll deny everything. Without fingerprints, a confession, or any good way to visually ID him, will they even charge him with the robbery at the bank?” She shrugged. “No doubt they’ll set a trial date for the theft of your wallet, but he’ll get bail. Then what? If he hasn’t sold the ring already, he’ll sell it then, for sure. It’ll be gone for good.”

“You have a better idea?”

Her lips stretched into a Cheshire cat grin. Chris had only seen that expression on a few occasions, and only when she was up to no good. “I might.” Then it fell away and she said gravely, “If it’s not already too late.”

Liam Parker

During the hour out of his cell, Liam placed a collect call to David from a wall-mounted pay phone (he hadn’t seen one of those since he was a teenager) and asked him to watch Elise’s dog until he got bail. God, he didn’t even want to think about what would happen if he didn’t get bail. After he hung up, he headed to the yard to walk around.

There was a basketball hoop on one side, free weights on another. Liam stuck to the perimeter, walking along the fence line and keeping his head down. He was there not twenty minutes before a fight broke out right in front of him. In a flurry of activity, the inmates surrounding the two fighters backed away. Some, who egged the men on, did it to make room. Others, like Liam, just wanted to get the hell out of the way.

The fight lasted only seconds before a team of guards broke it up. But that was long enough. One man was sent to the infirmary with a broken nose and a gash deep enough to need stitches. The other was taken to solitary confinement.

Liam didn’t hear what started it, and it left him even more on edge, certain a fight could break out over anything. He asked to be returned to his cell and decided that, from then on, that was where he’d stay. To hell with stretching his legs. At least there he was safe.

Jacob Reed

Jacob entered Liam’s building carrying a box perhaps two feet in diameter. He was dressed in a brown pair of pants and a matching coat with a UPS logo stitched into the right breast pocket. He made his first attempt to get past the concierge by ignoring him, but that was a no-go.

“Excuse me,” said the man in the blue blazer and black tie sitting behind a marble desk.

Jacob kept walking.

The concierge stood up and shouted, “Excuse me, sir!”

Jacob kneeled, awkwardly supporting the box with one knee, and pulled the earbud out of his left ear. There wasn’t any music playing. The