A Reagan Keeter Box Set: Three page-turning thrillers that will leave you wondering who you can trust

by Reagan Keeter

  “What guy?”

  “Just some guy. No one special.” There was a pause. Frank seemed to be thinking about something. Then he blurted out, “That’s it! That’s where I know you from. That guy. You must know him.”

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  “You have to. He came in here, had a driver’s license and a passport made for you. I’m surprised I didn’t pick you out right away. It was an unusual request. Normally I take the photos, myself. But he came in with a picture of you and insisted I use it. You must know about it, right? You’ve gotta know what I’m talking about.”

  There was only one person that could have been. “Jacob.” Liam felt his world shift in a way he couldn’t quite explain. It meant Elise and Jacob had known each other long before Liam had met her at Ava’s. There was no way they were both there by chance. But why were they there? Liam had thought Jacob was helping him because of Ava. Was he actually helping him because of Elise? No, that wasn’t it. But he couldn’t put his finger on what the truth was either. Not right now. Besides, there wasn’t any time to think about it anyway because Frank had already started to respond.

  “No, that’s not his name.”

  “It has to be,” Liam insisted.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Liam pulled the fake ID Jacob had given him out of his wallet and handed it over. “This is the ID you’re talking about, right?”

  “That’s it!” Frank said, pointing at the ceiling as if he were having a eureka moment. “Richard Hawthorne. Rick. That’s what was so unusual. Well, aside from the fact that he provided the picture.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “That,” Frank said, pointing to the ID. “He wanted the ID in his name. But hey, like I said—I don’t ask questions.”

  Liam sat on a bench outside Clix. It was cold, but he felt overwhelmed and needed a second to think. He pulled the army jacket tight, then took out his TracFone and searched the web for Richard Hawthorne. He wasn’t sure exactly what he was looking for, he just wanted to see what he would find.

  The search results were ordinary at first. Google presented a list that included Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. There were also listings that mentioned a failed state senate race, a hot dog eating contest, and an obituary. The remaining results on the first page referenced a Mike Hawthorne, The Hawthorne Foundation, and a site called MyLife that promised all sorts of background information on Richard.

  Liam clicked on Facebook first, perhaps simply because it was at the top of the list. Suddenly, the results no longer looked so ordinary. Richard Hawthorne had north of a hundred and fifty friends. He’d reposted memes and jokes; nothing personal. His profile picture was Liam’s—the same one, in fact, Liam now had on his fake ID.

  Feeling more overwhelmed now than when he sat on the bench, Liam clicked on the Twitter and Instagram accounts, and discovered a disturbing trend. All three accounts in Richard’s name had Liam’s picture.

  But why? There was no obvious answer. The only way Liam could find out would be to ask Rick.

  Rick—who had known Elise, who’d bought fake IDs with her, who’d sold him an ID after he was charged with Elise’s murder. . . . Had Rick killed her? Was he trying to frame Liam? The fake ID in Richard’s name didn’t fit that story. But Rick knew something. He had to. Liam had to talk to him.

  Getting in touch with Rick, though, was another matter. Liam couldn’t just call him up. If Rick was interested in telling him the truth, he’d have done it already. No, this had to be handled in person. How was Liam going to find him?

  He tried the MyLife site, only to be presented with a lengthy list of Richard Hawthornes, identified by age, city, and family members. Refusing to be deterred, he began scrolling through the results. While Liam felt comfortable ruling out anyone over forty, he found several that could be the right age. Two were even from the Chicago suburbs. Then he wondered whether the information on the site was current or even accurate. He didn’t have time to go tracking down one Richard after another, hoping he’d eventually find the one he was looking for.

  Fortunately, he realized that wasn’t his only option.

  Alice Parker

  As David left, Alice wished him luck. Catherine closed the door. She looked up at Tommy, who was still sitting on the stairs. “Go to your room.” He didn’t move right away, so she added, “Now!” and Tommy scurried off. “Why didn’t you tell me about the number last night?” she asked her daughter.

  Alice crossed her arms over her chest. “I told you. He gave it to me.”

  “It’s an emergency number,” Catherine snapped. “What if something happened to you and I needed to reach him?”

  “I could call him. Duh.”

  “Listen, young lady, I’ve had enough of your crap. I know you think you’ve got this whole world all figured out, but you better wake up. I’m your mom, you got it? As long as you’re living in my house, you need to start showing me some damned respect.”

  Catherine rarely swore. When she did, Alice knew she was pissed. But she had no right to be. Alice firmly believed what she’d now told her mom twice. If Dad wanted Catherine to have his number, he could have given it to her directly. Her mother was overreacting like she always did. “You’re insane.”

  “That’s it. Go to your room.”

  “Gladly.” Alice dramatically slung her backpack over one shoulder and went up the stairs, slamming her sneakers into the wood as hard as she could with each step.

  “You can forget that concert tonight!”

  Alice froze in her tracks. She spun around. “What?”

  “You heard me. I’m not playing around anymore. You’re grounded. Indefinitely. If you can figure out how to start showing me some respect, we can talk about you getting your freedom back.”

  Alice curled her hands into fists and let out a sound that was something between a growl and a scream. Catherine was out of control. Alice thought of a whole bunch of things she could have said right then, but all of them would have made the situation worse. More than that, saying them would mean she was acting just as out of control as Catherine was. She would not do that. She would not be like Catherine in any way. She bit her tongue, charged to her room, and slammed the door.

  Catherine wasn’t going to chase her up here. As long as she stayed in her room, Alice would be left alone. She dropped her bookbag by her desk and collapsed onto the bed. As she got control of her emotions, she stretched and straightened her back. Standing like she had been was uncomfortable.

  Alice had been waiting three months for this concert. No matter what Catherine said, she wasn’t going to miss it. But since she’d have to leave well before Catherine went to bed, simply sneaking out the front door (like she had on other nights) wouldn’t be an option. She’d have to find another way.

  Alice glanced around her room, thought about the layout of the house. There was only one option. She hadn’t opened her window before and doing so took some effort. Humidity had gotten into the wood, nearly locking it in place. A cold breeze rushed in and Alice shivered.

  She popped loose the screen, awkwardly working it in through the opening. She tucked the screen under her bed so Catherine wouldn’t see it if she broke precedent and came to her room to talk to her.

  She returned to the window and leaned out. There was a short overhang that wasn’t too steep within reach. That would work.

  Liam Parker

  Liam blew past the receptionist and found Ava at a young designer’s drafting table. He caught enough of what she was saying to know she was critiquing his work. The receptionist called for Liam to stop and apologized as Ava looked up from the sketches.

  Ava removed her glasses. Liam could tell she was assessing his new look, but instead of commenting on it, she said, “Liam. What are you doing here?” Ava had moved to the United States with her family when she was a child, but he could still hear remnants of a French accent in her voice.

  “We need to talk.” He
’d been moving fast since he’d gotten off the elevator. He sounded winded, although that had more to do with emotion than exertion.

  “I’m sorry,” the receptionist said again. “I couldn’t stop him. Do you want me to call security?”

  “No, it’s fine,” Ava said. She approached Liam. “Come with me.” She led him to her office and closed the door. “What is this about? What are you doing here looking like that?”

  “I’m here about Rick Hawthorne.” He searched her face for a tell, even something small. A flinch, a narrowing of the eyes, a subtle nod—any gesture might be enough to let him know she recognized the name. It was half the reason he’d blown past the receptionist in the first place. He wanted to catch Ava off guard. The other half was because without using the alias he had no name at all he could give. Even here, using his real name was too dangerous. That wasn’t paranoia, that was common sense.

  But Ava’s only reaction was to ask, “Who?”

  “Jacob.”

  “What about him?”

  “You didn’t know his real name was Richard Hawthorne?”

  Ava stared inscrutably at Liam for several seconds, then moved to one of the velvet chairs meant for guests. “Perhaps you should sit down and tell me what’s going on.”

  Liam didn’t feel like sitting, but he sat because Ava asked him to. He told her the important parts of his story, ending with the discovery that the name on the ID Jacob had given him was his own.

  Ava sighed. “This is concerning.”

  “So you didn’t send him to help me? You didn’t have anything to do with this?”

  “Liam, I like you. But no. Even if I’d known what was going on, I wouldn’t have gotten involved. This, right here”—she gestured in such a way as to indicate not only her office but the entire suite—“is my baby. I would not do anything that could put it, or my life in general, in jeopardy.”

  Liam thought about something that should have struck him as odd right from the beginning. The people who attended Ava’s poker games were well off, if not outright rich, at least as far as he knew. All except Elise. So what was she doing there? “How did Elise get in here to play?”

  “Jacob recommended her.” Her lips twisted with disgust and she corrected herself. “Rick recommended her.”

  “How did he get in?”

  “Emmanuel. He’d been my dealer since day one, and I’d known him for years before that. He was going to be out of town for a while, he said. Family emergency. Told me he knew someone who could fill in. I was in a pinch. I could either suspend the games until he came back or I could trust his referral. And why wouldn’t I trust him?”

  Although Ava did not look as disgusted by this second realization, Liam was certain it must have hit her harder than the first. To be betrayed by a friend was always worse than being betrayed by a stranger.

  “I need to find Rick,” Liam said. He knew something about Elise. Maybe a lot. And now there was this whole bizarre ID thing Liam needed to understand. And Ava’s. What were they doing there? He could feel there was some sort of connective tissue that bound these things together. But maybe that was wishful thinking. Either way, this was where his investigation had led, and Rick was the person he needed to talk to next.

  Ava got up and walked around her desk. She removed a lone key from her purse and unlocked the bottom-right desk drawer. She took out a collection of hanging file folders, then pried off a panel on the bottom of the drawer. Underneath was a thin stack of papers. “There are certain things you don’t keep on the computer,” she said.

  She flipped through the papers until she found the one she wanted. “After I hired Jacob—Rick—I did my due diligence. I tried to, anyway. Couldn’t find much. I got a copy of his credit and that looked okay.” Ava took a pen and a piece of paper out of another drawer and started copying something onto it.

  “It’s probably a real name, just not his,” Liam said.

  “Yeah, well, anyway, I needed more than that. I trusted Emmanuel, but I needed to know where to find this Rick if it ever came to it, so I had someone follow him home his first night.” Ava handed Liam the piece of paper. On it was an address.

  Christopher Bell

  Rick had used his real name when renting his apartment and opening his CTA account. He liked to keep his legal activities as far away from his illegal ones as possible. Until Chris Bell had showed up at his door, that had seemed like a good idea.

  Chris, of course, didn’t know this. What he knew was that somebody named Richard Hawthorne had stolen his wallet, broken into his safety deposit box, and, for some strange reason, shown up at his office.

  It was so unfathomable that the more he thought about it the less sure he was the receptionist had said “Richard Hawthorne.” He could go downstairs and ask the security guard for the name himself, just to make sure he wasn’t crazy. But he suspected there might be another option, one that would drive out the uncertainty in a way hearing the name again couldn’t.

  Chris brought up a browser and performed a search very similar to the one Liam had earlier. He hadn’t looked Rick up when Arkin got his address from the CTA system. The thought hadn’t even crossed his mind. Why would it? As far as he was concerned, a name and address was all he needed. And after things went awry at the apartment, what was the point in looking him up then? It wasn’t as if Rick was likely to walk into his office one afternoon and announce himself.

  But one profile after another—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram—all told him that was exactly what Rick had done.

  So strange.

  He’d come asking about a girl who’d run a con on Chris years earlier. Why? What was their connection? He didn’t look like the man who had been with her that night, but that was years ago, so maybe he was. Either way, it didn’t make sense. So, again, why?

  Chris wished he hadn’t brushed Rick off just to get away from him. He should have heard the man out, found out what he wanted, then dragged him to the parking lot and . . . what? Pinned him down and started breaking fingers until Rick told him where the ring was? That was ridiculous. He didn’t know what he would have done after he listened to what Rick had to say. But he should have started there and perhaps instinct would have told him what to do next.

  He fumed, pounded his desk. A coworker walking by asked if everything was all right. “Leave me alone,” he snapped, and slammed his door shut.

  Rick had walked right into Chris’s office and he’d let him go. He’d missed his best opportunity to get the ring back. Maybe his last.

  Maybe, maybe not.

  Chris still had the alert set up to notify him if Rick used his credit card. Hoping for a miracle, he logged into the email account to see if he had received any notifications. It was empty.

  Richard Hawthorne

  Rick felt like he was on a stakeout. He’d heard this was the kind of thing cops sometimes did—sitting in a car, watching a house, waiting for something to happen. It was incredibly boring. He couldn’t understand why anybody would choose to do this more than once. Of course, a cop would be prepared to handle more than his most basic needs. He’d have a sandwich and snacks, a thermos of coffee, and maybe someone to talk to. While Rick had none of that, at least he had enough gas to keep the heater running and an empty water bottle to pee into.

  The sun went down. The shadows of trees that lined the street grew long, melding into those of the houses until they became a single sheet of darkness punctuated by streetlights.

  Rick almost fell asleep twice. In between, he fidgeted with the vents because it was something to do. Eventually, he hooked his phone up to the stereo, turned the volume almost all the way down, and fired up a Spotify playlist. It started with a modern remix of an Elvis song.

  “A little less conversation, a little more action,” sang the King of Rock ’n’ Roll. Right now, Rick would have settled for either one.

  When his head lolled forward and he instinctively jerked it back for the third time, jolting himself out of sleep, he saw what he had
been waiting for.

  A window on the second floor slid open. A figure crawled out of it onto a narrow overhang. It had to be Alice. He had assumed she had permission to attend the concert and thus had expected to see her walk right out the front door.

  Alice remained on all fours, crawling backwards to the edge of the roof, then slowly lowering herself over. She hung there for several seconds, no doubt judging a fall that looked higher than it was, and dropped the last few feet to the ground.

  While she was doing all this, a car rolled past and Rick leaned over into the passenger seat to make sure he wasn’t seen. The car was moving slow. Although, with its lights in his rearview mirror, he hadn’t gotten a good look at it when it had come up from behind, he didn’t think it was a coincidence that a car was coming down this quiet street at this time. When he rocked back up, he was certain it wasn’t.

  The car was a white Volvo, exactly like the one Alice’s friend had been driving. It stopped in front of Alice’s house, she got in, and the car sped off.

  Rick followed from a safe distance. He knew they were going to the Bowards Arena, so when they caught a light right before it turned red, he wasn’t worried he’d never find them again. But since he didn’t know where they would park or where they were seated, he also couldn’t let them get too far ahead.

  When they got to the arena, he slipped on the same baseball cap he’d worn into the bank. The girls hung around outside near the ticket booth. They appeared to be texting their friends, trying to coordinate a place to meet. Like he had in the mall, Rick faked a phone call to look busy.

  Concertgoers swarmed past. The delay made him nervous. He worried if he stood out here too long, Alice might notice him. Eventually, Rick’s nerves got the best of him and he headed for the nearest entrance.