A Reagan Keeter Box Set: Three page-turning thrillers that will leave you wondering who you can trus by Reagan Keeter (fiction novels to read txt) 📗

Gina lifted her head from her hands. “Shut up,” she said, with nausea swimming behind her eyes. “I don’t want to if I don’t have to.”

“Then let’s keep driving until you do.”

“Hey,” Paul said, “you’ve got no business talking to her like that.”

“She’s wasting everybody’s time. If she has to puke, fine. Otherwise, I’m sayin’ we should just keep on trucking.”

Paul climbed out of the van and went around to where Ethan was. “Sit your butt back in that seat and close your mouth.”

“You threatening me, you hippie fuck?”

Martin could tell where this was going, and it was nowhere good. But before he could intervene, Ethan had also called Paul a longhaired crybaby.

With one solid shove, Paul knocked Ethan off his feet. “Who’s the crybaby now?” he said as Ethan grunted and rolled to his knees. Blood dripped from the corner of his mouth. His eyelid twitched in a way Martin knew meant trouble.

As soon as Ethan was back on his feet, Martin grabbed him around the arms. “Let it go, all right? Gina’s my sister, and if she says she’s feeling sick, then I’m sure she is.”

Ethan didn’t say anything. After a moment, Martin could feel him relax. He let go. “You all right, sis?”

Gina nodded, and then, finally, vomited onto the pavement.

Nobody understood why Martin had taken such a shine to Ethan. He was obnoxious, Gina had once said. Others called him a prick.

At first, employees at the bank thought it was because Ethan was the new guy. He was from out of town, they’d said, and he didn’t have any friends.

“He’s probably lonely.”

“He’s probably unhappy.”

“Martin’s such a good guy for going out of his way like that.”

“I know I couldn’t do it.”

But the truth went much deeper than that. Martin admired Ethan for his honesty and loyalty. And even more than that, he admired the way he stood up for himself. “Nobody steps on me,” he’d told Martin once. “You let ’em step on you one time, and they’ll step on you for the rest of your life. I should know, Ma stepped on me for years.”

“What’d you do?”

“I took care of it. I told her I wasn’t going to take her crap, and I didn’t.”

Paul parked the van at the Dark Moon campground halfway up Misery Rock. The cave’s entrance, he said, was still a mile away.

“Can’t you get any closer?” Gina asked.

“Afraid not,” Paul said as everyone climbed out of the van. Then, explaining that there were no trails leading to the cave, he guided them into the woods.

“How’d you find it, then?” Cynthia said. She had a flashlight tucked into her front pocket and, like everyone else, was dressed in an old pair of jeans and a long-sleeved shirt. She had the spelunking helmet Paul had given her tucked under one arm.

“You’d be surprised what you can find in these woods if you spend a little time wandering around.”

After that, they walked in silence until Paul stopped at a creek and slipped off his backpack. “At first I thought it was just a through cave,” he said, explaining that a through cave follows a stream’s course from entrance to exit. “Only it turned out to be much more.”

Martin looked around for the cave’s entrance. He expected it to be marked by a large opening in the rock. When he didn’t see one, he was certain they had some more walking to do.

Then Paul reminded them not to do anything he didn’t tell them to. “Because, remember, you end up on a fake floor and no tellin’ how far you’ll drop.”

“Yakety, yakety, yak,” Ethan said. “We got it. We’re not stupid. Let’s go.”

Paul took a deep breath, trying not to get angry. “Martin, you want to go first?”

“I guess so,” Martin said and strapped on his helmet. “Where are we going?”

Paul pointed to a small hole along the bank of the creek. “In there.”

“Funny.”

“I’m serious.”

Martin shook his head. “I can’t fit in there.”

“Sure you can,” Paul said. “It’s a little tight at first, but it opens up.”

“Yeah, but, well, I—”

“I’ll do it,” Ethan interrupted.

Everyone put on the kneepads and gloves Paul had provided. Then Paul checked Ethan’s helmet to make sure it was tight. “All right, you’re good. Turn on your headlamp and get going. We’ll follow you in.”

Ethan went headfirst into the tunnel. It twisted around and then down. The twilight zone disappeared quickly. If it weren’t for the headlamp, Ethan would have been in complete blackness.

He dragged his body along the slimy earth until the tunnel spilled into a large cavern. There, he grabbed hold of two rocks above the tunnel so that he could pull his body the rest of the way out without falling and scaled down the five feet of rock between him and the floor.

Once safely on the ground, he turned on his flashlight and spun slowly around. The two lights dueled for Ethan’s attention as they drifted over the curved rock walls to the massive stalactites hanging from the ceiling.

He felt like he’d crawled into the rib cage of a decaying corpse—all yellow-and-white bone, cracked with rotted black flesh still clinging to it.

NOW

THE QUAKE ONLY lasted a few seconds. But in those seconds, everything changed. They were knocked from their feet as rocks and rubble crashed down around them. Stalactites fell. The tunnel behind them collapsed. Cynthia rolled into a ball, and Gina screamed. Paul slid backward toward a wall, wide-eyed and trying to get his mind around what was happening.

Then another stalactite—just over Paul’s head—cracked and gave. It missed his nose by inches, crushing his legs instead. He screamed and continued screaming even after the quake had stopped.

Gina cautiously made her way over to him, moving fast but not running, afraid that the ground might shift again. She put her hands on his cheeks. “Paul!”

“Get this fucking thing off me!”

Martin was back on his feet—so was everyone else—and staring in disbelief at Paul’s