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) 📗

a man named Arkin Prichard. Arkin worked in the Chicago Transit Authority’s IT Department. Emma didn’t elaborate on how the two knew each other, but she did say that in high school he was the kind of person who could get you things and, as it turned out, still was.

When Chris showed up at the transit authority’s headquarters, he could see Arkin pacing around the empty lobby on the other side of the glass doors. He was alone, which Chris had expected.

Chris rapped on the glass.

Arkin, sporting a buzz cut and a CTA jacket, zipped up, scurried over to the door to let him in. “Bastards turn off the heat at night,” he said after he opened the door.

Chris didn’t mind. It was warmer in here than it was on the street, and he’d be back in his car soon enough.

A stack of bills changed hands and disappeared into Arkin’s pocket. Arkin didn’t insult Chris by counting the money.

“Come on,” Arkin said, and led Chris to a door on the third floor. A placard on the wall beside it read IT Department. Arkin swiped his badge in front of the security reader. There was a click and a red light on the reader turned green.

Inside were a series of long white tables in rows with translucent partitions dividing them into workstations. Arkin sat down at one of the workstations and gestured to the chair at another.

Chris wheeled the chair over so that he could see Arkin’s computer screen.

“What time frame you lookin’ for?” Arkin asked as he brought the computer to life and logged in.

“Friday morning. Let’s begin at two o’clock. Belmont Station.”

“Coming up,” Arkin said, and went to work. A fisheye view of the station’s entrance appeared on the screen with a clock in the lower-left corner that read 02:00:00. As he fast-forwarded the black-and-white image, he said, “Tell me when to stop.”

From the camera’s angle, Chris could tell it was attached to the underside of the tracks. It looked down on the road that ran beneath them, a station map mounted behind glass near the entrance, a Dunkin’ Donuts with walk-up windows, and cement pillars with cartoonish faces painted on them.

For a while, that’s all he saw. Then, a homeless man pushing a shopping cart zipped back and forth a couple of times at high speed. A group of college kids raced down the sidewalk. A blur of gray transformed into a man as he ran toward the entrance and stopped to pull out his metro card.

“Pause it,” Chris said.

Arkin did.

Chris couldn’t make out the face of the man standing in front of the turnstile and wasn’t entirely sure he remembered what the thief looked like anyway. But he could see another man entering the camera’s view from the right and that man he recognized as himself. He pointed at the guy who had stolen his wallet. “Who’s that?”

“Let’s see if we can find out.” Arkin minimized the video and brought up a different application. “I just have to match up the time on the video to the time he scanned his Ventra card,” Arkin explained, his voice trailing off as he quickly navigated to a search form and filled out the required fields. He pressed Enter.

The screen refreshed. The personal details of the man who’d stolen Chris’s wallet appeared: name, address, phone number.

Chris couldn’t believe it. Emma was right. Arkin had been able to provide him with everything he needed. “Do you know if the police have been by to take a look at this yet?”

“I don’t know. That would’ve gone through security.”

Chris chewed on his lip, digesting the news. In the end, he knew it didn’t matter. Either way, he had only one choice. He had to go by the thief’s apartment now. The longer he waited, the greater the odds were he’d never get the ring back.

But he didn’t feel comfortable visiting the thief’s apartment alone at night. He needed backup. The people Chris called his friends would not be suited for such a task. He needed somebody with Arkin’s moral flexibility. And since Arkin was already here, sitting not two feet away, he asked, “You want to make a little more money tonight?”

Jacob Reed

Jacob was sitting in the dining room of his basement apartment, his laptop open on the small wooden table in front of him. He began digging into Liam’s life through his social media accounts and public records. He found a birth certificate, a marriage certificate, information on his divorce and the birth of his children, which led him to other social media accounts and other records. After enough digging, he believed he had found a way into Liam’s condo. It wasn’t going to be easy. It would mean becoming a new kind of criminal. But it had to be done.

With his plan formed, Jacob closed the lid of his laptop, ready to call it a night. He crossed the dull, creaking floors that once might have been called mahogany, turned off the light, and made his way to the bathroom to pee. He looked forward to soon having a bathroom that was wider than the length of his outstretched arms.

While he was peeing, he thought he heard a knock and, when he stepped out of the bathroom, he was sure he heard another. Jacob was immediately on edge. Very few people knew where he lived, and none of them dropped in unexpectedly.

He quietly moved to the door to listen for voices on the other side. There was a large bay window beside the door, but he always kept the blinds closed, so there was no chance of being seen. He leaned in close, trying to pick out any small sound he could. It turned out, he didn’t have to listen very hard.

“Open the damn door!” a man shouted.

Jacob jerked back like he’d been struck, then retreated several steps deeper into the apartment. His first instinct was to run, but there were only two ways out of the apartment—his front door