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

  THE REAGAN KEETER COLLECTION

  GONE

  THE REDWOOD CON

  BURIED

  REAGAN KEETER

  GET AN EXCLUSIVE COPY OF THE LAYOVER

  Connor Callahan has been through a lot. More than anyone should. It has left him with an overdeveloped sense of justice. Perhaps that is why when he sees a man discreetly tag a stranger’s suitcase with a black magic marker, he sets out to discover what is going on. It’s a decision that will thrust Connor into a conflict far more dangerous than he could have imagined, and when it’s over he will know one thing for sure: You’re not always safer on the ground.

  Details can be found at the end of this box set.

  GONE

  CHAPTER 1

  Get. Out.

  That was the first message Ion had sent when Connor tried to hack his machine. It appeared suddenly in a black window in the center of his screen as all of his applications shut down.

  Whoa, was the only thought Connor could manage at the time. He was studying computer science at Stanford University, but had been hacking into other people’s computer systems for much longer than that. His fingers had been practically attached to the keyboard since he was four years old. Until that day, nobody had caught him in the act. Or, at least, nobody had kicked him out. He wouldn’t have even thought it was possible to do what Ion had done.

  That wasn’t the end of it, though. Two days later, he got an email from [email protected]. He recognized the domain as the one he’d tried to hack and deduced Ion must be the handle for the guy who had kicked him out. It contained only one line: Stay out of my system or I’ll make sure Matt finds out what you’ve been up to.

  The messaged bothered Connor for a lot of reasons. First, it meant Ion had hunted Connor down, found out who he was and how to contact him. Second, despite all that work, all the research Ion must have done, his email referenced someone named Matt, and Connor knew no one by that name. So who was Matt?

  Connor wasn’t a malicious hacker. His targets were not financial institutions or government entities. He didn’t send out phishing emails or try to steal anyone’s identity. He was a hacker of, as he saw it, the most righteous type. He sought out sites that dealt in misinformation and did what he could to disrupt them. Some of them were political. Many were not. There were “the sunners,” for example, who actually claimed the government had harnessed the sun’s rays and was using them to monitor people’s outdoor activity. It was an absurd notion. Connor hated the idea that these fools were out there spreading lies and, as hard as it was for him to believe, gaining followers.

  For three days, the sunners’ website had shown a popup to every new visitor that said, “This is a lie. Do not buy into their half-truths.”

  Connor knew, though, that he would never be able to stop a group of people like that permanently. Everyone he attacked eventually fixed their sites, patched the holes Connor had been able to exploit. But the way he saw it, if he kept even one person from slipping down a rabbit hole that would twist their view of the world into something untrue, possibly destroying their lives in the process (as he understood it, many sunners had found themselves alienated from family and friends), then he had done something good.

  TruthSeekers was one such site. It didn’t peddle in sunners theories, though. It had no such single focus. It had posts on Bigfoot and aliens, modern-day vampires and possession. A smorgasbord of crazy, in other words.

  Connor had stumbled upon the blog by accident. A Facebook post on blood diseases had caught his attention. It had had enough truth to sound legitimate, but something had smelled wrong. He’d followed a link in it to another site and a link there to TruthSeekers.

  But he didn’t go after the site right away. He had other things to do. He was home from school for the summer, working for a house flipper named Austin during the day, and was just too tired to bother with a mere blogger who posted stories so obviously false.

  At least, that was how he’d felt when he found the site. But he couldn’t stop thinking about the lies TruthSeekers was spreading. These weren’t the kinds of lies that would destroy anyone’s life. They were, however, the kind that would eat at you slowly, shift your thinking just enough to make room for more nefarious ideas. They were, he realized when he was lying in bed one night, “gateway lies.”

  And, for that reason, they were just as bad as, if not worse than, those told by the sites he attacked regularly.

  Stay out of my system or I’ll make sure Matt finds out what you’ve been up to.

  Connor had read the message over and over the night he had received it and, tonight, a week later, had pulled it up again. The gnawing, relentless question wouldn’t leave him alone. Who’s Matt?

  He was sitting at his computer in his attic bedroom, still wearing the clothes he’d put on for a day of painting with Austin: a pair of old khakis and a Cure tee shirt he had found at a thrift shop in Greenwich Village. He had taken to showering at night since he had started working with Austin, and his blond hair stuck out every which way.

  From downstairs, he could smell dinner cooking. His mom liked to use a lot of spices. Nutmeg and oregano were her favorites. But unless his nose deceived him, tonight’s meal would feature basil.

  He could also hear his parents going at it again, something that, this summer, had become almost a nightly occurrence. His mother tells his father to stop being so mean, to stop sulking around the damn house all the time and at least act like he’s happy to see her. Kim says something’s wrong, she can feel it, and why won’t he just talk to her? Frank tells her she’s being paranoid. He says nothing’s wrong, and maybe he would be in a better mood if she would just stop bothering him every night with these stupid questions. And on and on it goes. Sometimes one of them will mention Connor—“He’s right upstairs. He can hear us.”—and they will call it quits for a while. Other times, they’ll get so heated they forget he’s there.

  Next year, he might stay in California. He only had one more summer break before he graduated anyway, and it might do him good to use those three months working an internship somewhere like Facebook or Uber.

  Connor slipped on his AirPods with the intention of drowning out the argument, but no music played.

  The old oak desk he sat at stood in stark contrast to the sleek monitors and souped-up laptop on top of them. It reminded Connor of an era long since passed. A time when people still wrote letters regularly and did so with a quill instead of a pen.

  Connor scoured the desktop, shifting fast food wrappers, crumpled paper towels, loose sheets of paper, books, dishes, and a whole manner of other junk in search of his phone. Then he remembered he had shoved it in the top desk drawer to his left specifically because there was nowhere on the desk to put it.

  He opened the drawer, removed the phone. It was dead. At least that explained why there was no music playing.

  From outside, he heard the squeal of tires and a thump, like a car bouncing over a curb. Not the sort of thing you would expect to hear in a quiet suburban neighborhood. Certainly not when you were in the cul-de-sac of said neighborhood.

  Connor crossed the attic bedroom to a small window that faced the front of the house, careful not to hit his head on the slanted ceiling, and looked out. At first, he saw nothing but the dark and quiet tree-lined street that arced away from their house and disappeared around a curve. Then he heard a bang from downstairs. It sounded to him like somebody had opened a door fast,
let it slam into a wall. He instinctively looked from the street to the yard and saw a nondescript panel van parked on the grass. Blue or black—it was hard to tell in the darkness. The rear doors were open.

  “What the . . .” he heard his mother say.

  “Who are you?” his father said.

  Then there was another thud. His mother screamed.

  CHAPTER 2

  Connor began to panic. His hands shook. His mouth went dry. What the hell was going on? He had to call the police. He looked at his phone, then remembered it was dead. Shit. Well, he had to do something.

  There was more banging, like furniture getting toppled over and the sounds of footsteps—one person chasing another.

  “Please, please, please! Leave us alone!” Kim shouted. “Take what you want and go!”

  There were two doors between Connor and the rest of the house: one that led out of the bedroom, and the other at the bottom of the attic stairs. He bolted out of the bedroom door, ready to attack the intruder. As he ran, Connor imagined jumping on top of him, pinning him to the floor, beating him unconscious. Then, just at the top of the stairs, he stopped, realized the intruder might have a gun.

  New plan.

  He crept down the stairs. More banging.

  “What do you want with me?” Kim screamed.

  Connor turned the doorknob quietly, pushed the door open an inch, two. From here, he could see the living room and most of the dining room. Frank was sprawled out on the floor. A marble bust of Hippocrates, perhaps ten inches tall, lay beside him. Connor recognized the statue from their foyer where, until now, it had sat on a side table, atop a small stack of medical books.

  The couch was askew. The coffee table and dining room chairs were overturned.

  More screams from his mother. Demands for the intruder to get out. It sounded like she might be in the kitchen. Then he heard dishes breaking, and his suspicions were confirmed. She was, no doubt, grabbing dishes out of the cupboard and the sink, tossing them at the intruder, doing whatever she could to defend herself.

  Why didn’t she go for the block of knives by the fridge? Was she afraid to turn her back on him?

  Probably. Connor would be.

  Think. What are you going to do?

  If the intruder had a gun, if he planned on shooting anyone, he would have done it already. He wouldn’t have needed to use the Hippocrates bust to knock out Connor’s father. His mother wouldn’t be so bold as to run or throw dishes at the man.

  But what was he going to do? Even if the intruder didn’t have a gun, going after him empty-handed would be stupid. He needed a weapon of some sort. He quickly assessed everything within sight without actually focusing on any one item. Although the Hippocrates bust was certainly heavy enough—if it could knock out his father, it could knock out the intruder—he would also have to get right up on the intruder to use it. That didn’t seem wise.

  Then he saw what he was looking for. The fireplace poker. That would work. He would just have to get to the other side of the living room. That was doable, right? In his heightened state of alarm, he wasn’t entirely sure. The other side of the living room seemed to be twice as far away as it normally did. Three times, maybe. And it wasn’t a straight line, either. Even if his father wasn’t in the way, even without the toppled furniture and broken knickknacks that could slice into his bare feet, it wouldn’t have been a straight line.

  Still, those things weren’t going to stop him. He would just have to be careful. Careful and fast. He could do this. At least, that was what he told himself.

  It was what he was still telling himself when the thump-thump-thump of footsteps started coming rapidly in his direction. They were approaching from the jointed side of the door, so there was no telling who it was. But odds were good that even if it was his mom, the intruder would be right behind her.

  He pulled the door shut. Since it had only been open an inch to begin with, he was hoping the intruder hadn’t noticed.

  Chickenshit.

  Then, right outside the door, he heard a loud crackle and the buzz of electricity, his mother screaming, and another thump. This one was not that of a foot. This was a whole body going down.

  Connor wasn’t sure what had just happened. He suspected the intruder might have a Taser. Either way, there was no point in showing himself now. Let the intruder take what he wanted and go.

  Connor’s hand had been on the doorknob when he heard his mother hit the floor. It fell slowly to his side. He stayed there for a minute, maybe two. Still and quiet. Ready to launch himself onto the intruder if he opened the attic door. He heard the intruder leave, come back, and leave again.

  After he left the second time, Connor hurried back up the stairs, to the window, to see . . . well, whatever he could. The intruder sounded like he was taking furniture out of the house, which didn’t make any sense. How much furniture could you put in the back of a panel van? Maybe it was the TVs. Connor peered cautiously out the window.

  It was neither.

  The intruder had left the house the second time with Kim in his arms. He dumped her in the back of the van, leaned in to do something. Connor thought he saw the end of a rope.

  No, no, no, no, no.

  The energy in the words put his feet into motion. He ran back down the stairs, bounding straight through the door at the bottom of them. He had to find a phone. He had to call the police. Fortunately, his father always had a phone on him, and it was always charged—

  But his father was gone, too.

  Connor’s panic grew. He could feel it in his blood now, coursing its way through his body. He looked left, then right. For something. Anything. A solution. Help.

  The fireplace poker.

  Connor grabbed it and ran for the front door. He would stab the intruder straight through if he had to. This man wasn’t leaving with his parents.

  He hadn’t quite made it to the door when the intruder stepped back inside for the third time. The man was slim, six feet tall, wearing black jeans, a black turtleneck, a ski mask, and leather driving gloves.

  Connor froze. This man hadn’t come for just his parents. He had come for all three of them. Why?

  The intruder pulled a Taser out of his pocket, aimed it in Connor’s direction. He fired it up for just a second, and Connor jumped back a step, dropped the fireplace poker. Then, perhaps sensing Connor would stay where he was, the intruder leaned over and picked something up. A cellphone. Was it the one that belonged to Connor’s dad? Had it fallen out of his pocket when the intruder was carrying him out to the car? It had to be. But why? Why did the intruder want his father’s cellphone? Why had he abducted Connor’s parents? What the hell was going on?

  The intruder put a finger to his lips and made a shushing sound. Then he backed out of the door slowly and closed it behind him. The message was clear: Don’t scream. Don’t follow me.

  Connor did neither. He stayed where he was until the van’s engine turned over and the sound of it faded away.

  He ran to the door, just to make sure the intruder was gone, then back upstairs to get his own cellphone. He plugged it in, waited for it to charge. He hated himself for not having the guts to run the fireplace poker straight through that son of a bitch.

  The little white apple appeared on the center of the iPhone. “Come on,” Connor mumbled, willing the phone to launch faster.

  Seconds later, he was on the line with 911.

  CHAPTER 3

  The house was overrun with police. CSI and the like. They seemed to be everywhere, examining everything. Connor had seated himself on the bottom stair that led to the attic, mostly so he could be out of their way. Hovering over him was a detective who had introduced herself as Olivia Forbes. She was a squat woman in a black suit. Her hair was parted down the middle and tucked behind her ears. Every so often, several strands would work their way free, and she would push them back into place without stopping her flow of questions or, it seemed to Connor, even realizing she was doing it.

  �
�So the intruder,” she said, reading from her notes, “was dressed all in black. Ski mask, gloves. The whole deal.”

  “His gloves were brown.”

  She looked over the top of her glasses, thick spectacles that made Connor wonder how much she could really see. “Excuse me?”

  “He was dressed all in black except the gloves. They were brown. They kind of looked like driving gloves, you know? With the holes on the knuckles?”

  She wrote something down in her notepad. “How did he get in?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did he crawl through a window?”

  “No. He came through the front door. Parked his car right out on the yard. And . . .” Connor trailed off. He had already told several officers what had happened. Each time had been harder than the last. As things stood, he was barely holding himself together. And, really, why put himself through it again if he didn’t have to? Certainly one of the officers he had told would have repeated the story to Olivia. Why was she asking him the same questions all over again? He shifted gears, decided instead to address the ambiguity of his last answer. “I mean, I don’t know how he got through the door so fast. I was the last one home. I locked the door, I know it. I always lock the door. But it seemed like as soon as he got to the house, he was inside.”

  “You have a key hidden somewhere? Underneath a fake rock? Something like that?”

  Connor shrugged. “Sure. But how would he know where it is?”

  “Can you show me?”

  Connor pushed himself up—it seemed to take everything he had to get to his feet—and led the detective out the front door. He searched the bushes along the right side of the house and closest to the stoop. Then he pulled up an artificial stone, turned it over, and slid a panel open. He dropped a key into his other hand. “Like I said.”

  Olivia had put her notepad back in her coat pocket and was standing with her hands on her hips. She shook her head, just a little, as if at some private thought. “What about the van? You said it was a blue panel van.”