Reckless (Connor Callahan Book 4)

  RECKLESS

  REAGAN KEETER

  Summithill Press

  Atlanta, Georgia

  Copyright © 2022 by Reagan Keeter

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are use fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  FIRST EDITION

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN 978-1-7343945-8-0

  ISBN 978-1-7343945-7-3 (ebook)

  Table of Contents

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  JOIN THE READERS CLUB TO FIND OUT WHEN THE NEXT BOOK IS AVAILABLE

  AFTERWORD

  EXCERPT: THE REDWOOD CON

  GET AN EXCLUSIVE COPY OF THE LAYOVER

  ALSO BY REAGAN KEETER

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  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 book.

  CHAPTER 1

  Although the serpentine roads of Connor’s life had sent him barreling from one mystery into another, he had not officially been a private investigator for long when he found an unsettling note taped to the front door of his apartment. It read:

  Hickory, Dickory, Dock.

  The mouse ran up the clock.

  The clock struck one.

  The mouse was Done.

  Hickory.

  Dickory.

  Dock.

  His firm, Red Sky Investigators, which he ran with his best friends Dylan and Olin, had received a lot of attention lately thanks to a high-profile case on a UK film set. They had been featured in newspapers from coast to coast. From time to time, they still were, even though their receptionist, Lucy McBeal, did a good job of shooing away the reporters that stopped by the office to interview them.

  That sort of attention inevitably brought out a lot of crazies, and apparently, it had brought one of those crazies directly to Connor’s door. When exactly that had been, he had no idea. He’d left early and gotten home late. Other than calling it “today,” there was no way to pin the time down.

  Heart pounding, he slowly turned the knob to see if the door was unlocked. It was not, but there could still be somebody inside waiting for him.

  He drew his Glock 22 from the concealed shoulder holster he wore under his leather jacket, then quietly inserted his key into the lock. The repeated clicking of the key as it pushed the pins into place seemed like the loudest sound he had ever heard, only to be outdone a second later by the deadbolt grinding against the strike plate as it slid free.

  With the gun held up to his shoulder and his hand back on the knob, he hesitated before stepping inside. Maybe I should call someone, he thought. But who? Certainly not the police. He would feel foolish to have them search the apartment only to find it empty.

  He could call Olin or Dylan, but he shouldn’t need to call them either.

  As he did once in a while, he thought back to the time he had been standing in front of another door—this one at the bottom of the attic stairs in his parents’ house—listening to an intruder chase his mom around the first floor. He had been frozen by fear then. At moments like this, the shame of that memory kept him from being frozen again.

  Connor turned the knob, pushed the door open, and aimed the gun into the darkness on the other side. He could feel the weapon shaking in his hand. He had purchased the Glock after his trip to London because he no longer deemed it wise to do his job unarmed, but he still wasn’t comfortable with the gun.

  He stepped into the living room and scanned the shadows, now holding the Glock out at arm’s length in a two-handed grip. When he determined everything seemed in order, he flipped the light switch and scanned the room again.

  When Connor was in college, his bedroom had always been a mess. His desk was regularly littered with fast food wrappers, dishes, and books. His bed was never made. And good luck finding anything underneath all the clothes that seemed to be everywhere but in his closet.

  These days, he kept his space neat. His books sat upright on the bookshelf near the door. His clothes, although still not folded, went in the hamper or the dresser. Fast food wrappers were disposed of right away.

  All that made it easy to spot the only thing that was out of place. He had not noticed it when the lights were off, but now it stood out like a fly on a wedding cake (to use an expression he had picked up when he was in the UK). But unlike the note on the door, this one item—a mug on the oval walnut coffee table—had not been left by anybody other than him.

  Connor moved deeper into the apartment, clearing each room using the same methodical approach. After he determined he was alone, he ripped the note off the door and sat down on the sofa.

  Who could this possibly be from? he wondered, reading the modified nursery rhyme a second time.

  It was not an answer he was going to be able to discern by studying the author’s penmanship. So he placed the note on the coffee table next to the mug and vowed to begin his investigation into this new mystery tomorrow morning.

  He would not be a victim again.

  To which—it was also obvious that whoever left the note might come back. Although it did not appear the note’s author had entered the apartment before, there was no telling what someone like that might do next time. If the note’s author was as good a locksmith as Dylan, the deadbolt alone would not be enough to keep the person out.

  Connor crossed to the door and slid the chain into place. Looking at the chain dangling between the door and the frame, he realized he would need more. A lock like that could easily be defeated by a good kick or a pair of bolt cutters, so he followed that security mea
sure with one he had implemented in the UK—he grabbed a chair from the dining room and wedged it up under the doorknob. This was also elementary but would not be nearly as easy to defeat as the chain would.

  Even if somebody could get past it, they would make an awful lot of noise in the process.

  Then Connor checked all the windows to make sure they were locked. His apartment was on the third floor and, unlike the buildings he’d seen in New York, most of the ones here did not have fire escapes. He had little worry about the note’s author finding his way in through a window. Still, one could never be too careful.

  Once he’d decided he had fortified the apartment the best he could, he put his gun on the bedside table and turned on the TV. When he was stressed like this, the dialogue from one show or another would sometimes drown out his thoughts and help him sleep. A local news broadcast appeared on the screen. Connor decided that would work as well as anything else and let it run.

  Nonetheless, sleep did not come easily. Connor tossed and turned. He fought the urge to get out of bed, to start his day as the walking zombie he knew he would be if he did not get even a moment’s rest. Because this note was not just a past mystery to be solved. Whoever was behind it had a plan. And Connor needed to be as sharp as he could if he wanted any chance of figuring out what that plan was before the author brought it to some horrific conclusion.

  CHAPTER 2

  It was nearly dawn before Connor fell asleep, and by the time he did, Lucy McBeal was already racing around her home, trying to get her son ready for school. At five years old, Jerry could be a handful. Especially on days like today when he had decided he really wanted to go to school.

  Jerry was no more or less studious than most kids his age. He prized recess over math and lunch over science, but today his class was taking a field trip to the Georgia Aquarium. That—as far as Jerry was concerned—was the sort of thing that made school worthwhile.

  It took Lucy almost fifteen minutes to get him to finish his bowl of Cheerios. He would not stop talking about all the animals he was going to see, even when his mouth was full of food. He was most excited about the shark tank, but the dolphin show and the penguin exhibit both seemed to come in at a close second.

  “And then—”

  “Come on, honey, one more bite.”

  “And then—”

  “Jerry, seriously.”

  Jerry shoved a huge spoonful of cereal into his mouth. “And then . . .” This time, the words were almost incomprehensible as he simultaneously chewed. Lucy could only understand them because she had heard him say the same two words seconds earlier. Those that followed might as well have been in a foreign language.

  Lucy looked at the clock on her phone for the umpteenth time. When her son finished chewing, she clapped her hands. “Put on your shoes. Let’s go.”

  Today was going to be a big day. She needed to get him to Bower Elementary and get on with things.

  As Jerry ran into the foyer, Lucy’s own mom entered the kitchen from the hall. Gretchen McBeal was in her mid-sixties. Her hair, once blond and now gray, was trimmed to her shoulders. The lines on her face suggested she was someone who had both laughed often and cried too much. Although that might just have been the way she looked, she had lost her husband to a heart attack six months before moving in with Lucy and Jerry. And that, Lucy figured, meant the latter was almost certainly true, regardless of whether the lines on her face were related.

  Today, like most days, Gretchen was dressed in bright colors. Specifically, she was wearing a yellow button-down shirt and a pair of blue ankle-length pants. She was also wearing her wedding ring, and, unlike Lucy, that was something she did every day.

  Lucy had stopped wearing hers two months after Gretchen had moved in. She and her husband, Antonio, had separated instead of getting divorced. But, short of a miracle, that was as close as they would ever get to reconciliation.

  Their relationship had been strained for years before Jerry was born because of the financial realities that defined their lives—student loan debt, car payments, credit card debt, and so on. Even with two incomes, they couldn’t always keep up with all of it.

  When that happened, Lucy, who, in those days, had earned her living as a maid at Motel 6, would pick up extra shifts to make up the difference. Or her husband, who was always bouncing from one sales job to another, would log on to Door Dash and start making deliveries.

  But add to that the additional stress of a mortgage and a child, and he was no longer able to cope.

  Lucy couldn’t say for certain whether she or Gretchen had suggested they live together. Since both of their lives changed within a matter of months, they had been talking a lot, and it was no longer possible to sort out who said what. As far as she could recall, it just sort of happened.

  Regardless, it meant Jerry was the only man in their lives. For the time being, he was also the only one they wanted.

  Lucy got up from the kitchen table and carried her son’s bowl to the sink while Gretchen filled her mug with the last of the coffee in the pot.

  “You look frazzled,” Gretchen said. “If you’d like, I can take Jerry to school this morning.”

  Lucy knew her mom did not mean for the comment to come across as critical, even though that was how it sounded. The truth was, she probably did look frazzled. She’d forgotten to charge her phone last night, which meant that instead of the gentle melody that usually woke her up at 5 a.m., she was awakened an hour later by her son repeatedly poking her shoulder and calling her name.

  There had been no time for her usual morning routine. As it was, she considered herself lucky to have eked out a few minutes to apply makeup and put together an outfit she deemed acceptable for the office.

  Now that she thought about it, to say she looked frazzled was probably an understatement.

  “No,” she said. “I’ll see him off.” Her blazer was folded over the back of one of the unused chairs. She grabbed it and put it on. “Don’t you have your exercise class this morning?”

  “I can skip it.”

  Jerry charged back into the kitchen with one shoe on, albeit untied. “Come on, Mom!” he urged her, then ran back to the foyer.

  Lucy smiled at Gretchen. “It’s fine.” She kissed her mom on the cheek. “I’ll see you tonight.”

  After Lucy dropped her son off at school, she made her way across town to the building that housed Red Sky Investigators and parked in the garage underneath. Despite the morning’s chaos, she was pleased to see she was not late. Lucy liked to get to the office before anyone else and did not want to make today the day she failed to do so.

  She took the elevator to the third floor, unlocked the door, and stepped inside.

  Lucy had learned about Red Sky Investigators the way most people did—through the various articles and TV coverage on actor Chris Miller’s death.

  As story after story hit the newsfeed on her phone, she began to realize Connor and his team were the kind of people she wanted to work for. They would do whatever was necessary to solve a case, she had decided. She liked that. So she’d sought them out.

  She would have taken any job they offered her. But when she stepped into the lobby and saw half a dozen people sitting on plastic chairs and a receptionist desk that was, by all indications, unused, she had known exactly what position she needed to apply for.

  Actually, she thought, I could do better than merely apply. Red Sky Investigators was staffed by three bold individuals. Likely, they would respond well to someone who was just as bold.

  Without waiting to speak to Connor, Olin, or Dylan, she took a seat at the desk and fished around in the drawers in hopes of locating something she could write on. A legal pad would have been ideal. However, upon finding the drawers empty, she remembered she had a small notepad and pen in her purse. That would have to do. She looked around at the people in the waiting room. “Who got here first?”

  A man raised his hand.

  “Come up here.”

  She t
ook down his contact information and the basics of his case. Then she sent him back to his chair and repeated the process until she had spoken to everyone in the room. She had barely finished gathering all their information before a door to her left opened.

  A distraught woman stepped out. She was hugging a cardigan sweater around her waist. Mascara had run down her cheeks. Connor followed her to the main door, told her they would be in touch soon, and then, once she was gone, turned around to face the waiting room.

  That was when he finally noticed Lucy sitting at the desk. She could see the surprise on his face. He opened his mouth to speak, but before he could, she stood up, pointed to the man who was next in line. “Mr. Flores is ready when you are.” She ripped the piece of paper containing his information off her notepad and held it out to Connor.

  He stepped forward, eyeing her suspiciously. When he was close enough to whisper without being overheard, he said, “And you are?”

  “If all goes well, I’ll be your new receptionist,” she whispered back and winked. Then she directed his attention to the piece of paper again. “Take it. I’ve gathered the basics from everyone in the room. These are his.”

  Connor reluctantly accepted the piece of paper. He looked down at it. The paper had the man’s name, phone number, and email addresses. It also said he was there because he suspected his wife was having an affair.

  When Connor looked back at Lucy, she made a face indicating that it was not a case she would recommend he take. Nonetheless, Connor showed Mr. Flores into the back room. He gave Lucy one last inscrutable look before he closed the door, but he didn’t tell her to leave, which Lucy took as tacit confirmation she should continue doing the job she had assigned herself for the time being.

  From that point on, Connor spoke to Lucy briefly between visitors, and he did so strictly with the purpose of obtaining the details she had collected. This went on until the waiting room was empty, with only two minor changes to the routine.