“Hey! What—” the receptionist shouted, but his voice was swallowed up by the wind as Chris passed through that same door.
Rick was twenty feet from the taxi when Chris catapulted himself into the air and landed on top of the thief. “Where is it?” he shouted.
Liam Parker
Liam squirmed, confused and trying to escape as the two men fought to contain him. His whole left side was screaming out in pain after colliding with the cement. He recognized one of the men as Chris Bell. Questions sped through his mind too fast to ask. All he could do was try to push the hands away.
Liam got to his belly, then his knees. Somehow, by pushing and shoving, slipping this way then that, he managed enough wiggle room to slide out of his jacket and get free, then ran to the cab.
He was almost there when a shot rang out, muting the world around him and leaving his ears ringing. He reflexively ducked, curling inward to make himself smaller, but kept running. The taxi was right there.
Was.
The driver slammed on the gas and sped into traffic, seemingly without looking.
Liam slowed to a stop, watching in horror as his only means of escape drove off. Behind him, someone said, “What the hell are you doing?”
Then someone else said, “Do you want it back or not? Turn around!”
Liam reluctantly obeyed. He saw Chris going through the pockets of the army jacket. The second man, arms extended, had both hands wrapped around the handle of a gun and the barrel aimed at Liam.
Anita’s gun.
Chris threw the jacket on the ground. “Where is it?” he shouted.
“What?”
“You know damn well what.”
Liam didn’t think it would do him much good to say he didn’t. These men believed he was Rick and at least one of them was willing to shoot him. But standing here like this, saying nothing, wasn’t going to do him any good, either. And neither option would get him any closer to saving Alice. Only one thing would do that.
Liam bolted toward the street, betting that the man with the gun wouldn’t shoot into traffic and hoping his aim wasn’t very good if he did. It was crazy, but what choice did he have?
The gamble paid off. He glanced over his shoulder to see the men pursuing him, but at least nobody was shooting. Liam weaved through the traffic, thinking it might help put some distance between them. Perhaps it did, though not much. Chris and his friend were quick to find their own path between the cars.
Liam was burning time. Every second he spent running from Chris might be the second he needed to save his daughter. He had to lose these men fast. He thought about ducking into an alley, but decided that would probably be the worst choice he could make. In an alley, he would be isolated, just like he had been in the alley behind Collectables and Collections. If the man with Anita’s gun was serious about shooting him, he’d have no qualms pulling the trigger there. Liam needed a crowd. Someplace like—he looked as far down the street as he could see—that. Mariano’s.
Mariano’s was an upscale supermarket chain, and Liam knew it well. He carried the Mariano’s discount card and shopped at locations around the city. This one he had only been to once. He had forgotten it was here.
The supermarket spanned two floors and had an underground parking garage. On the first floor was a variety of food stations that sold made-to-order pasta, burgers, pizza, salad, and sandwiches. You could get a gelato from a woman in a paper hat, a coffee from a barista, and a drink from a bartender. Two dozen tables were cramped together in rows near the front of the store. All of them were occupied.
Liam made it inside and went for the escalator. He hoped, with the crowd, the small lead he had would be enough for his pursuers to lose sight of him. It wasn’t.
Chris and his friend came through the door, scanning faces. Chris pointed straight at Liam and they started moving again.
Liam couldn’t see the gun, but he was sure the men still had it. He pushed past the shoppers in front of him, quickly scaling the escalator. He didn’t have to look to know Chris and his friend were doing the same.
The second floor looked more-or-less like an ordinary grocery store, with aisles of food and cashiers near the elevators. The escalator ended beside rows of shopping carts and directly in front of the fruits and vegetables.
Liam ran down the closest aisle looking for cover, past shelves stacked high with pet food. In the middle of the store, the aisle ended and another began, creating an additional route for shoppers to navigate the space and cutting down on unnecessary traffic in the aisles.
At that intersection, Liam turned the corner and pressed his body as flat as he could against a Cheerios display without knocking the boxes over. On the end cap in front of him hung all kinds of gift cards. He held his breath, looked around for something within arm’s reach that would work as a mirror, but saw nothing.
He pulled his TracFone out of his pocket, confirmed it had a front-facing camera, and fiddled with the phone until he saw an image of himself on the screen. He held the phone horizontally and moved his hand barely an inch at a time. When the camera cleared the end cap, he could see the entire aisle behind him.
Just in time too, since a second later Chris and his friend barreled past it. They turned their heads, doing a quick examination of the aisle as they moved to the next one.
Liam doubled back the way he’d come, using the camera again at the end of the aisle to peek around the corner. A woman with a small child and an overflowing hand basket gave him a funny look. He smiled, trying to appear relaxed. “It’s not what you think,” he said. Of course, he had no idea what she thought, couldn’t even imagine, and Liam’s assurances clearly didn’t assuage her concern. She pulled her daughter close and moved around him.
Liam put his eyes back on his phone. Last time he’d looked at the screen, he could still see Chris and his friend making their way, aisle by aisle, to the far end of the store. Now, they seemed to be gone.
This was his chance. He had to get back downstairs and outside. It would take Chris and his friend several minutes to figure out they’d been duped. Liam ran for the escalator, and he was almost there when out of the corner of his eye he saw Chris’s friend coming at him full speed.
The escalator was more crowded going down than it had been going up. He pushed his way through the shoppers and glanced back when he got to the bottom. Chris was nowhere to be seen, but his friend was closing the distance between them fast.
If Liam went out onto the street, he’d be right back where he started. He needed a place to hide. It had to be somewhere that would lead the men to think he’d left the store even though he hadn’t. The stockroom? Maybe. He could fold himself up in a cardboard box. They’d search the area and determine he’d gone out through the loading dock.
But there were problems with that plan. The biggest was that he didn’t see a door to the stockroom that wasn’t behind a manned food counter. What he saw, instead, was an empty elevator, arrow pointing down, doors starting to close.
Liam made a break for it. As he slid between the doors, they bounced back. With Chris’s friend nearing the bottom of the escalator, Liam furiously pressed the close button.
Finally, the doors obeyed. Chris’s friend was only seconds from reaching Liam when they shut.
When the doors opened again, Liam was inside the parking garage. Most spaces were full, but there were no shoppers within sight. There was a stairwell that no doubt led to the street and a ramp at the end of the lot that did the same.
Liam had to think fast. He desperately wanted to get back to the street, hail a cab, save his daughter. But the stairs weren’t an option. They might connect to the store, as well; Chris’s friend could be coming down them right at that very moment. And he might not make it to the end of the lot without being seen.
His best move would be to hide in the dumpster.
Stick with the plan, he told himself. But the street was right there. There were taxis going up and down this road all the time. It wa
s stupid and irresistible and he ran.
I can do this.
He repeated the four words over and over in his head, pushing himself faster.
I can do this. I can do this. I can do this.
He was almost at the bottom of the ramp, hadn’t heard any doors open. There’d been no ding of the elevator. He was going to make it.
Then he heard more than felt a thump on the back of his head. It was like a low thud that echoed around his skull before pain blossomed along the same paths, following it like thunder follows lightning.
Liam felt the world slip away. The shadows of the parking lot were swallowed up by a nothingness that was black and all-consuming.
Liam Parker
Unconsciousness gave way to a dull ache. It rose slowly through the darkness, began to pulse, then throb. Liam groaned and put a hand to his head. He tried to remember what had happened and where he was, but all that would come back to him was running. Up a ramp. To the street . . . to save his daughter.
Alice.
His eyes shot open as the phone call at the airport and the chase that followed flooded back. The world was as dark as it had been when they were closed. Where was he?
Liam was rolled up in the fetal position shivering when he awoke. Wherever he was, it was cold. He tried to get up, banged his feet against something after they’d moved only a few inches. Then, as he lifted himself off the ground, he banged his head.
With growing panic, he reached out and touched the wall in front of him. It felt like fiberglass. He walked his hands up it, along the ceiling, and down the other side, mapping the space he was in. It was barely big enough for him to sit up in. And there was something else—it seemed to be moving. Rocking. Or perhaps that was only the pounding headache playing tricks on his equilibrium.
Wherever he was, he had to get out of here. He had to save Alice. She was out there and in danger and, dammit, he was the only one who could help her.
Then Liam saw a sliver of gray light, something like the outline of a door only much smaller. He reached out, found a handle. Relief washed over him as his fingers wrapped around the steel.
But the handle wouldn’t turn.
He pressed down harder, leaning into it, hoping he could break the lock. He couldn’t. His strength gave out. His muscles told him the effort was useless. He screamed, pounded the door, kicked the walls.
When that didn’t work, Liam felt his pockets for his phone—he could call Anita, or, better, the concierge in his building—but it wasn’t there. His pockets were empty. No phone, no keys, no wallet. He searched the ground around him by touch, hoping it all had slipped out of his pocket. He found nothing. Chris and his friend must have taken everything after he was knocked unconscious.
Finally forced to admit there was no getting out of here and no sending Alice help, he gave up. What would it matter at this point, anyway? Liam didn’t know how long he’d been out, but it had been long enough for somebody to move him here. No matter where here was, a quick calculation put that at thirty minutes, minimum. Plenty of time for Rick to kill Alice and get away, if that was what he had planned.
Liam collapsed against the fiberglass wall behind him, pulled his knees to his chest, and cried. He stayed like that for an eternity, remembering Alice as a baby, a child, a teenager. He imagined what her life would have been like as an adult. He pictured her graduating from high school and then college. In his mind, he was there, in the front row, beaming as Alice walked across the stage to accept her diploma. Then she was even older, with a child and family of her own, working a job she loved, maybe following in Liam’s footsteps, becoming her own boss, and still—always and forever—too little in his eyes to be doing any of it.
Liam pounded his shivering fist against his forehead, which made the pain worse. He had to get these thoughts out of his head. It felt selfish—taking his mind off his daughter to think about himself—but he didn’t know Alice was dead, did he? And what good would it do him thinking that way in here?
Here. Again, he was forced to use that mysterious pronoun.
Where was he?
The rocking was not a trick on his equilibrium. Liam was sure of that now. He was moving. Not the way he would be if he was in a car or a truck, though. This was something else. This was . . . a boat.
Why was he on a boat? What did Chris and his friend have planned?
Sooner or later, he was going to find out. They were going to come get him. Then what? When Chris and his friend had confronted Liam at the hotel, they’d demanded he hand over “it.” But they weren’t asking Liam for “it.” They were asking Rick. What would they do when Liam couldn’t give it to them? Kill him? Dump his body overboard?
Liam assumed it was still night. He imagined something not much bigger than a sailboat out on Lake Michigan, alone in the dark, and was forced to admit that, yes, maybe they would.
Was this the reason Rick had given Liam a fake ID with his name on it?
It could be.
Think it through.
What did he know?
Rick had sought him out after Liam had been charged with Elise’s murder. He had put Liam up in a hotel and given him a fraudulent plane ticket. Rick must have known the plane ticket would lead to Liam’s arrest if he tried to use it, although perhaps he never thought Liam would get to the airport to find out. Maybe he had only given it to Liam to keep him in line, thinking that, ticket in hand, Liam had no reason to risk leaving the hotel until late tonight. And maybe, if all that was true, Chris hadn’t shown up at the hotel when he did by chance.
Liam could feel pieces falling into place.
Rick had put Liam in a hotel to make sure his apartment was empty and to give him a place to hide. He wanted Liam out of jail for a little while so that when he transferred the money out of Liam’s accounts from Liam’s computer and in Liam’s apartment, it would look to the police like Liam had done it.
But Liam wasn’t the only one Rick had robbed, was he? He had also robbed Chris. And whatever Rick had taken was worth enough to Chris to kill for.
Had Chris been the one to break into Rick’s apartment? Had he gone looking for what Rick had stolen?
If so, perhaps that was what tied this all together.
Clearly, Chris didn’t know what Rick looked like. Thus, the fake ID and social media accounts in Rick’s name. Rick wanted Chris to believe Liam was the man he was looking for and probably figured the best way to do that was with a picture on Facebook. (Rick couldn’t have expected Liam to go to Chris’s office. But, in retrospect, that had only helped Rick’s cause. It gave Chris a chance to see Liam up close and match his face to the name Liam had given to security.)
Then what? After Rick had robbed Liam, had he tipped off Chris to Liam’s location? Maybe he was hoping Chris would kill him. If he did, Rick would have gotten away scot-free.
As long as Rick killed Alice too.
Liam could feel his heartrate picking up. He was starting to panic again. He closed his eyes, took several deep breaths, urging himself to calm down. That theory was close, but it wasn’t right. It depended too much on what Chris would do when he found Liam, and he doubted that was something Rick could control.
Then there was a clank of metal and the door opened.
Felix Winkler
“St. Mathew’s Passion” clocked in at almost three hours. Felix did not plan on moving from the sofa until he had heard the whole thing. As the music swirled around him, he waved his hands in the air, conducting an imaginary orchestra with an imaginary baton. He knew the Bach piece so well that, even though he did not speak German, he was able to mirror the opera singers by approximating the words.
Felix had sometimes wondered if he should look up the translation, ultimately deciding against it. His lack of understanding did not diminish his appreciation for the music. If anything, it enhanced it. He felt, by not understanding, he was able to listen with his heart instead of his mind.
The orchestra crescendoed and fell back. The opera sin
gers dropped out and returned.
As Felix’s whole being responded to the raw emotion infused into the music, his mind drifted. Dark waters soothed the stress of the day. Tomorrow, he would oversee the repairs to the first-floor restroom. Tomorrow, he would call Northwestern to find out if Roland Burris was still in ICU. Tomorrow, he would sort through resumes to find a replacement for the nurse who quit. But for the next hour and forty-eight minutes, he would think about only the music.
Normally, he would think about only the music.
Tonight, thoughts of Richard’s fake ID kept rising above the dark waters that buried everything else. When Felix had shown it to Ms. Hawthorne, she’d noticed right away the name was wrong, and he had begun to hope that she would indeed be able to provide some information about it. But when she asked why he was showing her an ID with her brother’s picture on it, that hope vanished. Even if there might have been an innocent explanation, she wasn’t going to be able to tell him what it was during one of her episodes.
And then things got worse. Voice shaking, Ms. Hawthorne had accused Felix of playing a trick on her. She shouted at him to go, even as he tried to apologize and back away. She said it was mean to play a trick on a woman in her condition and that he should just leave, leave with his mean tricks and get out of there.
Felix put the ID in his briefcase and, when he got home, leaned his briefcase against the small table next to the door where he left his keys. He would call the police in the morning, he’d thought, mentally adding it to tomorrow’s growing to do list. It was the decision he should have made from the beginning.
Felix tried not to get emotional about what this would mean for Ms. Hawthorne. While his predecessor wouldn’t have cared, he couldn’t help it. Try as he might to stay in the moment, he felt the music losing its spell over him. Reluctantly, he opened his eyes. The only light in the apartment came from a streetlamp placed directly outside his window. It filtered through and around the curtains, making him squint, and destroying the last of the magic the music held. All the stress of the day returned and was compounded by all he knew he had to do tomorrow.
A Reagan Keeter Box Set: Three page-turning thrillers that will leave you wondering who you can trust Page 41
