Thrillers Box Set 1
Dustin Stevens
Contents
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The Subway
Prologue
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Part II
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Part III
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
Part IV
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Part V
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Epilogue
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
The Debt
Prologue
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
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Catastrophic
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
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Sneak Peek
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Dustin’s Books
About the Author
The Subway, Copyright © 2017
The Debt, Copyright © 2016
Dustin Stevens
Cover Art and Design: Paramita Bhattacharjee, www.creativeparamita.com
Warning: All rights reserved. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work, in whole or part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, is illegal and forbidden, without the written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Characters, settings, names, and occurrences are a product of the author’s imagination and bear no resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, places or settings, and/or occurrences. Any incidences of resemblance are purely coincidental.
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As thank you for reading, please enjoy a FREE copy of my first bestseller – and still one of my personal favorites – 21 Hours!
The Subway
Hide nothing, for time, which
sees all and hears all, exposes all.
-Sophocles
It’s not the future you are afraid of.
It’s the fear of the past repeating
itself that haunts you.
-T.M.W.
Prologue
The government will tell you just about anything when they’re trying to convince you to enter Witness Protection.
Like your testimony is absolu
tely vital.
Or that the country will be better off without whoever it is they want you to squeal on walking the streets.
That you and those you care most about will be safe and protected, the program having never lost a single person under their care.
Even more extensive is the list of things they don’t tell you.
The infinite number of things that will never be the same, the sorts of decisions that are made for you in an instant, never to be reneged on.
The inability to ever visit your old home. Eat a meal at your favorite restaurant. Even visit the gravesites of your parents.
For six long years I trod through the program, checking in when I was required to, going through the motions of putting my life back together someplace new.
Trying to avoid being angry about the fact that while the prosecutor got his conviction and skyrocketed to a new position, the program got another victory to add to their tally and another story to sell on the next poor schmuck, all I got was a life I never wanted and damned sure never asked for.
A place with a name I despised and a morning ritual of staring into the mirror at a face I barely even recognized anymore.
An existence that could be shattered by something as simple as a phone call, just thirty seconds needed to deliver a lightning bolt from the clear blue sky, changing everything that had taken more than a half-decade to put into place.
Not until that very moment, standing in the kitchen of my apartment, naked save a pair of boxer shorts and a cross swinging free from my neck, bent forward with my hands pressed into the side of the sink, gasping to catch my breath, did the biggest omission the government made really come into stark relief for me.
No matter how hard they tried, no matter what strictures they put into place, reassurances they tried to give me, nobody could hide forever.
Because forever was a really long ass time.
Part I
Chapter One
“Freddy!” Peg Bannister called, her voice rolling over the calm surface of Lake Edstrom. In the early morning light, a thin mist could just be seen rising above it, dawn no more than a few minutes past.
Within an hour, the summer sun would have burned it all away, another descent into hellish temperatures on tap, but for the time being, everything was at peace.
Precisely the reason she had rustled her black lab from his slumber, no matter how unhappy he had been about it.
“Freeeeeeddy!” she called, extending the name several syllables in length, raising her voice as much as she dared.
As one of just a few year-round residents on the waterfront, she wasn’t concerned with bothering her neighbors. All having been present for more than a decade, she saw them at least twice a month for a planned social and knew that, like her, they would be up early to avoid the oncoming heat.
It was the scads of vacation rentals dotting the shorefront she more feared, the people they drew in from the cities cut from a much different cloth. Ignoring that this was a place where people actually lived and worked, they saw the lake as their own personal resort, expecting it to come with all the usual trappings.
Like observed quiet hours in the morning.
And unfettered access to be loud until the wee hours of the night.
Just weeks into June, the combination of the unwanted visitors and the even less wanted heat had Peg in a sour mood, her mouth twisted up into a scowl as she pushed along the shoreline. Polished river stones made for uneven footing as she went, a hand to her brow, her eyes pinched tight as she surveyed the landscape.
With each passing morning, Freddy had been a bit more vocal about his disdain for the early hour and the forced exercise. Taking off at a dead sprint, tearing away from her without a second glance the moment they were off the back porch, this morning was just his latest attempt at fully displaying that.
An act she would have to be certain to show her equal distaste for later when it came to doling out treats.
“Freddy!” she snapped a final time, one quick and agitated word, the echo of it across the water making her irritation clear.
“Where the hell are you, you damn dog?” she muttered, shaking her head as she lowered her hand from her eyes. Shifting her gaze to the ground beneath her, she picked her way over a pile of charred wood, a few fresh beer cans scattered around it.
One more reminder of the visitors that had descended on her home for another year.
Feeling the distaste she felt for the entire situation rising like bile along the back of her throat, she shifted her attention to the right. Despite being able to see nothing but dense pine, she knew that just one hundred yards away was a two-story cabin, a structure her friend Tom Jansen had built ages before.
Upon his untimely death two winters prior, his children hadn’t been able to sell it off fast enough, the place snapped up by a property management company bent on pawning it off to the highest bidder each weekend.
Which, apparently, included those with no regard for the land or the environment they were now staying on.
With just such a barb on the tip of her tongue, a combination of factors shoving aside any inhibition she had, Peg was cut short by the din of Freddy bawling nearby.
Low and clear, the sound drifted in from down the shore, as plain as if she were standing just a few feet away.
After more than eight years together, there were few things in life she knew as surely as the cadence of Freddy calling out to her.
Just as certainly, it was clear by the pitch and the rapid-fire delivery that something had him stressed.
Gone was any of the previous animosity, whatever bits of vitriol she might have felt. In their stead, Peg forgot about the litterers and the cabins and the summer heat, her sole focus on the few feet in front of her.
Picking her way up and over the uneven shoreline, her breath rose, sweat dotting her forehead. Beside her, a light breeze managed to push a ripple across the top of the water, the muddy brown liquid lapping up just inches from her shoes.
One time after another Freddy sang out to her, an audible beacon pulling her forward, beckoning her along the shore. As she went, scads of possibilities as to what had him so worked up passed through her mind, all of them ending badly, causing the panic she felt to rise precipitously.
For all their various forms, though, not a single one rose anywhere near what she found waiting for her.
Chapter Two
Standing in front of the mirror in the makeshift gym of her basement, there seemed to be little reason for Talula Davis to towel away the droplets of sweat collected on her skin. Situated as individual beads, they began just short of her hairline, covering her forehead, streaking down over her lips and cheeks.
From there, they only grew more pronounced, balanced atop her bare shoulders, following the carved lines of her abdomen in thick rivulets.
No sooner would she wipe them away – these the results of another early workout – than the wicked morning heat would bring them back even heavier.