The Box by Jeremy Brown (ebook reader play store txt) 📕

the road—it might require an urgent return to the trailer under gunfire—so Kershaw went down the two-track in reverse and swept around the final curve without slowing down.

What they found was Connelly standing next to a stocky guy holding his sweatshirt open like he was trying to cool off or flap the sides and fly away like a bat. Connelly had his rifle pointed at the man’s face.

Kershaw stopped the truck and they both got out and walked to the back of the truck, wading through the disappearing exhaust. They had their balaclavas pulled up to hide everything except their eyes.

Bruder said, “Who’s this?”

“I didn’t get his name yet,” Connelly said.

“He’s alone?”

“I didn’t see anybody else in the vehicle.”

“Did he call anybody?”

“Nope.”

Bruder picked the phone up and brushed the snow off. The screen was locked.

He thought about smashing it but didn’t yet know if they’d need any information it had, so he held the power button down until it asked for confirmation to shut down. He did that and put the phone in his jacket pocket.

Connelly asked the man, “What’s your name?”

The man just looked at Bruder and Kershaw like he was bored.

“This isn’t an interrogation,” Bruder said. “It’s a negotiation. There’s no reason not to tell us your name.”

“Then what’s your name? And show me your face.”

“I didn’t say it was an equal negotiation.”

The man shrugged. “Claudiu.”

“What do your friends call you? Claud?”

“No, but you’re not my friends, so that’s fine.”

Bruder walked up to him and pulled the pistol out of his pocket. It was a beat-up Glock 23. Bruder ejected the magazine and put it in another pocket, then pulled the slide back to spit out the cartridge in the breech. He put the Glock in the same pocket and plucked the shiny brass out of the snow and put that in with the gun and magazine.

“Turn around.”

Claud rolled his eyes and turned in a slow circle. Bruder patted him down and didn’t feel anything alarming.

“Alright Claud, get in the truck. I’ll drive your car, so you don’t have to walk all the way back here to get it.”

Claud’s eyes shifted between all three of them.

“Back from where?”

“Just up the track here. Not far.”

“Why?”

“I told you. We’re negotiating.”

“Ah. The terms of your surrender.”

“Something like that,” Bruder said.

Kershaw and Connelly switched places at the road.

Kershaw donned the poncho and kept his own AR-15, and when the truck and Claud’s Honda were past the chain, he hooked it back up and did his best to remove the tracks. Then he found the spot Connelly had pointed out to him and settled in.

Once the vehicles were far enough away the birds started moving around again and talking to each other. Kershaw was a hunter, when he had the time, and he enjoyed being in the woods.

He closed his eyes and listened to the critters and trees and waited for anything louder—like a gunshot or detonating charge or fleet of incoming vehicles—to tell him things had gotten worse.

Bruder dumped the Honda next to the truck where it wouldn’t be in the way. The interior was loud with squeals and thumps along the two-track and it smelled like stale tobacco.

When he got out, he pulled his balaclava down for a moment and spat in the snow to get the taste out of his mouth.

Connelly and Claud got out of the truck and Bruder pointed at the pile of duffel bags sitting in the thin snow and brown grass.

“That’s the money.”

“I recognize it,” Claud said. “Good. I’ll take it from here.”

“Inside that pile are enough explosives to turn all of it into mulch.”

Claud was horrified.

“You wouldn’t do that to money!”

“There’s always more money. When you go back, let your people know if they get too close they might get us, but they won’t get the money.”

Claud seemed ready to cross himself to ward off the blasphemy.

Bruder stepped up into the trailer and stayed in the doorway, blocking everyone still behind him.

The heaters were cooking inside and had replaced the moldy smell with the sharp tang of hot metal and an undercurrent of kerosene.

Bruder looked over at Rison, who was still listening to the police scanner and fiddling with the antennas on the small TV. Apparently the signal kept moving.

“Anything?”

Rison grimaced.

“Nothing. Not yet, anyway.”

Bruder nodded.

“Keep doing what you’re doing. But pull your mask up.”

Rison tugged his balaclava up over his mouth and nose.

“You got a guest with you?”

“Yes.”

“You want me to relocate this stuff?”

Bruder shook his head.

He stepped forward and let Claud enter the trailer with Connelly trailing him.

Bruder said, “We’re just talking right now.”

Claud grinned at him and surveyed the living quarters.

“So this is what it’s like on the inside.”

Bruder said, “You’ve been here before?”

Claud just gave him a patronizing look, which Bruder was already tired of. He pulled the three empty camp chairs over and put them in a small circle in what used to be the kitchen area of the trailer, judging by the severed pipes jutting out of the walls and open drain in the floor.

Claud sat in one of the chairs and put his hands in his sweatshirt pockets.

Bruder and Connelly took the other two.

Rison said, “You want me over there?”

“Not yet,” Bruder said.

Then, to Claud: “Why have you been here before?”

Claud gave a sly grin, his eyes sliding back and forth between Bruder and Connelly.

“If you knew enough to rob the delivery truck, I assume you already know what we do around here.”

“Don’t assume anything,” Bruder said.

Connelly said, “Your English is very good, by the way.”

“So is yours,” Claud said.

He pulled out a bag of loose tobacco and rolling papers.

“I am going to smoke.”

“No,” Bruder said.

Claud shrugged and opened the bag and started working anyway, and Bruder reached over and took them away, then stood up and tossed them down a hole in the floor.

He sat back down.

“So you’ve been here because you and your crew run this territory. You know the land, you know the properties, and you know where to look for a