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

“And that’s going to happen to us,” Bruder said.

“Only if you’re a pain in the ass. If you just give up and say you’re sorry, and all the money is here, it will be much better for you. We’ll shoot you and bury you in some field or put you on a burn pile and bury the bones or give the bodies to the pigs. Have you seen that before? Amazing. Maybe the boss chooses that if you put up a fight. Tie you up or cut your joints and toss you in with the pigs. That way the pigs get some free food, so it’s win-win.”

Claud seemed impressed by this and nodded to himself, then looked up at Bruder.

“So give me my phone. I will make one call and we’ll get started.”

Bruder took the phone out of his pocket and looked at the dead screen.

It was a newer iPhone and certainly had tracking capabilities, allowing others to see where the phone was if it was on and had signal.

But he didn’t know if the Romanians used apps that kept track of the last known location, which for this particular phone would be the end of the two-track, right before he turned it off.

Turning it back on to check wasn’t an option.

He said, “What happens if you don’t call?”

Claud frowned. “I think we’ve been over that already.”

“No, I mean what happens if you don’t call, you don’t go back, you don’t tell anybody about us and where we are.”

Now Claud was very confused.

“You’re not making sense to me.”

“Say, hypothetically, we gave you a stack of the cash to get back in your car and drive away, but not back to town. I’m sure you know the people at all the roadblocks and can get through. You take the cash and keep driving. Someplace warm. Maybe LA, maybe Miami. A guy like you would love Key West.”

“A bribe?”

“Call it whatever you want,” Bruder said. “What happens then? Do they pivot the hunt for us toward you, thinking you’re in on the whole thing? Or are you just some peon and it’ll be a week before anybody notices you’re gone?”

Claud looked at the other men to see if they were buying it.

“Are you serious?”

“I’m still collecting options.”

Claud closed his eyes and shook his head, then rubbed his face with both hands before sliding them over his thinning hair.

“I thought you were a little bit smart, but you must be a fucking moron to ask me that.”

He spat on the floor, a white bullet slapping the floor between Bruder’s boots.

“I just told you what will happen if you cause more trouble. What do you think they would do to me if I took a payoff? And it wouldn’t even matter. You’d still be stuck here and I’d have some of the money. What’s the point? What does it get you?”

“More time,” Bruder said.

“Time? What does time matter? Today or a week from now, we will come in here and get you if you make us.”

“We’ll blow the money.”

Claud gave a wry smile.

“That’s right, you boobytrapped the bags.”

“And the woods,” Bruder told him.

Claud kept the smile and swept a hand around the trailer, over the food and water stacked against the wall.

“You will run out of supplies. Your heaters will grow cold. You want to have siege warfare, Americans? We fought the Ottomans. We fought the fucking Mongols!”

Connelly said, “How old are you?”

Claud thumped his chest.

“It’s in the blood, asshole.”

“What about an exchange?” Bruder said. “We hand you over with some of the money, then we’re on our way out of town.”

“Oh, now I’m a hostage? I thought this was a friendly negotiation.”

“We can tie you up if it makes you feel better.”

“There will be no deal,” Claud said. “Get it through your fucking heads. You can stick your bribe up your ass, and trying to use me like a—what is it—a bargaining chip? That will only make things worse for you.”

Bruder thought about it for a moment.

“Then I guess we’re out of options.”

Claud said, “There never were any. I told you from the start.”

“I don’t suppose you want to tell us anything else about your operation. Where the boss is right now. That sort of thing.”

“From negotiation to hostage situation to interrogation. What’s next, torture?”

Bruder shook his head.

“Relax. We aren’t the torturing kind.”

Claud smiled along his nose again.

“I know.”

Bruder took the man’s iPhone out again and dropped it on the floor, then used his boot to smash it. He picked up the mess and twisted it in his gloved hands until he got to the SIM card, then snapped it in two.

Claud looked on with growing concern.

Bruder looked at Rison.

“You have your ears in?”

Rison nodded.

Claud looked at Rison with a slight frown, and before he could turn back to Bruder to see what was happening Bruder shot him in the side of the head.

They all pulled their balaclavas off, then Bruder’s earbud clicked.

From his spot by the road Kershaw said, “Did I just hear something?”

“You did, we’re fine,” Bruder told him. “Our guest just left.”

“You need me back there?”

“Not yet. How loud was it?”

“Barely, but I was listening for it. Or something louder.”

He was referring to the explosives nestled in the bags of money.

“We aren’t there yet,” Bruder said, and let go of the radio button.

Connelly frowned at Claud’s body, slumped over the arm of the camp chair.

“I think I could have worked something out of him.”

Bruder shook his head. “He was enjoying it too much, playing with us. He wasn’t going to give up anything. Except a trap.”

Bruder and Connelly carried Claud’s body outside and around the back of the trailer.

They dropped it on the ground, sending out a brief halo of snowflakes, and Bruder looked at Claud’s car, thinking.

Connelly interrupted him.

“Should we stash him in there? Maybe we can put him in the trunk and leave the car somewhere. Throw them off the trail.”

“What trail? He’s the only one who found us.”

“Well, like you