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

you’ve got a hot shower and cable TV here. The places we looked at don’t even have electricity.”

Connelly put his hands up.

“Don’t worry about me, man. I’m just riled up because this is all coming together around me, and I’m here with my thumb up my ass, looking for something to do. After a job, I’m all about chilling out.”

Rison put his jacket on a hanger and left it in the closet, then set his gun on the nightstand.

“You want something to do? Marie might need some cheering up.”

Connelly looked back and forth between them, suddenly betrayed.

“What did you guys do?”

Rison said, “Us? Nothing.”

Connelly frowned, then, “The Romanians? They were still there?”

Rison filled him in with Bruder adding details when necessary, since he’d had the best vantage point.

When they were done Connelly said, “So you guys think Marie can be our inside source?”

“She knows things,” Rison said. “Whether they’ll be helpful, or if she’ll be willing to talk about them…she seemed pretty shaken up after that crew left.”

Connelly crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe. He frowned at the floor, working through something.

“What is it?” Bruder said.

“It’s just…I don’t know anymore. Marie’s a nice lady. If she talks to us, and we do our thing, and it somehow comes back on her…”

“It won’t,” Bruder said.

“But if it does.”

The look he gave Bruder was full of dire consequences for Marie.

Bruder shrugged.

“Then she deals with it, or she doesn’t. She can move. She can start a revolt. But she won’t know who we are, or how to find us, so whatever happens stops at her.”

“That’s cold, man.”

Bruder said, “We don’t even know if she’s worth talking to yet and you’re already working out a plan to save her. You going back there tomorrow is a mistake.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Connelly said. “I’m fine. I just don’t like the idea of our actions bringing shit down on other people’s heads.”

“Except the Romanians,” Rison said.

“Well, yeah, fuck those guys.”

Bruder said, “Then be a professional. Be careful. Talk to Marie, or whoever, but don’t tip her off you’re pumping for information. Whoever we talk to, it should never cross their mind we might be connected to what happens five weeks from now.”

Connelly nodded.

“Yeah. Of course. I don’t know why I got off track like that, guys. I’m good to go.”

He rolled around the door frame and went into his room, where the shifting light of the TV was the only illumination.

Bruder looked at Rison, who knew what the look meant.

“He’s good,” Rison said, quiet enough to almost be talking to himself. “He’ll do fine.”

Bruder had his things in unit number three. Connelly’s room had originally been the empty buffer the motel manager included in his pitch, and Rison had let him know to request a room as close to the end as possible to get the adjoining door.

Bruder used his key and hung up his suit and shirt in the bathroom while he took a hot shower, letting the steam work into the fabric. He ended the shower with a minute of cold water and shut it off.

He put the pistol under the bed on the side away from the door. If somebody came in during the night, he’d roll that way and put the bed between them while he reached for the gun.

He stretched out and thought about how likely something like that was.

If the Romanians were into everything in town and everyone was either scared of them or under their so-called protection, the motel manager—Ed was his name, Bruder recalled—would give up the room numbers and extra keys of the two guys from Len’s.

And Marie would fill them in on the rest.

To the Romanians, Bruder and Rison were just two straight civilians killing time on a business trip, staying in rooms one and three at the motel.

And two guys like that, if the thugs from Len’s wanted to have some fun with them—smack them around and take whatever they had—those kind of guys would call the police if they survived the ordeal.

And if talking to the local police didn’t do any good because the cops were just like everybody else, scared or paid off, those kind of guys would call the state police.

In short, they wouldn’t be smart enough to keep their mouths shut.

They’d make noise.

So it would be stupid for the Romanians to come in and shake them down for pocket change, or just for a laugh, when they had such a sweet deal going with the farm subsidies.

In Bruder’s experience, most people were mostly stupid when it came to most things.

The Romanians at Len’s hadn’t changed his mind so far.

So he kept to the edge of the bed away from the door and thought about the spots he and Rison had scouted, and Connelly and his misplaced morals, and eventually he fell asleep waiting for the Romanians to do something dumb.

Chapter Seven

Five Weeks Earlier—Friday

When Rison knocked on his door at 8:30 Bruder was already showered and dressed.

“I got coffee and rolls in my room,” Rison said, and Bruder followed him.

He scanned the parking lot and didn’t see any new vehicles or anyone parked along the horseshoe driveway, or stopped on the highway out there past the abandoned miniature golf course.

Connelly’s door and curtains were closed, but he was standing in Rison’s room using the remote to flip through the channels.

Bruder asked him, “Did you have any coffee yet?”

“No, but I’m dying for some.”

“Wait. Go down to the motel office and ask them where you can get breakfast. Then go back to your room and come in here for the coffee. Or go to wherever they suggest.”

Connelly frowned at him, then got it.

“Yeah, okay.”

He tossed the remote onto the bed and went through the adjoining door. A few seconds later Bruder heard the door to unit two open and close, and Connelly went down to the office to provide more proof he was here on his own, just some guy with a guitar drifting around.

Bruder took one