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

in the grass. You come by in a couple hours and grab it.”

Bruder didn’t like the compromise, but he understood it.

The alternatives were to destroy the phone and piss off the farmer and possibly push him into making the call from somewhere else or kill him and leave even more of a trail.

They already had to get rid of the Honda.

Another truck and body would just add to the hassle.

The farmer said, “Which ditch?”

“Right outside my window,” Connelly said. “So, let’s see…the southwest ditch at the intersection.”

The farmer thought about it and Bruder’s finger crept toward the trigger.

It didn’t matter how much of a hassle another body would be, they were taking too much time sitting out here in the open.

If the Romanians came now, a hassle would be welcome.

Then the farmer said, “Okay, that seems fair.”

After a moment Connelly’s arm came out of the passenger window with the phone in his hand. He gave a thumbs-up.

Bruder stepped back to the Honda and got in.

Rison said, “You got a CB radio in there or anything?”

“No sir, you can tell by my antennas. I just got the radio, the music one. That’s it.”

“Okay. Hey, thanks for the heads-up about what’s happening in town.”

“You’re very welcome. Like I said, I got no respect for that group. Nobody knows what got them all stirred up, but we all know it’s collection day, so I’m guessing it has something to do with that.”

Nobody in the truck said anything.

“Okay then,” the farmer said with a nervous laugh. “Best of luck to you.”

He pulled forward and glanced over at Bruder in the Honda. They locked eyes, then the farmer immediately looked away and stared straight ahead, as if to let Bruder know he hadn’t seen him and was too busy minding his own business to do anything else.

The white truck pulled forward and Bruder followed it, watching the farmer in his mirrors.

After another quarter mile Bruder hit the radio.

“Stop.”

They pulled onto the shoulder and Bruder got out and went to talk to them without the radio.

“We can’t do that again. Too risky being separated like that. We need to dump this car.”

“Just leave it here,” Connelly said. “We’re far enough from the trailer, aren’t we?”

“Maybe,” Bruder said, looking around.

Kershaw said, “What if we torch it? Get a nice plume of smoke going, bring the Romanians to it.”

Bruder shook his head.

“If they act fast, we’ll get trapped between them and the fire. Run right into them.”

He pointed east along the road, to a field full of something tan on the north side.

“Is that corn?”

Kershaw leaned out the window and used the optics on his AR to check.

“Looks like it. Feed corn that hasn’t been harvested.”

“Why not?”

Nobody said anything, then Rison said, “I bet that farmer knows.”

Bruder said, “Let’s go.”

He took the lead and pushed the Honda as fast as it would go for the half mile to the field, then coasted while he scanned the side of the road. There was a drainage ditch running parallel to the asphalt, shallow but deep enough to bottom-out the Honda.

Then he saw it.

An access point from the road to the field, just a narrow strip of dirt and gravel and scrubby grass with a culvert running underneath it to keep water flowing in the ditch.

He took the Honda across, then turned left and drove parallel to the road back the way they’d come, bumping over tractor tread ruts and clumps of dirt toward the corner of the field.

Out his passenger window the corn was higher than the car’s roof. Dry, tan leaves as big as his arm occasionally slapped the windshield and rustled along the side.

Rison kept pace on the road in reverse, a small, amused smile on his face from watching Bruder jounce around in the car.

When he got to the corner of the field Bruder turned right, willing the car to keep going when the grass got taller. No one had bothered to mow here, which was good for hiding but bad for foreign cars with no ground clearance.

The car was working hard though, and Bruder kept it going until he knew he was pushing his luck. Then he cranked the wheel hard to the right and pressed the accelerator, bulling his way into the feed corn.

Stalks scraped along the doors and undercarriage and cobs thumped against the hood, like he was driving through an automatic carwash made of corn, and after ten seconds Rison came through the radio.

“You’re good, we can’t see a thing.”

Bruder stopped and killed the engine, waiting to see if anything pressed against the exhaust under the car was going to catch fire right away.

He didn’t smell any smoke or hear anything crackling, so he grabbed the AR and followed his path of destruction to the edge of the field and looked at the road, then at the hole he’d made.

The angle wasn’t great.

Anyone coming eastbound would be able to see the path into the corn, but maybe it was a common thing. Kids messing around, farmers checking on…whatever they checked on.

It didn’t matter now, because the car was staying there.

Bruder walked to the road and got into the back seat of the truck with Kershaw.

They had three ARs in the back—Rison’s along with Bruder’s and Kershaw’s—Connelly had his in his lap again now that the farmer was gone, and Rison had a Glock 19 stuck in the inside handle of the door.

Bruder reached into the front seat and pulled the three remotes for the remaining explosives out of the middle console.

“The charges are armed?”

Connelly nodded.

“Charges are armed, remotes are off. Let’s keep it that way, huh?”

Bruder handed him one of the remotes, gave the second to Kershaw, and tucked the last one into his coat pocket.

Rison got the truck rolling and said, “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a crew using the money as a hostage. But hell, if we get in a standoff with these guys, it might be the only play we got.”

“Unless they want to