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

but Razvan refused to call it that and wouldn’t allow anyone else in his crew to utter the word.

He’d grown up on a damn farm in Lehliu Gară and nearly starved to death when their land got flooded because some committee decided to build a dam in a place he’d never heard of, across the border in Bulgaria, so what was the point of busting his ass to come to this country and work his way up in Chicago, then find and leverage this little corner of Iowa, just to live on another farm?

So, no.

It was a compound.

He was starting in on his third piece of sausage when the cellphone rang.

He took his time wiping his hands and face before reaching for it.

His family and close friends called him the Groapă, which meant pit, hollow, and sometimes grave. His metabolism had never recovered from the time back home when he’d almost died, and since then he could eat all day and not feel full or gain a pound.

It was like dumping food into a pit, a groapă.

He checked the screen and saw it was Benj calling.

“Yes.”

“Raz, there is a problem.”

Benj said, “I haven’t seen the truck yet.”

Razvan checked his watch.

The truck should have passed Benj’s spot four minutes ago.

“Did you call Pavel?”

“Yes, no answer.”

“Go look for him. Call me back.”

Razvan ended the call.

Benj was on the side of the highway where Pine ran into the four lanes, waiting for the money truck. When it arrived, he and some of the other vehicles staged further along the route would follow it out of town and keep an eye on things until the crew from Chicago took over the babysitting duties in Dubuque.

But apparently the truck hadn’t arrived yet.

Four minutes…

Pavel and Costel knew to call if there was any trouble or delay, even it was just thumping into a deer and they had to get out to wipe the truck off.

So four minutes was too long.

Razvan wasn’t worried about any of the farmers or other locals when it came to the money.

They knew better than to mess with it, which would mean messing with him and his men.

Not possible.

When he’d first arrived in the town it had taken some work—first the bribes for the right officials, then a few burned barns and houses, a few vanished people, some others left where they could be found—before the locals realized the new reality.

And when they did, the chance of them causing any trouble had dropped to zero.

But the old Italians in Kansas City weren’t too happy about Razvan being in Iowa, and they’d made some quiet threats about going north to do some hunting.

They didn’t know anything about the farming subsidies scam Razvan had going—they thought it was just a group of Romanian thugs picking on some hillbillies—and Razvan knew it was only a matter of time before someone somewhere said the wrong thing, and the Italians would come looking for a cut.

Was that time now?

He shook his head and thumped bony knuckles into his temple, a mild punishment for getting too comfortable.

Five years he’d been pulling this off without a problem, and that success should have made him more wary instead of less.

He should have had Benj follow the truck from the compound rather than sit and watch the intersection for any trouble.

Luca and Claudiu were at the main crossroads—he should have brought them up to Benj’s spot.

But he only had so many men, and the stretch of Pine between the compound’s road and the highway was a ghost town. Any sort of ambush or attack would be visible for at least a mile.

Had Pavel and Costel done something stupid?

No.

Also not possible.

Their families were all from the same village, they were basically brothers.

And Pavel and Costel knew what would happen to their families back home if they stole from Razvan.

He thumped his head again.

The first two years he’d been inside the money truck all the way to Chicago with his men spread in front and behind like a parade, but nothing happened and it was a waste of time and manpower, so now he used the phones and waypoints and sent the rest of the men around town to make sure the locals weren’t too upset about the whole thing.

This sometimes, meant gifts, or extra muscle to help move some bales of this or that, or extra muscle to hold someone’s head underwater until they stopped being upset.

He picked the phone up and started calling them to tell them to get their asses into town.

If this was a false alarm, no problem.

They could just go back to whatever they’d been doing.

But if it wasn’t—if something happened to his money—his killers would go to work.

When Benj called two minutes later Razvan was already in his truck, speeding down the compound road toward the right turn onto Pine, northwest of the railroad tunnel.

Benj yelled, “Pavel and Costel, they’re tied up! The truck is destroyed, the wheels are gone. Well, they’re here, but not on the truck anymore.”

“The money,” Razvan said, bringing Benj around to the only thing that mattered.

“Gone. It’s all gone. I passed a white truck on my way here, the only vehicle on the road. It must have been them.”

“White truck?”

“Yes, full of men.”

Razvan hung up on him and called Luca.

“Raz, what’s going on? Is the truck delayed?”

“It’s been robbed.”

“What!”

“Listen: Have you seen a white truck go through town?”

“A white truck? I don’t…hold on.”

Razvan heard him talking to Claudiu in the background.

“We don’t think so. I mean, maybe, but not one that stood out. Is that who took the money? Are Pavel and Costel okay?”

“I don’t know. Shut the roads down. Check everyone who comes through. If it’s a white truck full of men, show them guns and get them out of the truck.”

“Okay, sure. You’ll tell the police it’s okay?”

“Don’t worry about the police.”

Razvan stopped on the northwest side of the tunnel and slashed his way through the tarp.

It was dark in the tunnel, nearly pitch