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

slow down and heard the engine noise drop.

When the truck rocked back and settled, he could hear the other truck getting closer.

A man yelled, “Turn the truck off! Show me the keys!”

Romanians?

Rison said, “What? Why?”

“Do it, motherfucker!”

Romanians.

Rison pulled the keys out and showed them.

The man said, “Throw them on the ground!”

“What’s going on, man?”

“Throw them out or we shoot you!”

Rison tossed them out the window.

Connelly kept a narration going, his voice low and tight. To Bruder it sounded like he was trying not to move his lips.

“Two guys, I think. Truck angled in front of us, windshield glare. Driver has pistol on us.”

The man in the truck said, “Keep your hands up! Show me hands!”

Rison lifted his hands and spread the fingers out.

The man in the truck said, “Where are the other two?”

Rison said, “Huh?”

“There are four of you!”

“What?”

The man in the truck said, “Where are the rest of you? In the back?”

“Buddy, take a minute and tell me what’s going on, please. Are you guys cops, or what?”

Bruder heard the man talking but couldn’t make out any words.

Connelly said, “Passenger door open. He’s getting out. Driver still in, gun on Rison. Shit. Shit. shit.”

Bruder waited, then whispered, “What?”

“I know the passenger. Grigore. The one from Len’s, busted his nose. Coming this way, has a shotgun on me.”

Bruder stared through the slit, waiting for something to enter the blue sky outside Rison’s window.

He heard footsteps outside his door, someone coming closer along the shoulder.

Then, closer than he’d expected a man barked a laugh.

“Hey, it’s the singer boy! The Hungarian!”

The driver asked something in Romanian and Grigore answered him, then said, “Hey boy, where is your girlfriend? You going to her place? Was it her idea to steal our money?”

Connelly stayed quiet.

Grigore yelled to the truck in Romanian.

Rison said, “Who are you calling?”

Letting Bruder and Kershaw know the man had his phone out.

Grigore said, “Shut your mouth. Singer boy, I’m going to open your door. Then you get out here and keep your hands up and kneel in the grass. If you do anything other than that, I’ll blow your guts out and let you die slow. Got it?”

“Got it,” Connelly said.

Bruder heard boots scraping on asphalt.

“Ah, is that our money in the back—”

Kershaw’s shot was deafening inside the truck, even with the suppressor.

Bruder yanked the poncho back and sat up in the same motion, pushing the AR into the front seat and searching for his target.

The man was behind the wheel of the pickup, which sat a little higher than the DOT truck because of its off-road package.

His pickup idled at an angle across the road with the front bumper near Rison’s door and the bed pointed away at the two o’clock position.

The driver had a pistol in his right hand, pointed at Rison, and a phone in his left.

He was using his thumb to swipe the screen.

His mouth was open, and his eyes were wide from the sudden gunshot, and Bruder fired just above the steering wheel, through the windshield. The bullet went into the man’s open mouth and scattered the back of his head inside the truck.

Rison scrambled out the driver’s door and kept his Glock aimed at the pickup until he got close enough to peek inside, then he stuck the gun in his belt and clamped both hands over his ears.

“Fuck! I’m deaf!”

Bruder opened his door and looked down at Grigore. His eyes were open and dull. He had a hole next to his nose and his head was misshapen.

Bruder walked around the front of the truck and met Kershaw next to the pickup.

After a glance inside he opened the door and found the phone on the seat near the driver’s left leg.

The screen showed a list of recent calls, which the driver had been scrolling through when Bruder shot him.

“No call,” Bruder said.

He opened the message app and saw the most recent conversation was a group text with eight people, all of them represented by one or two letters.

B

Cl

G

P

R

Like that.

The messages were in a foreign language.

He showed the screen to Kershaw and said, “Romanian?”

Kershaw peered at the phone.

“If it isn’t, we’re in a bigger mess than we thought. Here, let me see.”

He took it and scrolled through the conversation while Bruder looked in the truck for anything useful.

Kershaw said, “Apparently the Romanian word for Chicago is Chicago.”

Bruder stood up, suddenly wary.

“When was this? They talking about the delivery schedule?”

“No, it was…an hour ago. So after we made the grab.”

Now Bruder was concerned.

“What else about Chicago?”

“Hold on.”

He fiddled around until Bruder said, “What are you doing?”

“Copying and pasting into a translator site. It won’t be conversational, but we’ll get the gist. And there are some numbers, which is good. Don’t need to translate those.”

He looked around at the flat fields.

“They get really good service out here.”

Every second they stayed with the truck and phone made Bruder feel tighter, but he let Kershaw work.

Kershaw said, “Okay, something like, ‘Chicago sending package, arrive 5-6.”

“Who wrote that?”

Kershaw went back to the messages.

“R.”

“Razvan,” Bruder said. “A package from Chicago.”

“Arriving between five and six. O’clock, I assume.”

Bruder checked his watch. It was getting close to one in the afternoon.

He pointed at the phone.

“Toss that.”

It would be helpful to keep track of the conversation, but it would also pinpoint the location of whoever held it.

Kershaw tossed it back into the cab and shut the door.

Bruder went back to Grigore’s body.

Connelly had a finger in his left ear and was opening and closing his jaw.

Bruder asked him, “Can you hear?”

“Barely. Scared the shit out of me.”

Bruder raised his voice and addressed everyone.

“Listen up. The Romanians have reinforcements coming from Chicago. Arrival time between five and six, tonight. We need to be gone before then.”

Then he told Connelly, “Get out here and give me a hand. He’s going in the truck bed.”

Connelly got out and they carried Grigore’s body to the pickup.

The bed had no tailgate, just an open end, and they swung the body in and shoved it toward the cab.

Bruder reached in