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

tortured to death?”

Something caught in her voice and Connelly looked over and saw tears in her eyes.

Outraged, frustrated, terrified tears.

He told her, “You don’t have to worry about Razvan. Or his men.”

“No? These are the people who have the entire town locked down right now. Putting guns in people’s faces, and no one is stopping them. And no one stopped them when they threatened to kill my parents. I don’t have to worry about that?”

“No.”

“Because?”

“Because if they come here, we’ll kill them.”

She blinked.

“We?”

Connelly nodded toward the back corner, where Rison was fired up about something.

“We. And you, with that dinky peashooter, if you feel like getting off your ass.”

She finally smiled, a small flash that lasted less than a heartbeat, but it was there, breaking the tension and maybe, just maybe, putting them back on the same team.

She cuffed at her eyes with the sleeve of her sweater and glanced at the men in the back.

“One of them…I can’t tell which one anymore, maybe the one with glasses…he said five.”

“Five?”

“Yes, when the bigger one was taking about numbers, how many men Razvan has. He said, eight, and the other one said, ‘Well, five.’”

“Yeah?”

“What does that mean?”

“Oh. Huh. It means they started with eight, we think, and now they have five. We think.”

“What happened to the other three?”

He squinted out at the road.

“Remember, way back in the day, when I said you shouldn’t know things for your own safety?”

Nora shook her head.

“Don’t start with that bullshit again. My safety is up to me, and I need to know what’s going on.”

Connelly couldn’t argue with her.

He’d demand the same.

“They’re dead,” he said.

She absorbed that for a moment.

“How? Did you kill them?”

“I can’t say any more than they’re dead.”

“Oh, I get it. Some kind of code?”

He wasn’t a fan of the tone, like he and the others were just playing a jackass game of cops and robbers, but he couldn’t expect her to jump on board with all of it right away.

“That,” he said, “and knowing I deserve the same fate if I run my mouth about the details.”

“Oh,” she said, pulled down a bit by the gravity of the truth.

They both watched the road for a bit, then she said, “They’re talking about what to do about us back there, aren’t they?”

“Yep.”

“I think I’m more concerned about them than Razvan. The big one, anyway. He seems mean.”

Connelly shook his head.

“He’s not mean. Just very serious. I think they invented the term Zero Fucks Given for him. If negative fucks were possible, he’d give negative fucks.”

He was jabbering, making noise because he sensed they were wrapping things up back there in the corner, and made himself stop.

Nora said, “What are they going to do?”

Connelly heard footsteps and turned to see the three of them coming back to the front of the barn.

Bruder and Rison still had the long guns slung across their chests, but nobody had a hand on the grip. Rison’s pistol was tucked away somewhere.

“Let’s find out,” Connelly said, and kept his finger near the trigger.

Bruder noticed the trigger finger and watched Connelly’s eyes twitching between the three of them.

He said, “You—”

And stopped when Nora’s phone started ringing.

She pulled it out and looked at the screen.

“It’s Donna.”

Everyone waited for more information.

“She lives north of here, in the neighborhood southwest of town. You probably drove past her house to get here.”

“Put her on speaker,” Bruder said.

Nora hit the button.

“Donna?”

“Nora, sweetie, are you okay?”

Nora glanced at the four men looming around her.

“Yes, why? What’s happening?”

“They opened up the crossroads, so that’s good, but this whole part of town is still locked down. I just talked to Yvette, you know Yvette, from church?”

“Um, sure.”

“I just talked to her, and the tall one came to her house with another one of them, and they opened her barn and looked in her garage, then her house! Can you believe that? Her house!”

Nora’s face grew tight.

“What are they looking for?”

“I don’t know, hon. Yvette said they had another vehicle parked at the end of her driveway, with another man there, and she saw a gun. They left her place a mess and drove down the road to her neighbors’, the Judsen place.”

Nora said, “So they’re coming this way?”

“Yes, that’s why I’m calling. We’re all making calls, letting folks know. Not that you have anything to worry about, but just so you know and don’t get a nasty shock when they show up. They’re coming to search your property. Just let them do it and they’ll go away.”

“Thank you so much, Donna. I really appreciate it.”

“Of course, sweetie. You be careful. I need to make some more calls, but I’ll check in with you later.”

“Okay, bye.”

She ended the call and looked around.

Bruder said, “We need to get rid of the truck.”

Kershaw stayed in the barn to watch the road.

Everyone else started moving.

Fast, purposeful steps but no rushing.

On the way to the huge metal barns Bruder asked Nora, “How far away are they? If they just hit…who was it?”

“The Judsens,” Connelly said.

“Them.”

Nora said, “Ten minutes if they’re driving straight here. But if they have to stop and check every property along the way, I mean…an hour? It depends on how long they stay at each place.”

Bruder grunted.

However long it was, it wasn’t long enough.

He pointed out to the south and west.

“What comes after these fields? More fields?”

“Mostly. You can see the tree line out there to the west, and there’s a drainage ditch in there too.”

“Can the truck get through?”

“No. The ditch is probably fifteen feet deep, deeper mud at the bottom. With steep sides. Deer get stuck in there sometimes.”

“No bridges?” Connelly said.

“Not that we can get to. It’s a property line for as far as you can see. Last I knew there was one to the south, but that’s on the other side of the southern property line, which is another drainage ditch.”

“So you got yourself a moat,” Rison said.

Nora blinked.

“I suppose so.”

Bruder had already looked to the east, across the road where