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

point of splitting it four ways when there might not be four of us left?”

“You’re a real ray of sunshine,” Rison said.

Bruder moved bags and said, “If anyone gets snatched, assume the hotel room in Minnesota is burned. Whoever gets out of here with the money—if any of us do—leave a message with Lola. Everybody else, check in with her when you can. She knows how to make sure you don’t have the phone in one ear and a Romanian gun in the other.”

“Pause,” Kershaw said. “I’m down to the charges.”

“You want help?” Connelly said.

“Nah.” He toggled the receivers on the charges off and eased the bundles down with the two remotes he’d carried.

When it got to Bruder he added his remote and handed all of it to Connelly, who put it in the passenger seat.

Kershaw pulled the rest of the bags out of the hopper, and when they got to Bruder he set them on the stones next to the car instead of inside.

When they were done Rison eyeballed those bags, then the space left in the trunk and back seat.

“Draw straws to see who rides on the roof?”

Bruder said, “Only Connelly’s in this car.”

Connelly looked at him.

“This sounds like the start of a plan.”

“I wouldn’t call it a plan. Not yet.”

“Well, step one is I get in the car. Step two?”

“You call Nora back.”

Connelly paused.

“Do I want to hear step three?”

“You agree to drive yourself and the money out to the Romanian compound. With one of the explosive charges in with the cash, just in case.”

“Fuck me. Okay, then what?”

“That’s as far as I got,” Bruder said. “Anybody has any ideas, speak up.”

Luca perked up when he saw Razvan’s F-250 and Mihail’s Tacoma coming from the south, and when Luca’s phone buzzed with a call from Razvan he answered with, “You get the money? The thieves?”

“One step closer,” Razvan said in Romanian. This didn’t tell Luca anything and was irritating, based on how long they’d been sitting there waiting for something to happen.

He was in the driver’s seat with the heat on, listening to a story on public radio about the best way to slice a Thanksgiving turkey.

He asked Razvan, “One step? What’s that mean?”

“You’ll see when we drive past you.”

“Past? We’re not following you?”

By then Razvan was a few hundred yards away and had hung up.

Luca rolled his window down and told Costel, “They’re coming. Raz is being cryptic.”

Costel grunted, unsurprised. He was splayed out in the bed of the truck, enjoying the warm sunshine with the bite of cold wind blowing above him.

They were parked in the dead center of the first intersection coming up from the south, through which anyone trying to get back into town would have to pass.

No one had tried to get through for hours.

Everyone in town knew by now to stay at home, or wherever they were.

Luca and Costel had moved the truck steadily further south and west as Razvan, Benj, and Mihail cleared properties, looking for the white truck and the men from it, but mainly heading to the woman’s house because they knew her boyfriend, the Hungary fan, was involved somehow.

When they found Pavel’s truck in the ditch, stalled out with both him and Grigore shot to death, Benj and Mihail suggested they start executing locals until someone came forward with information about the thieves, even though they already had the information about the woman.

Luca nodded along with their rage, ready to follow, and Razvan seemed to be warming to the idea.

Finally.

Luca’s hatred for the sheep in this cowshit town grew with every person he passed while he sped Pavel’s truck back to the compound, the two bodies in the back covered by a flapping tarp anchored by spare tires.

Mihail followed dangerously close to his rear bumper to keep anyone else from getting a good look at the two pairs of boots flashing out inside the missing tailgate.

Luca parked the truck—now a hearse, he supposed—next to the wheelless armored car, squatting on the ground like a garbage bin, hauled there from the tunnel by a wrecker who took his cash payment and knew better than to show any curiosity about the situation.

On the way south again, riding with Mihail, the two of them stoked each other about how they were going to execute a scorched earth policy upon the masses here, an ethnic cleansing on a people who didn’t seem to have any ethnicity, but still…

But when they reunited with the rest of the men, the fury that had been building behind Razvan’s sunken eyes was gone, replaced by the simmering patience they all knew could erupt at any moment, but it was not the rage felt by Luca and Mihail and Benj.

Costel…he was just an ox, satisfied to pull whatever wagon Razvan hitched him to.

And Razvan told them all, “There’s no need for a massacre, boys. We know who is involved, or at least who is associated with those involved.”

The woman.

Her boyfriend.

Luca had been with Grigore during the incident at Len’s, and he’d noticed how the shitty guitar player moved when he attacked Grigore. It hadn’t meant anything at the time—the singer knew how to fight a little, so what?—but when they all heard what the farmer said about him being in the white truck, Luca wasn’t shocked.

Maybe surprised, but not shocked.

He looked forward to seeing the singing Hungary fan again. He had some things to share with him in return for the sucker punch at Len’s, and for killing Grigore and Pavel.

And probably Claudiu, though they didn’t know for sure yet.

And for taking away the widespread bloodletting he and Mihail considered their right.

And for being a Hungary fan.

The turkey carving story on the radio was actually interesting when Luca substituted the thief for the turkey, but he turned it down as Razvan slowed his truck and angled as he approached the intersection so his side would be closest to Luca’s door.

The driver’s window came down and Razvan leaned out, his gaunt face grinning at them