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

“I haven’t really had the luxury.”

Razvan laughed.

“That’s true. I’m just curious, it will be interesting to find out exactly how much this whore is worth to you. See you soon.”

The call ended.

Connelly put the phone away.

“Too easy. They’re going to kill me at that compound.”

Bruder nodded.

“Nora too. But he’ll make an example of you first, for his men and the people in Chicago. So, we’ll have time before he kills you.”

“How much time?” Connelly said, keeping his voice level.

“As long as it takes,” Bruder said.

Razvan killed the call as he pulled into the compound. He kept Nora’s phone in case the boyfriend called again.

Nora watched him drop it into his breast pocket but didn’t say anything.

The driveway into the compound went through an open, hinged gate attached to an eight-foot chain link fence with barbed wire along the top. The fence wrapped all the way around the few acres of house, silos, and outbuildings.

The silos and conveyors and the metal and concrete buildings dedicated to them were on the right side of the driveway, just inside the gate, acting like another barrier between the house and the road.

Razvan turned and drove along those with the silos looming over the truck in the afternoon sun, which was already dipping toward the western tree line at four o’clock, then he cut left and pulled in close to the front of the house.

They’d ripped out the landscaping and tilled the grass under years ago and now just had a flat lot of crushed stone inside the fence, making the place look and feel more like a way station than a homestead.

On the other side of the fence to the west and south was flat, plowed cornfield, smelling faintly of fertilizer and waiting for the spring planting.

To the east, back toward Pine Street, was the tree line serving as a wind and snow break for the compound. Razvan and his men had cut into the trees thirty yards or so, creating a no-man’s land between the fence and remaining trees filled with stumps and trunks that had been cut and stacked but not yet split.

Nothing about it was fresh or recent.

Razvan got out of the truck and waved his fingers, telling Nora to follow him.

Benj got out the other side and went up the steps into the house, a two-story rectangle with yellow siding and brown shutters. It didn’t have a nice porch, like Nora’s, just a set of poured concrete steps leading up to the door, which had a small canopy roof jutting out of the house’s face to offer a bit of shelter from rain and snow.

Nora got out of the truck and moved past him to stand near the tailgate.

He asked her, “Would you like a coat?”

“No.”

She was being stubborn and pouty, so he didn’t ask again.

Mihail pulled through the gate and trotted over to close it, then took the Tacoma in a tight circle and put the front bumper against the inside of the gate, blocking it. He hauled the M249 and sandbag out and carried them into the metal and concrete building closest to the gate and shut the door behind him.

Razvan knew he’d be setting up in one of the windows with an angle covering the gate and looking east along the road, where the boyfriend would come from.

Nora seemed to know this as well. A line appeared between her eyebrows.

He told her, “When I bought this place, I stood upstairs in the master bedroom and looked out the windows at these fields, almost as far as I could see, and I thought, ‘How depressing.’ Then I realized, for you people, it was like looking out at fields of money. Like a man who owns a diamond mine looking out at sand and rocks. And for me, it was the same. For different reasons, obviously, but the same. Money, almost as far as I could see.”

She didn’t respond or act like she’d heard him at all.

“Did you know your boyfriend was planning to steal it from me?”

Now she heard him.

“No.”

“But you told him some things about me, didn’t you? About how we operate.”

She shook her head.

“I think you did,” he said. “Even if you didn’t know it, he was finding things out. Otherwise, how would they know to hit the truck at the tunnel? And when to be there?”

She said, “Maybe one of your men has a big mouth.”

It made him laugh.

“Well, yes, they all do. But only with each other. Certainly not with a shitty singer who showed up in town a few weeks ago.”

She went back to silence.

Razvan said, “You told him about your parents, I’m sure. Do they like it in Arizona?”

She looked at him, the line between her brows deeper now.

“I’ve heard it’s nice,” he said, “especially this time of year, when the heat is finally bearable. You should know, if something happens to you because of your boyfriend—like if we have to kill you—I will deliver the news to your mother and father myself, in person.”

It hung between them, unaffected by gravity.

“So, make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid, okay? For your sake, and theirs. Just do exactly what I tell you to do and everything will be fine.”

He was lying, Nora knew, but her brain tried to convince her otherwise.

It kept telling her to go along with it, be polite, follow the norms of society even though this was as abnormal as it could get.

If she behaved, like Razvan said, she’d be fine.

But no, that was a lie.

He was going to kill her and Adam—that was his name until she learned otherwise—as soon as he got the money back.

But her brain wouldn’t accept that, so it tried to construct a narrative in which she and Adam drove away from this tiny prison yard, unscathed and free to go, left to sort out their future with this insanity lingering like a bloodstain on the infancy of their relationship.

Like something they’d tell their kids