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

he wasn’t sure what Wern would do. Wern was a good man, trying to do what he thought was best for everyone, but even so it was horseshit, all around.

Donaldson was about a mile away from the dirt road leading to the damn compound they had out here, caught up in a fantasy about going in all by himself and cleaning it out, when the taillights reflected back at him.

He sped up.

At first, he thought the vehicle was pulled off the left side of the road, but when he got close enough to hit it with his spotlight he saw it was parked across the dirt road leading west, toward the compound.

The vehicle was dark, shut off, with no sign of anyone around it.

Donaldson got on the radio.

“Sheriff, you should ask that crystal ball of yours about some Lotto numbers. I just found the Cherokee.”

Wern came back with, “Is that so? One piece?”

“Looks like it. Parked across 64th, like it’s blocking the way in or out.”

The radio was silent for a moment.

Then Wern said, “Anybody around it?”

“Negative. And, if I may speak freely here, I think the folks out here in the compound finally came across somebody a little badder than they are.”

“Seems that way,” Wern said.

It wasn’t meant to be a slight against the sheriff, but Donaldson couldn’t help it if he took it that way.

“Well,” Wern said, “if the Cherokee’s not hurting anybody or messing with Pine, let’s leave her there until morning. I’ll let Jim and Carol know, and they can either come and get it or we’ll have it towed out to them.”

Donaldson said, “So, do nothing?”

“Maybe put a reflective sticker on it, for safety.”

“Sure, copy that.”

Donaldson grinned, pleased about the sheriff’s willingness to step back and let these two groups have it out, if that’s what was going to happen.

He didn’t think it was quite to the level of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend,’ but it felt close.

He kept the spotlight on the Cherokee as he opened his door and stepped out, then instinctively dove back into the car when the gunfire started.

Bruder heard voices coming from the far side of the house but he couldn’t make out the words.

Nobody was screaming yet, which was good.

He focused on the voices and sounds coming through his earpiece.

The voices spoke Romanian and the sounds were things being moved, slid around, dropped, then loud mechanical chattering, like something being dispensed.

Or cash being counted.

Bruder switched his radio to the channel he and Kershaw and Rison were using.

“Go.”

Stealing the same money twice from the same people wasn’t something Bruder found appealing, especially when those people seemed to be expecting it.

But the money was right there, on the other side of a fence along with Connelly and the woman, Nora.

And the men protecting the money were the sort to hold a grudge, and Bruder didn’t want to worry about anybody with a grudge and the means to track him down.

He stood outside the southwest corner of the fence, shielded from the rest of the compound by the two story house. He was just beyond the halo of security lights coming across the fence, watching the windows of the house and everything else in front of him while Kershaw worked on the chain link with the cutters on his Leatherman.

When Kershaw pulled the flap open and slipped through with his rifle and took up a spot at the near corner of the house, staying below the windows, Bruder moved forward and used the same opening. He went to the other corner, where he could see the pickup truck and armored car parked near some piles of junk.

He leaned the rifle against the wall and went flat on his stomach, not caring about the marks he left in the snow and crusted ice. He slid his head forward an inch at a time, easing his eyes to the corner and looking at the scene in front of the house.

Two men, one lean and one big and wide, carried duffels past Connelly into a bunker-like building with bright lights coming from inside.

Bruder caught a glimpse of Razvan in there, and an elbow and shoulder that had to belong to Nora.

That was three, plus the one they’d spotted on the way in from the Cherokee, the one moving around inside the building next to the gate with the machine gun sticking out of the window.

That left one missing Romanian, who could be right on the other side of the wall from Bruder.

The men made another trip to the trunk and only brought out two bags—the last two, apparently—and the big one carried them away while the lean one closed the car doors and lifted a rifle out of the bed of the truck parked next to Nora’s car.

He kept the rifle on his hip but pointed it at Connelly, who said something Bruder couldn’t hear.

It was probably wise, and it would be just like him to get shot right before the plan went into full swing.

The man with the rifle had his left profile to Bruder.

It was an easy shot, but beyond the man was the bunker with the men and money inside, and Nora, and Bruder didn’t want any bullets to pass through the guy’s body and go through the metal siding if the concrete blocks didn’t go all the way up.

He pulled back from the corner and met Kershaw near the middle of the house, to the side of a back door that looked like it hadn’t been used in a decade.

They spoke in low voices and agreed on the next steps, and just in case Bruder reached up and tried the back door.

Locked or nailed shut with no keyhole on the outside.

Either way, too loud to open.

Bruder nodded and they went back to their corners.

He stayed on his feet this time and counted to ten, then slid his right eye past the corner.

Same arrangement, only now the door to the counting room was closed.

It didn’t matter.

He said,