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

her and the remote from Connelly.

He crouched next to Razvan and shoved the satchel under his damp shirt, then checked him over.

He found Nora’s phone and kept it, and Nora’s gun stuck in his waistband, and he took that too.

Then he looked at the phone Razvan had been using to talk to the Suburban.

That call had ended abruptly, but the phone was still unlocked.

“This other Chicago number. This is your boss?”

Razvan groaned and coughed blood.

Bruder said, “What did you say about us? About Nora and her boyfriend?”

Razvan showed him bloody teeth.

“Everything. I told him everything.”

Bruder considered that.

“Him? It’s just one man?”

The grin faltered.

“No, dozens of men. Hundreds.”

“I don’t buy it,” Bruder said, picking the ugly pistol up. “What’s the address?”

Razvan laughed and coughed.

“Fuck you.”

Kershaw and Rison strolled back.

“It’s a genetic blender in there,” Kershaw said.

Bruder showed him the phone.

“You can find the address for this number?”

“Sure. Just a matter of time and effort.”

Razvan looked between them, his bluster fading to confusion.

“You’re going to see him?”

“No, you are.”

The confusion turned to surprise when the bullets hit him, then the surprise turned to nothing.

They put the loose cash back inside the duffel bags and loaded them into the bed of Razvan’s pickup truck.

When that was done, they dragged Razvan’s body into the counting room, then the others from the lot and the dust-covered machine gunner, stacking them on top of Razvan and the explosives.

The bodies in the Suburban stayed where they were.

Connelly kept a close eye on Nora, who helped load the cash but didn’t want to touch the bodies.

She was a little shaky, which was understandable, but seemed to understand and accept what had happened, and what needed to happen next.

All in all, his opinion of her continued to grow.

Rison checked the house to make sure no one was locked or hiding inside, then opened the wood stove and stuck the corner of a blanket in. He dragged the opposite corner to a couch and dumped the barrel of dirty paper plates and napkins over all of it and walked out.

They all met at the Lexus and agreed it was time to leave.

Rison drove Connelly and Nora in the Lexus through the gate and around the Suburban.

Kershaw and Bruder followed in Razvan’s truck.

They got to the tree line and stopped and met between the two vehicles.

Smoke began to lap out of the house’s open front door.

“I just realized I’m starving,” Rison said. “Who wants a burger?”

“Maybe down the road,” Bruder said.

He had the remote labeled with ******3 in his hand.

“I think Connelly should have the honors,” Kershaw said.

Nora said, “Who’s Connelly?”

Then, when Bruder handed the remote to the man next her, “Oh.”

Chapter Twenty

Donaldson heard the booms and the shots, then another big boom, then he watched the car and truck roll down 64th Street toward Pine.

He was north of the intersection, like the sheriff wanted, pulled off the road and close enough to be seen from the intersection in daylight but invisible in the dark.

He got out and rested his elbows on the cruiser’s roof to look through the binoculars he’d gotten from the trunk.

The second vehicle’s headlights showed him the Lexus in front, and he figured the second one for a pickup by the height and shape of its lights.

He radioed Sheriff Wern.

“I got a Lexus and a pickup truck, maybe a Tacoma, going east on 64th. Probably headed towards town.”

“Who’s inside?” Wern said.

“I’m too far north, I can’t tell. Hold on, they’re coming up on the Cherokee.”

He watched a man get out of the Lexus and start the Cherokee up and drive it onto the shoulder, then get back into the Lexus and turn southeast on Pine.

The pickup followed, and Donaldson used the binoculars to check the silhouettes created by the head and taillights.

“I can tell both vehicles are full of people, too far away to recognize, with plates too far away to read. I can say, with some degree of certainty, there aren’t any tall Romanian assholes among them.”

“Huh,” Wern said. “Are they shooting at anybody?”

“They aren’t even speeding, sheriff.”

Wern was quiet for a moment.

“Well, okay then. Come on in and clock out. We’ll call it a day.”

Rison drove east through the main crossroads, where they should have been about ten hours earlier in the white truck before everything went to hell.

He looked though the front windows of Len’s as they passed and saw Marie in there, standing next to a table full of people with her hip cocked, laughing at something.

“She seems happy,” Connelly said from the back seat.

He had his arm around Nora, who leaned into him and wouldn’t let go of his hand.

Rison said, “Of course she’s happy. She doesn’t have to listen to Little Pink Houses anymore.”

They all met again an hour and a half later at the motel off of 90 in Minnesota, and Bruder backed the pickup as close to the room’s door as he could get.

They moved the duffels inside and Bruder and Kershaw used the showers in the adjoining rooms to rinse the day off before changing into clean clothes.

It had taken Kershaw most of the drive, working on his laptop with a hotspot, to find the address connected to the phone number in Chicago.

They ate some protein bars from the room’s stocked provisions and stuffed more in Kershaw’s bag, along with bottles of Gatorade, and got moving again.

Bruder drove the Romanian pickup truck and Kershaw followed in one of the cars Rison had staged at the motel, a Ford sedan.

They got back onto 90, headed for Chicago.

It was close to 3:30 in the morning when Bruder walked up the concrete stoop to the door on Halstead Street.

Razvan’s pickup was parked illegally along the curb with the keys in the ignition.

Kershaw waited a hundred yards down the silent street while Bruder called the number from Razvan’s phone and put his ear to the door.

After a moment, he heard the ringing inside.

He let it ring and went to work on the locks,