The Box

by Jeremy Brown

  He pulled away and headed toward town with Mihail following.

  Luca waved at Mihail, who wagged his tongue and gave him the finger.

  Luca rolled his window back up and sulked through the windshield.

  So the three of them—Razvan, Benj, and Mihail—needed more men to search for the thieves, but if they came roaring up the road he and Costel were sufficient?

  He hoped they did show up.

  Let him and Costel drive back to the compound with the four assholes slung across the roof like the deer they saw around town or stacked up in the bed like they used to do back home with the people going into pits.

  Like Pavel and Grigore were, in the truck parked out at the compound now.

  Let Razvan and the crew from Chicago suck on that for a while.

  Luca stared down the road, willing the thieves—wherever they were out there—to come his way.

  They had a plan.

  Or, according to Bruder and the others, something close enough to a plan to get moving.

  Connelly stood next to Nora’s car and called her phone on speaker.

  The other three men watched the road and fields and listened to the ringing.

  She answered after the second one.

  “Adam?”

  There was engine noise and airflow, telling him she was on speaker too.

  “Hey, what’s up? Are you okay?”

  “I—”

  Razvan cut her off.

  “Hello, asshole. You know who this is?”

  “Uh, no,” he said, playing stupid. “Nora, what’s going on?”

  Razvan said, “You’re not talking to her anymore, you’re talking to me. You know what’s going on, and so do we. We talked to the farmer you ran into north of town.”

  Connelly looked around to see if Bruder was giving him an I told you so face, but he still gazed out at the horizon, watching.

  “I know you have my money,” Razvan said. “And I know you’re still here. And now you know I have your woman. Here’s the deal: Bring me my money, you get her back unharmed. Do not do this, you do not get her back, and she gets harmed. Very much. Now, where are you, and where is my money?”

  Connelly paused.

  They’d all agreed to string it out for as long as possible—maybe the Romanians weren’t certain about anything—but if it became clear they knew the situation, continuing to play dumb would just waste time they didn’t have.

  “Okay, you have a deal. Money for her, and I drive out of town with her.”

  Razvan laughed.

  “I did not mention what happens to you and your friends.”

  “No need,” Connelly said. “I just told you what happens. And my friends are gone.”

  “Oh? They left you and my money behind?”

  He didn’t sound convinced.

  “They didn’t like how things were going.”

  “Better to live to steal another day, eh?”

  “Something like that,” Connelly said.

  “Well, they didn’t drive out of town, I can promise you.”

  Connelly didn’t say anything.

  Razvan said, “They are on foot? If so, we’ll find them. Would you like to take a turn with the knife, let them know how you feel about being abandoned?”

  “The money for Nora,” Connelly said, getting back on track. “And she and I drive away.”

  “Okay, okay, we’ll discuss your friends when we meet. Where are you?”

  “I’ll come to you.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because we’re meeting on the highway, east of town. I’m tired of being boxed in.”

  “I see.”

  Razvan was quiet for a moment, then said, “No. You’ll come to our compound.”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Then she’s dead. And so are you, eventually. You have to know we’ll find you.”

  Connelly looked at Bruder.

  They’d expected something along these lines and were ready for it.

  Bruder nodded.

  Connelly told Razvan, “Okay, okay, fine. Your farm.”

  “Compound.”

  “Whatever. But listen up—I have explosives tamped in with the cash. I see anything that looks like a trap, or you do anything I don’t like once I get to the meet, I blow the money.”

  Razvan processed that.

  “With you standing next to it?”

  “If the alternative is letting you go to work on me, hell yes. And there’s enough boom in here to flatten everything for fifty yards, so I’ll probably take you with me.”

  “Hm. All of this—losing the money, willing to explode yourself—all of this for the woman?”

  “I’m not interested in your opinion on it. Are we doing this or not?”

  “All business, I like it. You know where the compound is, I assume?”

  “Yes,” Connelly said.

  “You can be there in ten minutes?”

  Putting him on the spot, trying to gauge where he actually was.

  “Make it thirty,” Connelly said.

  “Half an hour, then.”

  “Who am I going to run into between here and there?”

  “Depends on where you are,” Razvan said, teasing.

  “I don’t want anybody shooting at me.”

  “My men will know to bring you, no shots fired. I’ll tell them about the explosives too. Oh, have you counted my money yet?”

  “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 sh
elter 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 about, years down the line: The crazy time your father stole some money from Romanian gangsters and I got held hostage until he gave the money back. Oh, it was such a hoot…

  There her brain went again, wandering off into a future she knew did not exist.

  She looked at the flat black armored car, which now had no wheels and looked like a boxy, beached submarine. And next to that, a pickup truck with four boots sticking out where the tailgate should be, and the legs attached to those boots.

  Dead bodies.

  She saw all of that and tried to put it into context with the man she knew as Adam, who was funny and enjoyed making her laugh, who put too much sugar in his coffee, who kept trying to convince her Die Hard was a Christmas movie and they should start a tradition to watch it every year on Christmas Eve.

  To picture him doing any of this, to think he was capable of it…it disturbed her, but what was even more troubling was how much it pleased her.

  To have someone in her life who was that capable—who came across a situation like Razvan and his men, then set about making a plan and executing it to come out on top—it ought to terrify her.

  But it didn’t.

  The idea of being next to a person like that for the rest of her life made her think of one word: Peaceful.

  She didn’t need anyone to take care of her.

  No, the thought of that was chafing.

  It made her bristle.

  But to walk through the world knowing she didn’t have to worry about people like Razvan anymore…

  And there she went again, thinking she and Adam were going to walk away from this.

  The pragmatic side of her brain, the one she used at work—and now that she was forced to examine it, just about every other part of her life—figured it was a survival response.

  A coping mechanism meant to keep her from panicking.

  She noted the irony.

  Panicking and doing something drastic, instead of cooperating, was exactly what might keep her alive.

  But so far, her brain wouldn’t let her.

  It kept telling her things were going to work out fine, and maybe this would be a story she and Adam would tell her parents when they met this Christmas.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Connelly pulled out of Nora’s driveway at 4:15 and turned left, north.

  Even though the sun hovered just above the western edge of the field off to his left there was still plenty of light to see, since there were no shadows or trees forming a darker canopy along the road.

  Still, he found the headlights and turned them on.

  He didn’t want anyone ahead of him to get the idea he was trying to sneak around.

  All in all, he gave it about a fifty percent chance this was all going to work.

  He would have put it at less, but Bruder had come up with the rest of the plan, and the man never seemed to do anything unless he was clear on the outcome, or at least clear on the contingencies if that outcome didn’t, well, come out.

  So Connelly was either driving towards rescuing Nora and getting the hell out of town with the cash and crew, or he was driving towards his own torture and execution, alongside Nora, while the rest of the crew slipped away thanks to his distraction.

  Fifty-fifty.

  A coin toss.

  For Connelly, the risk was worth the reward.

  He just hoped everybody else felt the same.

  Connelly came to the first house north of Nora’s and said, “Neighbor is two point seven miles from the driveway. Vehicles in the driveway but nobody moving around.”

  He didn’t bother to turn his head when he spoke—they’d tested the radio with the mic locked open and the sound came through just fine with him looking forward.

  The radio was inside the partially open zipper of the duffel bag in the middle of the back seat floor, likely to be one of the last bags Razvan and his men got to, if they got that far.

  The explosives were tamped between bags in the trunk.

  The remote was in Connelly’s hand.

  So far, the hand wasn’t sweating.

  He was still a mile out when he saw the truck waiting for him in the middle of the intersection.

  When he got closer, he glanced at the odometer and said, “Five point six miles from the driveway. I can see two men standing behind a truck in the intersection, the first one coming north. Both have long guns, pointed at me. They’ve been waiting.”

  Nobody could respond with the mic locked, so he had to assume they’d heard everything and would act accordingly.

  He closed the last mile and dropped the driver’s window, then coasted to
a stop just before the intersection.

  He lifted his hands to show the left was empty and the right held the remote.

  “Hey guys. Easy with the guns.”

  The one behind the hood yelled, “Get out!”

  Connelly got out.

  He used slow, deliberate movements, watching the men as they came around opposite ends of the truck to flank him from both sides.

  “Arms out,” the one from behind the hood said.

  He was wiry with a cropped black beard and seemed to be in charge.

  The other one was bigger, with a reddened face like he’d been exercising or standing in the sun and wind.

  They both kept their rifles pointed at him.

  Connelly spread his arms.

  He told the one in charge, who was on his right, “Don’t touch this hand, please. Razvan told you about that, right? The explosives?”

  “Yes, we know. I think you’re bluffing—nobody would blow up this much money—but you stole it from us in the first place, so maybe you are stupid enough to destroy it too.”

  Connelly shrugged.

  “I’m more than stupid enough.”

  “I agree. I was there when you sucker punched Grigore. That was very stupid.”

  Connelly watched the big one, on his left, stepping all the way behind him.

  “Hey, that wasn’t a sucker punch. He was standing right there, ready to fight.”

  “No, no, you had the woman distract him. Then you hit him. A bitch move, my friend.”

  Connelly scoffed.

  “Bullshit, pal. But all that is ancient history.”

  He glanced over his left shoulder.

  The big one was at his eight o’clock, out of sight and out of the line of fire if the other one decided to shoot.

  The one in front of him said, “Yes, history. Because now Grigore is dead—did you kill him?”

  “Nope.”

  He lifted the rifle, moving the barrel from Connelly’s chest to his face.

  “I think you did.”

  “Is this what Razvan told you to do? Threaten me and scare me into blowing the cash? Because it’s working.”

  The man behind him said something in Romanian, making the one in front blink a few times.