by Jeremy Brown
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, which were old and a bit sticky from a lack of maintenance but opened for him in less than a minute.
He went inside and closed the door behind him.
The phone was also old, with an actual bell somewhere inside the housing, and he crept down a long wood-floored hallway with a dark staircase on his right.
An opening on the left showed a shabby living room with sagging furniture and stacks of old newspapers.
The ringing kept going, deeper in the building, and between rings Bruder heard the creak of feet on floorboards coming from the same direction.
The hallway emptied into a kitchen, and when Bruder looked through the opening he saw an old man, once strong but now stooped, dragging an oxygen tank behind him for the last steps to the phone.
He wore an open bathrobe over pajamas that might have been silk at one time but had lost the shine.
He picked up the phone and barked a question in Romanian.
“What?” or “Yes?”
Too short to be “Who the hell is calling me at three thirty in the morning?”
So he was expecting some sort of news.
He didn’t see Bruder until the ugly pistol was already up in his gloved hand.
Bruder squeezed the trigger and the gun spat half of the magazine out at once, a shocking noise in the small kitchen that, outside the brick walls, would sound like somebody nudging furniture across the floor.
Bruder looked at the gun for a moment, a nasty, unsettling little thing, then dropped it on the floor and walked outside where Kershaw was waiting.
He got into the car and they drove away.
Let the Romanians—whoever was left—waste their time figuring that out.
On the way back to the motel room Kershaw said, “I didn’t figure Connelly for a romantic.”
“Surprised me too,” Bruder said.
They had coffee and breakfast sandwiches from a 24-hour fast food drive-through.
The radio was on low, a news station, and so far there was nothing about the compound in Iowa or dead Romanians.
Kershaw said, “You know, romantics, they buy into stuff like honor, and debts of gratitude. Stuff like that.”
Bruder knew where this was headed.
He chewed his sandwich and waited.
Kershaw said, “And I figure Connelly was a stand-up guy before all of this. A solid crew member. But now, I’m not worried at all about him saying anything to anybody. Same goes for Nora. Not after what we did for them.”
“We didn’t do it for them,” Bruder said.
“Doesn’t matter to a romantic.”
“Good point,” Bruder said.
Then, “They need to get their own room.”
Thursday morning at 10:30 they got back to the motel in Minnesota and found the new luggage lined up along the front wall of Rison’s room with small gaps between each share.
Bruder looked into the adjoining room and found it empty, the beds undisturbed.
“Where are they?”
“Got another room,” Rison said. “We didn’t know when you’d be getting back, figured you might want to crash.”
Kershaw told Bruder, “See?”
Rison waited for an explanation about that, and when he didn’t get one said, “You can use this room too. I’m heading out.”
Bruder pointed at the suitcases.
“How’d we do?”
“Just under three million apiece. Less than the fourteen total we’d hoped for, but not too shabby.”
Kershaw nodded.
“Connelly say how he’s going to split his with Nora?”
“Tell you the truth, I don’t think they’ll split it at all. I think it’s their nest egg. Or, what do you call it? A dowry?”
They thought about that for a moment, how it might turn out and if it meant anything to them.
Finally Rison said, “There’s a diner on the other side of the parking lot, I think they serve breakfast all day.”
They shook hands and Rison carried his luggage to the car he’d staged for himself, another forgettable sedan, and drove away.
Bruder was thinking about another shower when someone knocked on the door.
Kershaw checked through the front window, then opened the door for Connelly and Nora.
They looked fresh and well-scrubbed, Nora wearing the same clothes and without any sort of makeup or work done on her hair.
They looked, Bruder decided, like a young couple excited for whatever the day brought.
Picking apples, maybe.
Kershaw closed the door and asked, “How you two doing?”
He was being polite, but also checking in with Connelly, not wanting to come right out with it in front of Nora, just in case.
“We’re good,” Connelly said, and gave small nods to both Bruder and Kershaw, letting them know it was true.
“Heading to Minneapolis?” Bruder said.
“Not sure yet,” Connelly said, looking at Nora.
It was the right thing to say.
Whether Bruder was just making conversation—unlikely—or looking to find out where they’d be if he needed to find them sometime soon, Connelly was smart to keep their next stop to himself.
Nora said, “I had a few voicemails on my phone, from Helen and Donna, a couple others. Mostly checking in on me, but also saying the place out on 64th pretty much burned to the ground. The fire department went out but couldn’t do anything. They found a license plate from Illinois, and now everybody’s talking about some kind of gang war.”
Kershaw smiled.
“You call them back?” Bruder asked.
“Not yet. I will, just to let everyone know I’m okay, but I don’t think I’ll see them again. That part of my life is done.”
Bruder believed her.
Connelly picked up their share of luggage.
“I’m set for a while, but when I’m ready for work I’ll reach out to Rison and leave a number. So if something comes up and I can help, you know…”
Nora didn’t seem surprised by this, so they’d either discussed it or there wasn’t any need to.
They turned and walked out, and Bruder noticed something heavy pulling the pocket of Nora’s sweater down.
Her pistol.
Kershaw saw it too and shook his head.
“Romantics.”
A Look At The Wake (A Bruder Heist Novel Book Three)
Bruder doesn’t kill anyone unless he has to, but for some people he’s willing to make an exception...
When a past job comes back to haunt Bruder, a man he should have killed forces him to pull off what seems like a simple errand—steal an impounded yacht and deliver it to its owner in the Gulf of Mexico—but the heist quickly gets complicated when he finds out who the luxury craft belongs to and meets the ruthless crew he’s supposed to run.
On top of it all, Bruder doesn’t know a damn thing about boats, or enjoy any time on them, and when he discovers the yacht is much more than just a floating status symbol, the stakes turn more dangerous than a shark in bloody water.
But Bruder is dead set on pulling off the job and getting free of the man he should have killed, and this time around, he’s not leaving any survivors in his wake.
The Wake is the third book in the gritty Bruder Heist Novels. If you like professional hard case criminals with a relentless focus on pulling off the big heist and getting away with it, join the crew and buckle up.
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Thank you.
Jeremy Brown
About the Author
Jeremy Brown is a novelist working in many genres, including crime thrillers, murder mysteries, and military thrillers. He has worked as a narrative designer and lead writer for a massively popular video game and enjoys kettlebells, stockpiling firewood, and using coffee as a delivery system for cream. He lives in Michigan with his wife, sons, and various animals.
For more information please visit jeremywbrown.com.
