Page 16 of Boxed In

“But what about the man?”

“He was an office worker, too,” Jones answered.

“I’m not so sure,” Smith objected. “He showed . . . martial training.”

“So who was he? And what was he doing there?” Brown asked.

Smith didn’t answer directly. “You have read the accounts. Over the years, others have tried to steal the box, and they have ended up dead.”

“They were incompetent,” Jones answered.

“All of them?” Brown asked in a sharp voice.

“By definition. They failed.”

“The question is—why? What if the box has special protections?” Brown asked.

Jones and Smith stared at him. “Explain your thinking,” Smith demanded.

“Did you see the eyes of the man?”

Jones swallowed. “What about them?”

“I think you know,” Brown answered, his voice soft and even.

“What do I know?” Smith snapped. He had been thinking the worst, but he wasn’t going to be the one to say it.

“There was a spirit in the box. He emerged when he sensed danger.”

“Nonsense,” Smith answered, but his voice no longer held the same conviction. “If he emerged, how did he acquire a body?”

“He took the body of that man,” Brown said. He fixed Smith with a sharp look. “We may not survive this attempt at theft.”

Smith glared at him, but fear jolted through him. They had contracted with powerful forces to steal the box. They had thought they had the skill and the training to recover the object of power. Now it appeared that they had not been told the whole story.

“We could just disappear,” Brown said softly.

“No. They would track us down,” Smith said. He didn’t say who “they” were. Each of them knew.

“We must see this through,” Smith added, keeping his private doubts to himself. He made his voice sharp. “We will surely not survive if you give up so easily.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out some sheets of paper. “We’ve lost them for now. But I have addresses from the office files. The woman is the assistant of Carl Peterbalm, and I know where she lives. They may go to her dwelling. And if they do, we will find them and kill them,” he said with a hard finality in his voice.

“What if they are not there?” Brown asked.

“We will keep looking. I have the cell phone of one of them. If it belongs to the man, I can use it to trace his address.”

“That only gives the phone number.”

“I have equipment that will trace the number to a residence.”

oOo

Olivia was familiar with this area because she’d had to take several different streets going to and from work when road repair crews had blocked her usual route.

Luke was looking over his shoulder. “There’s a car behind you. It could be them.”

“Not to worry,” she answered, speeding up and weaving down one street, then another.

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