A standalone darkly humorous thriller set in modern America’s age of anxiety, by New York Times bestselling author Jason Pargin.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Jason Pargin’s I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom, which is out September 24th.
Outside Los Angeles, a driver pulls up to find a young woman sitting on a large black box. She offers him $200,000 cash to transport her and that box across the country, to Washington, DC.
But there are rules:
He cannot look inside the box.
He cannot ask questions.
He cannot tell anyone.
They must leave immediately.
He must leave all trackable devices behind.
As these eccentric misfits hit the road, rumors spread on social media that the box is part of a carefully orchestrated terror attack intended to plunge the USA into civil war.
The truth promises to be even stranger, and may change how you see the world.
3
Hunter
Abbott Coburn’s father, Hunter, stood blinking over his kitchen table, holding his son’s note in one hand and the five hundred-dollar bills in the other.
He had left the house for work at six thirty that morning and had forced Abbott to get up at the same time to start doing Lyft rides. He’d made this the new policy a while ago—if Abbott was to live there rent-free, he wasn’t just going to sleep in like a teenager, he’d get up and work. The boy had a habit of doing a couple of trips and then going back to bed, so Hunter would swing by now and again to check. This time, he’d come home to this note.
He read it again.
The question in his mind wasn’t whether whatever “job” Abbott had taken was illegal—that much was obvious. The question was if whatever delivery he was making would allow the cops to seize the Navigator when he was caught. Or, even worse, the house. Could they make the case that whatever crime Abbott was participating in had occurred in the home? Were any illegal goods being stored there? He had surely used Hunter’s Wi-Fi to arrange it, whatever it was. The note said he’d be gone for more than a week and that definitely sounded like a delivery across state lines, which would mean feds. Jesus.
Hunter read the note yet again. Abbott was to help a “friend.” And not to move but to “move some stuff.” Abbott didn’t have any friends. Maybe it was somebody he met on the internet? Someone using him as a mule to haul, well, it wasn’t a question of “what” but rather “what kind of drug.” Probably fentanyl, these days. The idiot was probably going to get the stuff on his hands and OD through skin contact. Hunter tossed the note in the trash, then immediately turned around and fished it out. It could wind up being evidence later, if it came down to establishing when exactly he’d become aware of his son’s activity. He pulled out his phone and dialed Abbott. He knew he wouldn’t take the call, but Hunter could at least be on record having tried to—
From upstairs came the faint sound of Abbott’s phone playing its obnoxious little jingle.
Oh, so he was home. Wait, had he loaned out the Navigator to some shady stranger? Hunter stormed upstairs, loading up a rant to unleash as soon as he burst through the door. He gave two harsh, perfunctory knocks and swung himself inside.
“What’s all this about—”
Abbott wasn’t there. The phone was on his unmade bed, next to his laptop. Well, that only meant Abbott was coming back. He’d sooner leave the house without his balls than his gadgets. Hunter would just have to wait a bit before tearing into him. Good. It would give him time to polish his rant.
Unless . . .
What if the cartel mule and/or human trafficker had told Abbott to leave his phone behind so it couldn’t be tracked? Surely Abbott couldn’t be that stupid. Surely. But if he was, that meant he wasn’t coming back, and every minute Hunter stood there was another mile down the road Abbott traveled toward life-altering disaster. No, he had to move. He had to think. In that order. Heart pounding, Hunter went to his own bedroom, took one step toward his nightstand, and stopped dead. There was a crescent of wrinkles on the edge of his otherwise perfect bedspread, the exact impression one would create if they’d sat there with the intention of retrieving something from that nightstand.
No.
He yanked open the bottom drawer, opened the case for his SIG SAUER P320, and, when he saw it was empty, hurled the case across the room.
That idiot. That fucking idiot.
Hunter tried to calm himself. Okay. Was there any way to anticipate where they were going? The worst-case scenario would be the border, that a criminal organization had posted a “delivery job” with the hopes of recruiting a mule dumb enough to absorb all of the risk for some fraction of the payoff. Or, just as likely, the job had been posted by the feds trying to fill their arrest quota with a low-effort entrapment sting. Guessing was a waste; he needed information. How would Abbott have heard about the job? Likely online, with a follow-up phone call. Hunter made his way back to Abbott’s devices in his bedroom, then became enraged again when a quick search of his son’s email and text messages turned up nothing. Finally, he went to his son’s video streaming thing, the service unnervingly called “Twitch.”
He opened it and found that it automatically logged him into Abbott’s account. It didn’t activate the laptop’s camera, so the broadcast continued to show a static away message, but Hunter did seem to have access to a chat window. The users there apparently continued talking among themselves even when Abbott wasn’t broadcasting, which to Hunter seemed especially sad.
Twitch chat logs from the stream posted at 8:19 a.m., Thursday, June 30, by user Abaddon6969:
LumpShaker: LISTEN TO WHAT I AM SAYING. If you kill the old man and then put him in the water, he’ll attract fish, then you eat the fish. Infinite food.
Abaddon6969: Is this on?
DeathNugget: Back already?
Abaddon6969: This is Abbott’s father.
DeathNugget: Hey. Fuck you.
CathyCathyCathy: If you eat fish that have fed on human meat, that’s still cannibalism, you’re just adding a middleman.
Abaddon6969: I came home to find Abbott had taken off with my truck. He left a note with a very vague explanation. I think he may be in danger. Do you know where he went?
SkipTutorial: Probably to get away from you.
ZekeArt: He didn’t say, but the vibes were definitely off. Like he was nervous.
LumpShaker: You’re just using the corpse as a lure, you aren’t going to let them chow down before catching them.
Abaddon6969: Did it seem like he was being coerced?
SteveReborn: Since when do you care?
Abaddon6969: He’s never done anything remotely like this before. He said he wasn’t going to be back until late next week. I have reason to believe he’s gotten himself wrapped up in something illegal. He took my gun.
From I’m Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom by Jason Pargin. Copyright © 2024 by the author and reprinted by permission of St. Martin’s Publishing Group.
