IT TOOK ME A FEW HOURS to get everything in play, but the plan that we’ve all put together is a good one. I must say, I’m impressed with the way our road family pulled together on this.

Hannah and Artie have backed their camper into the west alley sealing it off while Colossus is blocking the east alley. Mandy, Hazel, and Virgil are waiting at the side entrance near the exercise room. Everyone is on group text and waiting for the signal from me.

I enter the hotel lobby and ask the lady at the front desk for the manager on duty. It takes about ten minutes, but he finally arrives. He’s a tall, lanky man who can’t be older than twenty. He must be fresh out of hospitality school— so fresh; I don’t think the ink has dried on his diploma yet.

His hair is a mess; like it’s been finger-combed a dozen times in the last hour. “I’m Michael Yates, the Manager. How may I help you?”

“I’m Braxton Ryder, one of the bull rider’s with the PBR.” He shakes my extended hand when offered. “Have you seen or heard about the accident we had last night?”

“Who hasn’t? It’s the cause of all my stress today.” He holds out an arm pointing to the news vans outside, clogging up the front walk.  “I can’t get them to leave.”

“Maybe I can help you with that. The doctor on that infamous video is a guest here. Now we need to sneak her out and away from here, but we need your help. Will you help us?”

“I hate to be the one to break this to you, but the doctor isn’t here anymore. Her lawyer took her away this morning, along with her friend.”

“What? What time did they leave?” Anger boils inside me. I’ve been planning this all fucking day. Why didn’t Myla call me?  I should have called back when she was awake, but I was in planning mode then, and it all moved quickly until now.

“They left just after the mid-shift began, so a little after 11:00 am when the detectives left.”

“Detectives?” The anger inside me is about to spill out. “Fucking lawyers,” I mumble under my breath as I walk toward the front doors. I pull out my phone to send a text.

Me:  She’s gone. It’s over.

A/H: What? How?

Mandy: Let’s meet back at camp. We’ll meet you at your truck.

I come around the corner to see everyone waiting in my truck for me. I’m still fuming mad. Maybe I should have taken my time coming back here or cruised the block one more time. My anger and the need to get away from the craziness on the street propelled me forward to my truck.

I hop into the cab, and there’s nothing but silence. No one knows what to say, but that’s okay because I don’t have any words. I’m stunned and surprised at this turn of events.

She didn’t give me time to fix it.

That’s because she didn’t trust me.

She’s back to letting everyone else run her life for her.

She took the easy way out, and I’m more than just angry. I’m disappointed, and for some reason, that hurts more.

Mandy catches my eye in the rearview mirror. She knows— although I’m showing no outward sign of how I feel.  The pitiful look on her face reflects my heart.  Sad and shattered.

Of all the people in my life whom I thought would hurt me, she was never one of them.

I let her in. I was willing to wait to make her mine.

I was building something strong and everlasting with her.

Friends before lovers and then soul mates; isn’t that how it’s supposed to be?

I told her all of my secrets, even the buried ones that nearly killed me to dredge up.

I told her my hopes and dreams.

She was my sunrise and my sunset.

I park Colossus in front of my camper and offer to help Hazel out of the truck. I run around to the passenger side and make sure she is steady as she slides down out of the front seat and into Mandy’s waiting arms.

“I don’t know what to say other than thank you all for offering to help today. I’m gonna move on to Terra Haute solo.”  All three ladies give me tight hugs, and Virgil smacks my back, man-to-man.  Artie nods his approval.

“I’ll have supper ready when you get there. You be sure and come over,” Hazel insists, shaking her index finger at me.

“Oh, there’s no way I’m missing a Hazel meal. You can count on me.” She beams a smile at me as she steps up into her trailer.

Mandy makes a phoning gesture to me in case I need to talk. “I’ll call if I need you.” She nods and hops up into her truck. I wave to Artie and Hannah as they move on out.

It looks like our rescue mission failed. 

For as much as I’d like to blame the attorney, Noa is a grown adult. She can make her own decisions, and she has.  Hopefully, a few days off will help her to recover from the stress and strain of the accident. I’m sure we’ll talk when she comes back, but I don’t know how much I’ll have to say at that point.

The king pin slides into the fifth wheel easily connecting Colossus and the camper, as it always does. I look around the almost empty parking lot and see Bill walking around Wes’s trailer with a flashlight. What’s he doing?

“Bill, do you need help?” He’s bending at the knees down on the ground and contorting his body to look under the camper.

“Jesus, Braxton. You scared me. I thought everyone was gone already.”

“I was just about to pull out when I saw you bending low with the flashlight. Do you need me to get up under there?”

“If you could. I’d like to know what he was doing under there. My knees don’t want to cooperate today, of all days.”

“Alright.” I bend low and take the flashlight from him. Thank God Wes has a short wheelbase with one bedroom. I flip over onto my back and scoot underneath it, clearing cobwebs and removing dried leaves as I go further under the trailer.

There’s no way he was under here. The cobwebs are too thick and dirty. He’d have had to have cleared them to see anything. I’m underneath the kitchen and bathroom plumbing now, and the door hatch is covered in a massive web of bugs, dried mud, and road salt.

I shine the flashlight from corner to corner and see some green spray paint that looks odd. I roll over several times to get to it and see it’s just numbers and arrows pointing to a latch. Five feet by four feet.  I pull down on the handle and see it’s a small trap door into Wes’s trailer. Why the fuck does he have that?

I get out from under the trailer and shake the dirt off me.

“Well, what was he working on?”

“Bill, I have absolutely no idea. The cobwebs are a foot deep and thick as Halloween under there. I don’t think he’s been under there in years, but he does have a trap door built in.”

“He’s got a what? A trap door? What in tarnation does he have that for?”

“I  have no idea. I don’t have one in my trailer. It looks like it’s self-installed.”

“Let’s go take a look.” He pulls the trailer keys out of his pocket and we go inside.

I walk over and measure by steps out from the window about where it should be and kick the floor. Nothing happens. I walk around stomping the floor in a two-foot radius and finally, it gives way.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Bill stands over the trap door quiet as a church mouse thinking. He looks up at the window and all around the room trying to figure it out. It’s not near anything, and he doesn’t have it covered up like it was a mistake or something he changed his mind about.

He looks up at me, rubbing the creases and wrinkles on his forehead. “I’m just as confused as you are. You’re sure you don’t have a trap door and don’t know about it?”

I shrug my shoulders and pull my keys out of my pocket. “We can look, but I don’t think so.”

We enter my camper, and I measure out the same rough spacing and start kicking around on the floor. Nothing. Bill starts helping, but we don’t find anything.

“Let’s go check mine.” I lock up, and we cross the lot to the business trailer and step inside Bill’s trailer. This layout is different since part of the kitchen is used as the office.

We measure out the same rough distance, but can’t quite get around the desk.

“I think it should be under the desk drawers,” I say while Bill starts pushing the desk away from its current position. “It only needs to move about a foot to the right. Pick it up, Bill.”

We both pick it up and set it back down after a few steps. I start kicking the linoleum and down swings the trap door, making a big thud as it smacks the bottom of the floor.

“What the hell. That thieving sack of shit.” Bill looks at me with narrowed eyes. “That’s where we keep the deposit.”

“Looks like we caught our thief.” I reach down and pull the door  back up.

“But where’s the money?” Bill sits in a chair, his voice is tired and worn down. Heavy bags cause the skin under his eyes to sag as he rubs them.  “It wasn’t in his trailer. We were all over it the other day.”

“When are the police coming to get that heap o’ junk?”

“That’s who I was waiting for as I walked around it. They said between 4:00 and 5:00 pm.”

“It’s ten ‘til five now. Maybe we should take a look inside and secure it for transport?” I wink at him, and a mischievous smile widens on his face. I lead the way to Wes’s trailer. The thought of rummaging through it for anything turns my stomach, but I’ll look for anything for the PBR.

“Try to look in the ‘not-so-obvious’ places first,” Bill advises. He goes straight for the upper kitchen cabinets and pulls them open, while I  head to the bedroom.

I rifle through some old boxes in the closet but don’t find anything of interest, just worn pictures of him in his “glory” days. His bed isn’t open underneath, so I lift up the mattress and box springs. “Well, fuck me. Hey, Bill. You’re going to want to see this.”

Something crashes in the kitchen, and Bill mumbles “Fuck it” as he scampers into the bedroom. “Good Lord, Braxton.”

Wads of money are rolled into tight circles and strapped with rubber bands. Shoe boxes without lids are lined up end-to-end and are overflowing with pill bottles. Each one is labeled meticulously with the drug name and dosage.

There are even some boot boxes, but those have lids. I lean forward and remove a cover, only to shut my eyes in horror. Pictures of naked and half-naked women are tossed inside.  One of the women used to be one of our roadies, but her husband left her and ran her off the tour. He joined another circuit, I believe, probably because of this.

“Was he blackmailing people and selling drugs on my tour?”

“That’s exactly what it looks like.” I put the lid back on the box. I assume the other boot boxes contain the same items, so I don’t look.

“Good grief, Braxton. Get some trash bags. Let’s see if we can get this shit out of here before the police show up. I don’t want this scandal broadcast about the PBR.”

I run and do as he says, finding the bags in the usual spot, under the sink. We both start jamming as much stuff inside them as we can fit. Altogether, we collect five bags, and they’re bursting at the seams with all of those box corners inside them.

“Let’s take these over to my trailer, and we’ll go through them in Indiana,” Bill suggests. We toss them out the front door, and I carry them two and three at a time to Bill’s.

In the meantime, he cleans up the mess that he made from the ‘crash’ I heard earlier. He continues picking up more trash inside and fills another two garbage bags. He’s carrying them out the door, huffing and puffing his breath when the police show up with a tow truck behind them. I’m so glad I got the last remaining bags out of there.

“Stop right there, Sir,” one of the officers say as I come out of Bill’s. He’s drawn his gun and has it pointed at Bill, using his door as a shield.

Bill drops the garbage bags where he stands and raises his hands.

“What are you doing?” the other officer asks, slowing opening his door to get out, not seeing a weapon in Bill’s hands. “State your name, Sir.”

“My name is Bill. I’m the tour manager. I was cleaning up some of the trash before you took it away, so it didn’t stink,” Bill informs them.  He looks so innocent with his hands raised high above his head. He’s just an old man trying to help, is how he makes it sound. I lower my head to hide my smile as I walk toward them.

The one officer closest to Bill picks up the trash and unties it to look inside. “He is telling the truth. It’s just garbage.” He ties it closed again but takes it back inside.

“You can put your hands down, Sir. Sorry for scaring you.” He comes from around his open door, holstering his weapon.  “We were told to have all of its contents brought to the impound lot for review and proper disposal. I thought you were getting rid of evidence.”

“No, just trash. It’s pretty messy in there. Wes wasn’t the cleanest guy.”

“And who are you?” the other officer asks, as he comes back outside from taking the trash in.

“I’m Braxton Ryder, a bull rider on the circuit. I was coming to see if Bill needed any help before I hit the road.” I turn and point to my truck and camper that are hitched and ready to go.  “He looked tired and out of breath struggling with those bags.”

“Okay. We can take it from here. Thank you, Gentlemen.” Bills hands them the keys to the trailer and truck, while the one motions for the tow truck driver to back up.

We casually walk over to Colossus. “I guess I’ll meet you in Indiana before the end of the night.”

“I just need a half-hour and I’m ready to go,”  Bill slaps my back. “Hey, thanks for not calling me an old man back there.”

“Yeah, we make a pretty good thieving team.” We both laugh at the irony of that thought. “Speaking of team, have you heard from Noa? She disappeared today, and now I hear she’s gone.”

“Yeah. She called me on her way to the airport. She wanted to terminate her contract and said her attorney would be in contact. I don’t blame her. She was pretty tore up about losing Wes.”

Anger forms in my throat and all I can do is choke out, “Alright. See you later.” I tip my hat to him and climb up into the cab of the truck.

It’s incredible how one wrong decision can turn your whole world dark.