“Oh…”

“So, the traps?”

“Yes, so they’re secret and hard to access. It’s actually kind of genius. In order to open the compartment, you have to have the car off, in neutral, with the windows down, the driver’s seat all the way to the front, and know where the release button is located. Then and only then will the trap open. Otherwise it just looks like regular carpet.”

Beau shrugged, “So what’s the big deal? So Jethro installed secret vanity compartments? How is this supposed to compel us to become the Iron Order’s chop shop?”

I grabbed a nearby chair and turned it around; I straddled it, facing my brother. “That’s not the issue. Well, it’s part of the issue. The real problem is that on the video someone tells Jethro that the traps will be used to transport drugs.”

Beau frowned, his gaze became unfocused as his thoughts turned inward, and I could see he understood the implications.

I continued delivering the bad news. “Jethro cusses a few times, yells at the guy who is off camera, tells him he didn’t sign up to install the traps for drug transportation. They argue a bit. Basically though, the voice reminds him that the only way Jethro can extract himself from future involvement with the Order is to install the traps—which he did—and keep his mouth shut about how they’re being used. The date of the video is about three years ago. They time-stamped it.”

Beau closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair as he reiterated the facts. “So, they have a video of Jethro finding out the traps are being used to transport drugs, which basically makes him complicit or an accomplice to their drug running.”

“Yeah. He installed the traps. Then he taught them how they’re used, how to hide stuff. Then, they pointblank told Jethro that the compartments were going to be used to transport drugs and hide those drugs from the police.”

Beau opened one eye, peeked at me. “And no one else is on the video? Just Jethro?”

“If you don’t count the voice off camera, it’s just Jethro. And the cars.”

“Fuck.”

I nodded, sighing at the frustrating futility of our situation.

“Did you call Jethro? Ask him about the video?”

“No. I didn’t think calling him on Drew’s government satellite phone, while they’re off in the middle of the Appalachian Trail backwoods wilderness was a smart idea.”

“Have you told anyone else?”

I shook my head. “No. I don’t want anyone else to know, just in case we have to go through with this.”

“I agree. No need to tell Billy in particular. He’s perpetually pissed off anyway. With Roscoe finishing his last year of college, he’s got enough on his plate. And I don’t like the idea of messing with his life for no reason.”

“And I wasn’t planning on telling Cletus either.” I watched Beau carefully for his reaction. If any of us were capable of seeing a way out of this mess, it was Cletus. He was too clever for his own good. Still, I didn’t like dragging him into something just to have him shoulder the blame when or if we were busted.

Beau, I think, was having similar thoughts. He appeared to be considering our options. Eventually though, he came to my same conclusion. “No. Best if it’s just you, me, and—when he gets back—Jethro who know about this…disaster. But I’m not ready to hand over the shop, not yet. There’s got to be something we can do, even if we can put them off long enough until Jethro gets back in two weeks.”

I nodded. “I’ve been thinking about that. The way I see it, it’s the video that’s the problem. If we could get our hands on all the copies then the problem goes away.”

Beau cast me a sidelong glance. “So…we what? Go to The Dragon Biker Bar and try to hack into their system? They’ve got to have backups on the cloud, or the mist, or whatever it’s called.”

“I don’t think they’re that advanced, I honestly don’t. I bet they’ve got a PC someplace with the original video. Plus, if we go after their files, get a copy of everything then destroy the machine, we might find something to use in retaliation, maybe another video we can blackmail them with, get them to back off.”

“How are we supposed to access this PC?”

“I’ve been thinking about that, too…” My mouth turned sour because I didn’t like our best option.

Beau studied me for a long moment and, unsurprisingly, he plucked my plan out of my brain. “Tina.”

I closed my eyes briefly and sighed. “Yes. Tina.”

Beau continued like I hadn’t said anything. “Tina can get us in there. Or she can get in there on her own, no problem. She’s been seeing one of the younger guys, right?”

“No. She’s not an old lady. Since we broke up for good, she’s now one of their girls, one of the…” I tried to think what the biker gang called women they indiscriminately used for sex.

“Sweetbutts,” Beau supplied, giving me a scowl that demonstrated his dislike of the word, and the concept.

The Order wasn’t exactly known for being gentle with their women. Maybe it was because our momma regularly sported black eyes and bruised ribs at the hands of our father, but none of us Winston boys found anything remotely alluring about the biker lifestyle. The idea of fucking, and then beating random women didn’t strike me as badass. It struck me as dumbass and evil—like our father.

“Anyway, the point is, I think I can talk Tina into helping us.”

Beau studied me before asking, “Aren’t you worried about what they’d do to her? If they find out?”

“Yes,” I answered honestly. “But it would be her choice. I thought we could pay her. She’s always short on cash. And she’s shrewd, crafty. She’d be careful, I know she could do it and not get caught.”

“What if she uses this as a way to get back at you? You’re right, she is shrewd. What if she takes the files for herself and then we got two people blackmailing us?”

I gathered a deep breath, let my gaze wander as I thought about this possibility—because it was a possibility. “I don’t know, Beau. I guess you’re right. She might double-cross us. But can you think of any other options?”

I settled my eyes on my brother, waited, hoped he’d have an alternate solution.

He looked resigned as he asked, “How much time do we have?”

“Dirty Dave said we have two weeks, and that was on Wednesday.”

“Shit.”

“But I think we can stall for a bit. I got the sense they’d like to do this real friendly. They’d like us to be willing. In fact, they offered to give us a cut.”

“Well, we can work with that. Maybe put them off for a week or two, tell them we need to think it over, not say yes but not say no.”

“Yeah, then delay another few weeks, tell them we need to get the shop ready—or even say we’ll do it off-site. Maybe buy us enough time to get the files, or at least until Jethro gets back and we can beat the shit out of him.”

Beau smirked at this, but it lacked any real humor. “You want to hold him down? Or should I?”

I returned his humorless smile with one of my own. “Let’s take turns. No reason to be greedy.”

CHAPTER 11

“We all know that light travels faster than sound. That's why certain people appear bright until you hear them speak.”

? Albert Einstein

~Jessica~

I was in a funk.

It wasn’t a fun, funky-town funk. It was a full-on, pseudo-depression funk. Not even researching Aztec Temples and reading travel blogs about New Zealand’s geothermic sites did anything for the funk.

And it was all my fault.

Before Halloween, the majority of my fantasies centered on world heritage sites. Now I caught myself daydreaming with alarming frequency about the time we’d shared. Also the reluctant curve of his smile, the shape of his torso, the cadence of his voice, the texture of his beard, and the radiance and intensity of his sapphire eyes.

Not to mention that incorrigible circumcised penis.

Accursed penis!

Making matters worse, I was second-guessing myself. Yes, I still had the insatiable wanderlust, I still desperately needed to see and know the world, but maybe there was more than one way to kill a rooster. Maybe I could save my money and go on really long vacations.

Teachers typically had the option of taking summers off; I could live the year in Green Valley and use the summer to backpack around the world. But this idea felt like settling, like giving up, and it gave me heartburn.

My point, I argued with myself, is that it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. If you really like Duane and you do—don’t try to deny it!—then you should try to find a way to make something between the two of you work…

But with these thoughts also came fear, fear that I would be tied down, unable to travel, unable to leave. Fear that, if my intense like for him eventually turned to love, I would lose my freedom. It would be akin to having those National Geographic magazines read to me instead of losing myself in their pages. My dreams would be diluted and I would be stuck.

It was the fear that held me hostage, trapped in indecision purgatory.

I didn’t call him after our disastrous date, and it had been a disaster. We’d consumed our food in silence; it had stuck in my throat, settled like a lump in my stomach. Duane had packed up, and this time he’d accepted my help. Our walk back had also been silent. Though he was just as solicitous and polite as he had been on the trek out, he hadn’t looked at me. When we arrived to the car he’d opened my door.