Page 1 of Tripp

Chapter 1

Tripp

Zipping my pants, I turned to look at the woman lying on the bed.

Last night—no, that would be early this morning—must have been one helluva celebration for a job well done. I had no idea where I was or why there was a half-naked woman lying on the bed. I was wearing shorts and a wife beater when I rolled from under the covers.

Confused, I scrubbed a hand over my beard. I didn’t normally sleep with clothes on if there was a woman in my bed.

Color me confused as hell.

That was it. No more alcohol for me.

I really need to get my head out of my ass and back into the game.

I’d just finished one job, time to move on and find another. The job? To keep a self-righteous prick from getting the life beat out of him; or worse. Yeah, it wasn’t a fun job for me, but it paid well. This little shit thought he was a big bad racer. Well, too bad for him, he’d aligned himself with some serious bad apples. The race in the desert last night had turned into a bloodbath.

I’d had the foresight to stop the kid before he left his hotel. He needed to see what he was dealing with. Vegas thugs were no better or worse than others. These jokers just seemed to be above the law. Maybe they had an inside person, or they were just damn lucky. Either way, I needed this kid to see what he was risking.

It hadn’t taken much to get him to agree to go with me, to keep an open mind. If he wanted to go out and be a reckless idiot after that, well, I’d done what I could. He was technically grown and would have to make his own choices sometimes.

We’d stayed back, up the hill from the race. I made him watch as car after car crashed or flipped for no apparent reason. The amount of alcohol and drug use in that environment blew my mind. After one spectacular crash, the driver’s crew got involved. Gunfire rang out through the open sky and bodies hit the dirt.

I’d done my part earlier and called the police. They just hadn’t gotten there in time to keep the firefight from happening. I’d climbed down off that hill, the rock crunching under my boots, and dragged the moron with me.

His daddy, a highly recognized man in his own right, had sent someone to pick him up and escort him to the private hangar of the airport. For my part, I’d received a wire transfer for ten thousand and two in cash. I needed travel money, after all. Being a man for hire, for a certain group of people, could be tiresome. The money though, that kept me going.

I made sure the woman was breathing; I didn’t need any dead bodies on my watch. It took a few minutes to gather up the rest of my things from the room and head out to my 1982 Jeep Cherokee. The trailer behind it had my 1980 Harley Davidson FXS 80 Lowrider Shovelhead on it. This bike and I had been through many things. It was my go-to when I was on a case. You’d think I would stand out, but nowadays everyone rides, so I’m just lost in the crowd. Same for my old Jeep.

If those wheels could talk.

I checked the straps on the trailer, the tarp was fully in place, no one had tampered with anything that I could see. Guess it paid to be at a hotel in the literal middle of nowhere Arizona. The bar across the street, I could have done without that. My head reminded me of that fact with every step I took.

“I’m too old for this shit,” I muttered.

I’d left Vegas late last night, heading toward Texas. It was time to catch up with old friends and honestly, to check on my son. It’s been about a year since I last laid eyes on him. Using the gas station just up the road, I filled my tank and the two gas cans on the trailer. I was about to head out across the desert and wanted to be prepared.

I checked my water supplies in the back of the Jeep. I had three cases of water, my rations bag was full, and my portable charger meant I had a fully functioning cooler. I went in to pay for my gas, snag a few cups of coffee to fill my thermos, and to get a big bag of ice to fill the cooler. This ice would still be here hours from now, most likely tomorrow.

I would be going through the hottest parts of the United States in the middle of the night, but it would still be hot in the morning. What people didn’t tell you when you made travel plans was, the desert in the day may be one hundred and ten degrees, but at night it dropped down to the fifties. You’re either burning in Satan’s playground or freezing your ass off. I preferred crossing Arizona at night. Unless I had to be out there in the daylight. Thankfully, this time, I wasn’t on a case.

I would however be crossing New Mexico during the day. That meant at times I would have to turn the air conditioning completely off and suffer to avoid killing my Jeep. Survival of the fittest. I’d been in worse places: Iraq, Egypt, the Saharra, the fucking Australian outback. Nothing beat that heat. It was like walking on the fucking sun with your bare feet.

Looking at my watch, I turned on the radio, letting the normality fill the night alongside me.

“What?” My voice was gruff as I sat up in the back of my Jeep, groggy as hell.

I looked around. It had been a long, exhausting night, and it took a minute to remember where I was.

I’d stopped early yesterday morning to grab a bite to eat and stretch my legs only to be stuck in Albuquerque until the flat I’d acquired was fixed. By the time I got to Santa Rosa, New Mexico, I decided to catch a few hours of shut-eye after eating. That meant that when I got up and was ready to roll again, I had to reroute myself to get around a big wreck. I’d decided to go down Hwy 84; it only added an hour to my trip. It beat sitting in the heat and traffic.

The traffic wasn’t too bad, but I did hit a few construction zones. They were slow going and annoyed the hell out of me, but I finally made it to Abilene. I stopped for gas and to find a place to eat. I was tired but fighting it. According to the GPS, I had about five hours to go.

Clearly once I hit Dallas, I was done for.

The loud siren went off again, and I jerked.

Oh, the cell had woken me up. Waking with a jolt either had me ready to fight or confused as fuck. Guess it was door number two this morning.

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