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into the hospital room as they wept for their friend who lay there in front of them, the soccer-playing,
beachgoing teen now motionless.
On Monday afternoon the doctor ushered Preston’s family into a small room in the hospital.
Then, as tears and shock covered the faces of his mother, father, and sister, the doctor informed the
family that at 3:48 p.m. sixteen-year-old Preston Bridges had died.
• • •
And then, just like that, the weekend was over. Ross, René, Selena, and Kristal packed their bags and
drove back through the orange towers of the bridge. Back to San Francisco. Back toward the Silk
Road.
Ross returned home with a broad smile. He felt renewed as he opened his laptop and logged on
to his world.
“So everything smooth while I’m gone?” he asked Inigo.
“Yep. nothing exciting happened.”
“Goooooood,” the Dread Pirate Roberts replied.
“Surprising huh?” Inigo responded. “Like something always happens when your away. It’s like
the curse is lifted.”
Life was looking up. Ross was making plans with Kristal to visit her in Portland in the coming
weeks. They were going to stay in a cabin in the woods. They would get massages and order food in a
cozy cabin, then romantically nuzzle up to each other over a long weekend.
He was so jubilant about the prospect of his new love interest that he had even broken one of his
own security rules, telling several of his employees and confidants on the site about the girl he had
just met. He even told Nob, his drug-smuggler-turned-hit-man who was currently searching for Curtis
Green.
“You seem to be in a very good mood!” Nob wrote.
“I am,” DPR replied. “It’s a girl :) A woman I should say. An angel.”
A weekend that had started out shitty had turned great. And the big, fat, sloppy cherry on top was
that the Silk Road had made its usual fortune that week, selling drugs to people all over the world,
including a “party pack” of N-bomb to a sixteen-year-old in Perth, Australia.