There was a little security gate beside the stage which seemed to be the only way in.

By then the brawl had shifted toward the grandstands and we were able to make our move. We had to avoid an inebriated trucker pinned to the ground by a couple of security cops, but we managed to race to the side of the stage without getting knocked over again.

I couldn't stop laughing. I hadn't forgotten the body, but I was so drunk by now, I actually didn't care that someone had just died.

This little panicking security guard was the only person manning the backstage gate. He was so focused on the brawl, standing on his toes and yelling into his cell phone, that he just waved us in without even really looking at our passes. He was probably used to letting local girls with passes backstage.

The area behind the stage was strangely empty. There were these couches set up outside, and a cold-cut buffet, and coolers of what I assumed to be beer, but no one was around. Bryce Tripp's trailer—the same one that had blocked my car—was now pulled up alongside this sitting area.

But Bryce Tripp himself was nowhere to be seen. I don't know what I expected, but not this.

Morgan grabbed a beer from a cooler and sat on the couch.

Just then someone came out of the trailer. A guy. He was dressed in tapered jeans and a fitted shirt and looked ready for an L.A. nightclub.

He lowered his sunglasses, and it was only now that I realized fully that this was Bryce Tripp, the same guy who'd just been singing twangy country songs in a Stetson.

"How do you like my disguise?" he asked.

"I can't say it's an improvement," Morgan said.

He folded his glasses and stashed them in his vest pocket.

"So where we going?" he asked. "If I'm going to buy you drinks, you two have to lead the way. I've never been here before. Where are we, anyway? Muldoon? Is that what it's called?"

"Muldoon," I confirmed, stupidly.

Morgan laughed. "Which means there's only one place to go! Come on."

The Buckshot Bar is the single establishment where you can buy beer on tap year-round in Muldoon. During fair time it never closes, and it's basically standing-room-only, twenty-four hours a day, all weekend.

I don't think anyone recognized Bryce Tripp when we came in. He turned the head of just about every girl he passed when we all made our way inside, and at least a dozen half-sozzled guys sized him up. But he looked so different out of his western clothes that no one realized he was the same guy on all the concert posters. Everyone figured he was just someone's out-of-towner friend, some pretty boy from the city.

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