My brother has the most terrifying “let’s not meet” story I’ve heard

We all love a good let’s not meet story to make us laugh or cringe. But this one is not like that. This is a story to be more aware of your surroundings and how important it is to be prepared to deal with very bad people. <br><br>So my brother had been on the road for 2 years by this time. He has a few jobs, one of them is property scouting for a very large real estate development company. They send people to different locations in the country to take videos and pictures, especially of rural areas, and report back on their observations. <br><br>He was in a very rural town in Texas. It was in the middle of nowhere. He was in a small Super 8 motel, with a small diner next door. He stayed for a few days, and knew everyone at the front desk, the diner, the local gas station. They knew him too. And they knew he was a solo male traveler who was spending a lot of time out in the woods without cell service. <br><br>So my brother is 6’4, 240 lbs, has a thick beard, and was in his 30s at the time. He’s a huge guy. But he has some medical conditions that made him lose his hair very early, so he was pretty much bald. <br><br>One of the evenings, after dark, he goes next door to the diner. He orders dinner to take back to his room, because he wants to just chill for the night. One of the waitresses he didn’t know comes over to him and starts talking to him. She was very very friendly, and very goofy. She had a few things on her that, to my brother, were red flags. <br><br>She had a few different hand tattoos, which to her credit was just very unique artwork, so my brother thought it was very interesting and thought she had some personality. But he also noticed she had some jailhouse-style tattoos on her arms, which my brother recognized as gang tattoos from his time in the army. <br><br>My brother is very outgoing, he likes to talk to a lot of new people, and he’s very observant. So he was trying to find out more about this new waitress. She was definitely not a local, and she acted kind of…off. <br><br>While he was talking to her, and the other waitress, he noticed that anytime they mentioned their life outside of work, she would jump in and interrupt them. It seemed like she was intentionally stopping them from saying too much. It made my brother super curious and super suspicious. He decided to try to get her to talk more, figuring he’d be leaving in a few days anyway. <br><br>The new waitress ended up having a lot of common interests with my brother, she was very much trying to get him to talk to her instead of anyone else. My brother figured out very quickly that she had no idea what she was talking about, and that she had zero real interest in anything they had in common. <br><br>My brother was looking for a way to see if she was dangerous or not. He asked her about her tattoos, since that’s something that definitely needs some conversation. She said it was from her “past life.” My brother knows that this phrase usually means “I used to be in a gang.” My brother was in the army for 8 years. In that time he was stationed in several different countries, and he learned a lot about detecting threats, and defeating them. <br><br>So my brother asked her a very open-ended question about her past life. She went on for several minutes about “just being in a lot of situations, like with guys, you know?” <br><br>So she was being purposefully vague, and kind of weird. My brother was just humoring her at this point. So he asked her what she did now, and she said she was just traveling with her boyfriend. My brother noticed that when she talked about her boyfriend, she glanced up to the corner of the restaurant, by the door, where the ceiling met. My brother knows this as a “tell”, something that tips a person’s hand and shows them how they really feel. <br><br>When he looked to where she glanced, he didn’t see anything. But he figured there was someone in the parking lot, probably in a car, watching. So my brother went on for a few more minutes, chatting with her, but really looking for anything out of the ordinary. <br><br>There was one more thing that tipped him off, and that was it for him. He knew he had to get out of there or something very bad was going to happen. <br><br>There was a scuff on the bottom of her jeans. Like they had ripped on something. On the inside of her legs, near the ankle. <br><br>This was a red flag for 2 reasons. <br><br>1: it was a sign of a struggle. If someone had been forcibly grabbed and put into a vehicle, they would likely scrape their ankle bones. <br><br>2: it was a sign she was complicit. She would know what was going to happen to my brother if she lured him out. This meant she wasn’t just some dumb chick, tricked into luring unsuspecting men into a trap. <br><br>So my brother got his food to go, and left. But instead of going to his room, he walked into the front office, and went straight to the front desk clerk, and said “I need a different room, now.” <br><br>The clerk was confused, and my brother said “I need a room that is not on the ground floor, and I need it now. And I need you to not tell anyone that I moved. Or I’m calling the police.” <br><br>The clerk was shocked, and said, “Yea okay, I can do that.” <br><br>So my brother went to his new room, and looked out all the windows, and saw two guys in a running car, parked on the street. They were casing his room. <br><br>So my brother quietly unpacked his go-bag, which is a portable bag that he always keeps packed with some essentials. He always keeps it by his door, or with him, when he’s on the road. <br><br>He left out the back of the hotel, through a side door that opened into the parking lot. He quickly walked to his truck, threw his bags in the back, and left without turning on the lights. He drove almost a mile down the road, until he found a place to pull over where he could turn around. <br><br>He drove back to the hotel, and pulled into the parking lot, and just watched his room. After about 10 minutes, a few guys came out of the running car, and went into the room my brother used to be in. <br><br>So my brother left, he drove all night to the next town, which was at least 5 hours away. <br><br>When he got to his next destination, he called the police in the town he had left, and reported what had happened. They were very concerned, because they had been tracking a few instances of men who were traveling alone going missing. They never found any bodies, and no one reported them missing for at least a month. The police think these men were taken and were probably going to be sold. <br><br>So this is my brother’s let’s not meet story. I think it’s very important to know the warning signs of danger. If my brother hadn’t been as observant, or as experienced, he could have been the next missing man. <br><br>We all need to be aware of our surroundings, and know what to look for. I hope anyone reading this will be more aware in the future.