Documents everywhere; real documents, documents straight from the source; documents which, had they been forged, would have been far more unsettling even than they already were. Yet what to do with them? No reporter would believe them to be real, no publisher would allow them through their presses on the fear of lawsuits or worse; not even a blogger would touch them, knowing they would likely be killed in their beds, their murder chalked up as the result of a robbery gone wrong, or even as a suicide.
There was no way of knowing when their absence from the archives would be discovered; it could be hours, days, or even years. If hours, there would be no escape; if days, there was a chance to cover tracks and dive deep into some backwater and hope for the best; if years, a chance to use them well may appear, but carelessness due to the march of time would likely end with an awful death once the missing documents were discovered.
Time could not be wasted. The documents were gathered together, placed in a leather satchel, which was in turn thrown back over the shoulder. The satchel-bearer turned off the lights, shut the door, and fled down the hall, one hand clutching the bag’s strap, the other making sure the gun was still in its belt holder.
Out the door and into the car; soon the hotel and its town were no longer in the rear-view mirror. A case of Coke sat on the floor on the passenger’s side of the car, a case which was emptied at a surprising clip as the car hurtled down the highway on its way south, on its way away from immediate danger.
