Taylor Coughlin

From the Book

“What is this?!” I shouted as I unassumingly stepped back into the dimly lit office to discover my best friend Lex with a heavy pistol sharply pointed at a man dressed in a dark grey suit, next to what looked to be a corpse flailed out on the thin blue carpet. At the alarming sound of my sudden outburst, the suited man snapped his focus to me, giving Lex an opportunity to tackle the man to the ground, knocking him unconscious. “Lex!” I shouted in a whisper. “Shhhhhh,” Lex began to rummage through the wooden desk in the corner of the room. “This wasn’t part of my plan by the way,” she informed me as if that made a difference. “What plan?!” Panic grew in my racing mind. Lex was ravenously tearing apart each drawer and component of the desk, eventually uncovering a false bottom in the last crooked drawer. “Isn’t this your business office? Are you looking for something?” Lex ignored me. Stowed in the drawer was a small brass key, and six digits on a small piece of brown stained scrap paper. There was a large towering bookshelf behind the desk housing a small iron safe, which Lex swiftly approached with the key, storing the numbered paper in her jacket pocket. “Are you supposed to be doing this, is this even your office?” Lex continued to ignore me, and opened the safe, quickly grabbing a thick stack of paper documents, along with a black leather case. “Go, now,” she whispered to me. “What do you mean, what about the bodies on the floor!” instead of answering me, again she ignored my questioning and shoved me out of the room, pulling me toward the back of the building.