Political Science 101

Chapter One Hundred

RAY DOYLE made sure the door to his downtown St. Louis hotel room shut quietly as he exited. He wasn't entire certain how he was going to pull this off, but his objective was to make it out to his car and leave. The problem, however, was the simple fact that he was the reason the hotel was so packed full of people. His victory party was gradually filling with supporters and if anyone saw him walking through the hallway, he would almost certainly be forced to engage in a mundane and time-consuming conversation.

But he didn't have time. He had to go.

Ray was going to drive to Jefferson City.

He needed to get to his office. As Ray stewed in his hotel room after Lenore left, he began to wonder what could link him to her, and anything he had which would have left a paper trail would be in an old storage locker in the basement of the Missouri Capitol Building. Originally, he'd kept documents down there for safe-keeping, knowing he would be able to find them and also knowing it was actually safer than a bank's safe deposit box.

There is a tunnel on the side of the capitol building which leads directly to the basement storage area, and outside this tunnel was a security booth. But Ray knew the lone guard who worked there on weeknights, and he also knew this guard was prone to watching NetFlix on his iPad rather than watching his surroundings. Thus, it would be simple for Ray to sneak down tunnel on foot and use the key he kept to access the storage area.

Ray was fully aware that destroying evidence was a felony, and, to his knowledge, that would be the first actual crime he would be committing in this whole scenario. But Ray also knew something else: In America, a person does not need to commit a crime to be sent to jail; they just need to be proven guilty — and there's a difference.

Luckily, Ray found a maintenance elevator near the door to his room and took it all the way to the basement. From the basement, he found stairs up to an exit leading out into an alley. From there, he ran as fast as he could to the parking garage, knowing his car was on the first level. And after getting in, covertly driving to the exit, and paying the parking garage attendant (who couldn't care less who he was), Ray was on his way to Jefferson City.

As his car entered the highway, Ray realized he had not yet turned on his radio. The thoughts in his mind were so fleeting and fast and numerous and confusing that the chaos in his head seemed to fill the silent space in his car. Every possibility and outcome was flowing through his mind like uncontrollable waters of a broken dam; Ray was a worst-case-scenario thinker, so no matter how the situation played out in his mind, each scenario ended with him in handcuffs — and that was simply unacceptable.

Suddenly, as he sped down the highway in silence, Ray was suddenly filled with the one emotion on the spectrum he had yet to encounter: Betrayal. Within a matter of moments, Ray's thought process transitioned from anxiety to rage. His anger weighed on his foot as he began to accelerate for no apparent reason; the dashes separating the lanes of Interstate 70 seemed to look like a solid line.

"That son of a—" Ray said aloud. He gritted his teeth and squeezed the steering wheel. The feeling of betrayal overflowed like an erupting volcano. "Unbelievable," Ray said to the air in his car. "This is not happening!"

Ray felt betrayed for one reason: If Mitch had not decided to go on television and warn everyone about the voting machines, none of this would be happening. If Mitch had kept his damn mouth shut, none of this would be happening. Everything in Ray's life that was seemingly crumbling around him was one person's fault: Mitchell K. Bradley.

Mitchel Bradley had just ruined Ray Doyle's life, and this betrayal would not go unpunished.

Ray sped toward Jefferson City.