Smuggled Through the Border Motel

I've worked the graveyard shift at the same border motel for six years, and the rule is you don't see what comes through at two in the morning. Then someone left a duffel on my counter, and the notebook inside it had my boss's name in three different columns. I called the only phone number printed in the cover. A man named Kirill answered before the second ring and said my name. He rode up three hours later on a bike that looked like it had been built in a shed. No cut, no colors, no last name — just a capo on a flathead and a plan that involved driving me north until the men who wanted the notebook gave up. Three days on back roads. Two towns that burned behind us. A family that voted on whether I should live. He kept me alive, then he kept me gone. I kept the notebook. Somebody had to remember what was inside.