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Back 3 a.m.
Chapters (67)
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  67. 3:46 a.m.

If you are the CIA and you have a secret underground prison where you keep and torture enemy combatants, well, I can’t think of a better place.

What I don’t understand is this: if the location were Romania, then there was a possibility I could do something. Stir things up. Make some noise. Since I was at the vet, I was thinking in terms of a puppy. Imagine if there were a puppy lost somewhere in Romania and I knew the puppy’s coordinates. I had enough money that I could probably get the puppy found and flown home in twenty-four hours. But if said puppy was lost in Greenland, well, three million dollars might not bring the puppy’s bones back.

And if this was all happening in Greenland, what did my mom expect me to do with the information, and why was the Department of Homeland Security involved?

I scroll back up to the locations.

I read the coordinates of the Greenland drill site: 38.94445718138941 N, 77.70492553710938 W.

My eyebrows scrunch together.

Greenland was almost into the Arctic. It was much higher than forty degrees north of the equator.

My heart rate quickens.

I search and find a GPS coordinate website and cut and paste in the coordinates.

Not Greenland.

Virginia.

:10

My dad opens the door. He is wearing boxers and a white T-shirt. His eyes are half open.

“What are you do—”

I push past him.

It’s 3:41 a.m.

Murdock rushes forward and starts pawing at the backpack. He can hear or smell Lassie inside. My dad tries to pull him away, but he is too strong. He springs forward, knocks me down, snatches the backpack and begins tearing at it. Seconds later, Lassie wiggles his way through the hole in the fabric.

Prison break complete.

Murdock bathes Lassie in kisses, then the two disappear through a sliding glass door that leads to my father’s neatly kept backyard.

“Say goodbye to all your flowers.”

“I said goodbye to those a long time ago.”

For the first time, I realize it’s been over nine years since I stepped foot in the house where I grew up.

For many years, my dad would drive to see me fifty-two Wednesdays a year, plus Thanksgiving and Christmas and birthdays. Sure, my one hour was precious, but I still should have made the pilgrimage back before now.

“What are you doing here, Son?” my dad says, pulling the door closed. “And what’s with the car parked across the street?”