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  67. 3:46 a.m.

The entire shoebox is aflame. A half second later, Armageddon erupts. A second and third Howler begin screaming. Twenty bottle rockets zip out in twenty different directions. Black Cats pop off in one hundred round successions. Spinners shoot out and begin zipping all over the street in neon sparks. Smoke bombs begin hissing out their colored clouds.

It’s a light show Prince would be proud of.

My dad dashes from the front of the house. He is wearing the clothes I wore earlier as well as a motorcycle helmet. If the two men looked closely, they might realize he isn’t me. But they are a bit preoccupied celebrating July 4th with their new pets.

My dad jumps on the scooter parked on the street, hits the engine, and takes off. He gets a ten second head start before the man dives back into the passenger seat and the black sedan revs its engine and Murdock gallops away.

I dart back into the garage and jump into my father’s Lincoln.

It is 3:58 a.m.

I hit the garage door opener, check if the coast is clear, and then zip out of the neighborhood. I take a left, then a right, then another left, then pull over on the side of the street.

I have less than a minute.

I jump out, grab the tarp I took from the basement, and throw it over the car. I only have three-quarters of the car covered when the alarm on the watch I borrowed from my dad goes off and I crawl under the tarp and dive into the back seat.

:11

I half expect to wake up in an underground dungeon, chained to a wall, rats having eaten off both my big toes.

But it appears the CIA took the bait.

I directed my dad to drive just fast enough so they would be able to see him and to lead them out of the neighborhood. I didn’t want to risk them losing sight of him, then doubling back and searching the neighborhood, then seeing a car with a blue tarp over it and growing suspicious enough to check its plates. Whereby they come back to a Richard Bins, and then I’m in a dungeon with my toes eaten off.

Whether the CIA boys followed my father to a motel ten miles south, it didn’t matter. They would still find him.

He had my cell phone.

They would have traced the GPS to the Motel 6 just on the outskirts of Alexandria and settled in for another night of watching.

I’d thought about keeping my dad’s cell phone, but I didn’t want to underestimate the CIA. They might figure out my dad was simply a diversion and trace my father’s cell phone thinking I might have it. No, it was better to be off the grid.