Plus, I doubted how long my dad would be able to play possum. He needed to buy me a full twenty-four hours before he could return. But an hour from now, I would be sixty miles away and he could safely return home.

As for Lassie and Murdock, I can only imagine what the two unsupervised teenagers were up to the last twenty-three hours. Murdock would do just about anything Lassie asked him or dared him to do. I am tempted to go see if my father’s house is still standing. If after the two snuck back into the house through the sliding glass door, they burned the place to the ground. Or if they’d eaten all my dad’s pickles.

But I don’t have time.

I jump out of the back seat, rip the blue tarp off the Lincoln and toss it to the ground. Then I hop in the driver’s seat and speed out of the neighborhood.

There is a quarter tank of gas, plenty to get me where I’m going.

I pull out the GPS and turn it on.

My destination is one hour and seventeen minutes away.

I merge onto the highway and drive five miles over the speed limit. It’s going to take me two days to get there, but I’m hoping to cover considerable ground today, so I will have as much of my hour tomorrow to locate the black site and take pictures with my father’s expensive Nikon.

Pictures I will then show to President Sullivan and say, “Told you so.”

Possibly with my tongue out.

The Lincoln eats forty miles of the interstate before the GPS directs me to get off on the next exit.

It is 3:35 a.m.

There is a large gas station — a truck depot — and I pull into the lot. I dash in, use the restroom, then grab two bottles of water, a premade sandwich, three protein bars, some Peanut M&M’s, and a large bag of beef jerky.

The cashier asks, “Where you headed?”

It is the same question he asked the guy in front of me and the same question he will ask the guy behind me.

“Taking a load to Ohio.”

He nods and hands me my change.

Back in the car, I zoom out of the truck stop. A half mile later, I enter the town of McLean, home to Langley. CIA headquarters.

I wonder how much time the goons sitting outside my father’s hotel room spent at the sprawling campus. Is that where they were trained, where they cultivated their espionage skills, where they were taught how to deal with enemy combatants? Did anything in the thick manuals they’d read or the hours of hands-on training they’d endured instruct them how to deal with an English mastiff sitting on the hood of their car?