For an instant he was actually able to retain his balance, but then he tipped over. Van, now in reverse with the emergency brake off, rolled backward into a squad car. The crowd cheered.

“Gunn!” the sergeant screamed. “Put the fucking brake on! Put on the brake.”

Gunn got out muttering. Several of the other cops turned their heads so they wouldn’t be caught laughing. Eventually a lieutenant showed up and took charge. His name tag read L. Carty. He was a perfect bronze color and came fully equipped with a sense of humor. He asked me to drive Van, which would make everyone’s life easier, then cautioned me about trying to escape. “But if you do, I’m warning you,” he threatened, tilting his head toward Gunn, “you better take him with you.”

I rolled Chair into the rails behind the wheel and locked down. We drove in a convoy, three squad cars in front of me, three behind, all of them with their light bars flashing. It was as bright and colorful as a party in my friend “The Mush’es” basement in high school. Gunn rode shotgun with me, watching me drive with the hand controls. “That is definitely cool,” he finally said. “Man, I never would have figured that out.”

“Oh, sure you would have,” I said, as if he were a friend. I went through each of the controls for him, demonstrating how they worked. And when I was done with that I asked, in the same friendly conversational tone, “How’d you guys find us anyway? That’s good police work.”

“Thank you, we are pretty good, you know, for a small town.” He paused, then filled the silence. “Okay, I’ll tell you. We didn’t. The marshals called us and said you were over at Leo’s and we had to get right over there and arrest you.” That was interesting but not helpful. I’d screwed up somewhere, and without knowing exactly where that was, it was possible I’d do it again.

“They don’t tell you how they do that stuff, I guess.”

Gunn was pretty talkative once you got him going. “It’s some kind of secret voodoo shit. They got all this spy stuff. All I know is they told us they seen you going into Leo’s.”

Thank you very much, Officer Gunn. Cameras. That’s interesting. Drones maybe, but I doubted that. There’d be no reason to fly drones in that area. Satellite images? Possible, satellites could read license plates fifty miles away, but Laura had changed the plates and there were a lot of white vans on the road. They saw me going into Leo’s? Not Van, me. It had to be surveillance cameras. Had to be. We’d used them all the time over there to gather intel. I wasn’t really up-to-date on new techniques and capabilities, but I was pretty sure they were keyed for characteristics. Hair color. Height. Gender. Wheelchair. That was a problem. Once we got out of this, I’d have to figure out how to present a different profile.