Once in the alleyway, I pause for breath. Molly and the bear stare at me, waiting for an order. I glance at them, and put my head in my hands.

"We were so close." I moan. We would have to postpone our storming of Corrina Corrina's hotel, the Windy Palms until we can find a new base of operations.

"We need to get away from here!" I shout. "Molly, hail us a taxi!" She starts to question me but stops and turns, heading out of the alley to follow my orders. I turn to the fat bear. "Go Total." He looks at me and grunts. "Go! We'll rendezvous as soon as we reach another hotel where we can stay, understand?" GO!" I am shouting now. The bear looks sad and moans, but understands. He turns away from me, looking back for just a second, before bounding off into the night.

The taxi drives slowly, stopping in traffic every two minutes. Our driver swears loudly in Spanish every time he slams on the breaks. Eventually this gets annoying and I slide the plastic partition shut. It is better this way. Now Molly and I can talk in private.

"We need a plan." I announce. Molly looks up from her sketchbook, in which she is furiously writing the words "Mrs. Molly Failure".

"Hmm?" she says slowly, dropping her pen.

"Where should we go? How will we find a place to sleep?" I pause. "Dang it, we were so close!" Molly frowns.

"I'm sorry, Timmy." she says slowly in a strange tone. I know that tone. My mother uses it often enough when I anger her. My mother….

Molly continues. "It's not my fault they were tracking the card Timmy. I didn't know." I ignore her.

"We need to find a place to sleep. Checking into a hotel-any hotel-is beyond our price range sans debit card."

"We could just check into it for the night, and then pay in the morning, I guess?" I contemplate her suggestion. It might work, but I'm not sure I want to exhaust our lone resource; the debit card. And, I suddenly realize, I grasp little, if any, of the mechanics of the Debit Card system.

"How much is on the card?"

"My parents said they put a couple hundred thousand dollars on the thing, I think." My heart races. A couple hundred thousand! I've never seen just a thousand, let alone that much. I could take $108 to repay the YIP-YAP funds Molly had given me (I had unfortunately been forced to use it all to 'tip' a waiter at our restaurant to keep him from being suspicious about two children dining alone.). Another hundred could fund the ventures of Total Failure Inc. for the next year.

At first I wonder how Molly's parents can afford to plop two hundred thousand dollars in a checking account, and give the debit card to their daughter, but the. it hits me (thanks to the astute detective skills of Yours Truly). Molly's parents are rich. Not obscenely wealthy, but enough to avoid day-to-day financial stress (A point my mother has yet to reach). It all makes sense; the debit card, Mr Moskin's job in Peru, the fact that the Moskins can afford the latest model cellphone, and finally, that Mr Moskins has the free time to develop an unsettlingly boring hobby; road maps.

All that is fine and well, but the fact of the matter remains; the debit card is simply too dangerous to be used. Every time that thing is used to pay for our expenses we give my mother and the Moskins more and more information they can use to track us. The Moskins, my mother, and Doorman Dave.

"It's too late to check into a hotel." I say. "And we have absolutely no where else to go."

"I have an idea." Molly says.

It is 3:00 in the morning, and me, Total and Molly are entrenched In A 24-hour All-You-Can-Eat Buffet. We have been here for four hours, and Molly plans to stay the entire night, as far as I can tell. She passed off sometime before midnight, and the fat bear entered what, for all I know, could be a food coma. That leaves me alone, sitting at a table stacked high with empty plates, and occupied by myself and two unconscious creatures. With that, a decide it's time to make a call.

I excuse myself from the table, and ask the restaurant's lone attendant, a single 19 year-old janitor lazily mopping the floor, where I can find their phone. He doesn't speak, just points a thin, gloved finger at an archaic phone booth near the door.

I shut myself inside it, and turn to the pay phone inside. There are two calls that must be made.

One to a friend who is indeed quite rotund, whose job was the Sergeant-at-arms, of YIP-YAP, an organization that lost all its funds.

However, it is the middle of the night, and calling Rollo would wake him up, making him cranky. It might also wake up his father and mother, who would be surprised to learn Rollo has been aiding me. They would not only ground him, making me lose my only source of intel on my mother's apparently frantic search for me, but they would use what I've told Rollo to increase their search, and possibly successfully find me and my crew.

So that leaves my other operative still in California; My Great-Aunt Colander.

I currently have a lot of stories I'm working on, which explains why this chapter is so late (for anyone who's been reading). If you read this chapter, and actually like this story, please review so I know whether or not to move it higher on my priorities list.