New Identity
“The key to a good disguise is to make one feature draw the attention away from all others,” King was saying as he worked on transforming Ella into someone else. “You want to make it look as if it isn’t possible that one feature is false, so that the mind is tricked into focusing on that feature and dismissing all others.”
Ella watched the face she’d drawn used to recognizing in the mirror transform into something else, a person she didn’t even know. Her eyes weren’t even the same color as usual after King put colored contacts into her eyes. Her hair was short and feathered, though it wasn’t actually hers. She was wearing a truly convincing wig. Her teeth were off-white with a gap between them, and behind thick glasses, she had dark eyes. Perhaps the most noticeable part of her new facade, though, was the mole next to her nose. It was placed so much better than the one she’d stuck on the day before. It looked real. She didn’t look like a young woman even. She looked more like she was in her mid-to-late thirties. King had clothes for her to wear that fit her new facade and would make it less likely to recognize her as a wealthy American as well.
“Wow!” Rome said, as she turned to look at him. “I wouldn’t even know it was you.”
Ella smiled, and he noticed the gap between her teeth and laughed at that. “What do we do about our passport pictures, though?” Ella asked King.
“I will take care of those before you leave. Don’t worry. I have gotten hundreds of people through screening without fail. Not one failure.”
Ella had no choice but to trust him. She certainly wouldn’t be able to get through customs looking like this. She looked nothing like the fake picture Bart had attached to her passport.
Over the next few hours, King transformed all four of them so that not a single one of them looked anything like themselves. Mary became an old woman with a crooked back. Gus became even younger somehow, and Rome looked nothing like the athletic heartthrob he had been when King started.
Once he was satisfied with his work, King took new passport pictures of each of them and then set about remaking their fake documentation, giving them fake driver’s licenses as well. He changed their names to something that seemed random to Ella. She wasn’t Juliet anymore. Now, she was Cindy Grimm.
“All of these name changes, I’m not going to be able to keep track of who I am anymore,” Mary said, looking at her new passport that called her Nancy Ratcliff.
“I think I will just start calling everyone, ‘Hey you!’” Rome joked. Ella agreed with a giggle. It would be hard to remember who everyone was.
They decided they needed to travel lighter, so as much as it pained her to do so, Ella left her wedding dress and the gown she’d gotten from Tim in King’s care, along with some other items. He promised he’d take good care of them and return the items to her as soon as she was settled somewhere. She had no idea if or when she would ever be able to be settled again, but she prayed she would be, someday.
Night had fallen by the time King loaded them up and headed back to the airport. This time, each of them only had one small bag. King had kept their expensive luggage and traded it out for some old bags of his. “Now, this isn’t going to have any bomb residue on it, is it?” Gus asked him.
King laughed and said, “No. Probably not!”
Ella hoped he was joking. This time when she squeezed into the truck with him, she didn’t feel so odd sitting next to the older man.
He took his time winding his way out of the woods, and now Ella understood why that was important, too. There were traps and other triggering devices planted everywhere, meant to deter people like the ones who’d attacked the night before, but it was just as likely King would accidentally trigger them himself if he wasn’t careful.
Eventually, they made it out to the main road, but he took a different route, trying to establish that they weren’t being followed.
He didn’t drop them off at the airport, either. Instead, he dropped them at a bus station, and the four of them would have to catch a bus to the airport. That was fine with Ella. If any of King’s enemies were following them, maybe they’d be able to lose them before they got to their actual destination.
“No dilly dallying when I stop,” he said to the girls as they approached the bus stop.
“Thank you for everything,” Ella said to him, understanding what he meant.
“You are quite welcome. Best of luck to all of you.”
He stopped a half a block away from their destination, and the girls got out. Rome and Gus hopped out of the back, grabbing their bags. Ella thanked him hastily again, closed the door, and stepped onto the sidewalk, taking her bag from Rome, even though he would’ve kept it. But the four of them were planning to act like they didn’t know each other, even on the plane. Of course, first they had to figure out where they were going.
Rome stepped away from the others while they walked toward the bus stop. He had his phone out and was investigating plane tickets. The bus pulled up, and about five other people got on. Just as Ella stepped onto the bus, Rome got in line behind her. She turned to look at him, and he nodded.
They had tickets. That was something. Now, where in the world were they going?
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