CHAPTER 61
‘I’m not taking a photo,’ Lucy says flatly.
‘We need to leave, as soon as possible,’ Simone says.
It’s not even half an hour after the police ceased their search, and nobody has yet come back for them.
‘Someone knows we’re here. We have to get out of here.
’ As she says it, Damien is gathering up their things.
Socks, books, glasses, shoes. He’s carrying them around nonsensically in the way people do when they want to feel busy.
‘Just take the photograph,’ Damien adds.
Lucy’s face pales.
‘But Moody said …?’
‘Moody’s house is being searched,’ Damien says shortly. ‘That doesn’t look great for him.’
‘I don’t know,’ Simone argues. But, resigned, she begins to pick up their things, too.
‘He was right about Max,’ Lucy argues. ‘I googled him. Therefore isn’t he straight? And if he has handed us in, why has no one come?’
‘This is not the time to take chances. Whether or not they know we are here, or just that we’re in Terlingua, we have to go as soon as possible.’
Lucy looks at Simone, the way she used to when she was a toddler who would play one parent off against the other, and Simone nods sadly.
Really, it’s foolish to stay here another minute, but the police not returning has reassured her enough to stay until they can leave prepared.
Besides, where else can they go right now?
To her surprise, Lucy stands silently against a blank white wall in Moody’s house, her mouth a low, flat line, her expression heartbroken but silent.
Damien realizes her intent, and gets the phone to use as a camera.
Just out of shot is a photograph of the sky that perhaps Moody has taken, featuring the Texas clouds that look like meringues.
Dark clothes, Lucy’s hair glowing almost white against tanned skin. Damien takes the photos, and then Simone flicks through them. She logs on to the email account Damien got from the dark web, ready to send them, standing there by her husband and daughter in the hallway.
It’s funny that, sometimes, the risk has been taken but the results take time to materialize.
Simone carefully rereads the instructions.
Upload documents as a draft to an email account.
They’re not to send it. The person providing identities will then log on, download the attachments to the draft, without leaving evidence of a sent or received item on any server.
Payment is cash on collection. The identities will be ready within twelve hours, available to pick up at the port. The less Simone thinks about where they have come from, the better. Are their photos to be attached to the dead, the murdered, or just the fabricated?
As she uploads their photographs in miniature, that feeling: settles over her again, the futuristic, unreal feeling: the photos look like mugshots.