CHAPTER 63
Galveston Port looms into view. It took so long, almost all their cash now gone, the rest to be spent on the identities and the cruise ship tickets they reserved, but it’s worth it because it kept the number of people who saw them low.
They didn’t need to fly, or go through a train station terminal. And here they are.
The port is industrial, huge ships everywhere, slow-moving triangles that throw around light and shade as they block the sun with their mass.
A port is a port, and Simone could almost pretend she’s in England; gone is the sandstone of the desert, replaced with blue and white and grey.
There’s moisture in the air. Not rain, only sea, but still.
And suddenly, it’s no longer just the three of them, a little pink house and the brown and red of the desert.
They’re here. Between them and freedom stand just documents and one official.
Five minutes go by, then ten. Simone and Lucy stay where they are, their hair enmeshing in the strong breeze, saying nothing, merely watching the door to the storage units steadfastly remain closed, hoping that the illegal service they have purchased is – ironically – not a scam.
‘How can someone exist online selling things that are just so illegal?’ Lucy says simply. ‘He was easy to find.’
‘I know.’
Simone, watching nothing happen at the automatic doors, agrees entirely. How could they trust a stranger on the internet? How could they take such an enormous risk?
How did they run so easily out of options?
But then, as unceremoniously as he went in, Damien emerges, carrying a brown envelope. He is seemingly safe and free.
He gestures for them to cross the road to reach him and they head into a sheltered alleyway.
‘All fine,’ he says tightly, looking around him for CCTV, then handing out the documents.
They can’t be the only people buying identities here, but it feels so.
Damien wordlessly hands Simone hers. As she checks it, she remembers reading somewhere that this is a federal offence, but the fear doesn’t seem to hit like it once would have.
Sometimes, you’ve just done too much to care any more about the collateral.
‘How did you pay him?’ she asks him, once she’s looked at her identity.
An anodyne name, Sarah, against Simone’s own face.
She could never be a Sarah, she finds herself thinking; she’s had a name unusual enough that she’s never met another her entire adult life.
‘A man met me by the locker. Was expecting me. Said nothing except the price.’
Simone nods, glad her husband dealt with it and not her.
She shudders there in the cold shade of the buildings with the ocean salt in her hair.
She turns and looks over her shoulder, just once, imagining tens of police gathering to arrest three fools, but there’s no one.
There is nobody except the bustle of tourists. Nothing out of the ordinary.
And, just like that, for a fee, Simone, Damien and Lucy have become different people.
‘The passport check is in that building over there, before the ship,’ Damien tells them, his tone wooden, and Simone wonders if he’s optimistic, if he’s nervous, or if he’s just pretending, too.