At All Costs Read Online Free Page B

from the drawer.
    “It’s not your break time!” Phyllis said, drawing looks from shoppers. “You get back here right now!”
    Carolyn never said a word. Her mind was elsewhere, reliving the terrors of her past, wondering how this could have happened again. An assault charge? Isn’t that what Jake had said? Who on earth did he assault? She chastised herself for not paying closer attention.
    The escape plan was built around a single theme: family first, at all costs; everyone and everything else second. Carolyn’s first mission, then, was to retrieve her son from school. Even without Jake, she and Travis could make a go of it. Jake was resourceful—brilliant, even—at these things. If they couldn’t make the initial rendezvous, he would figure out a way to catch up. But Travis was still a boy. He had no idea what awaited him. He’d have to be taken care of, guarded and protected.
    Damn that field trip.
    With family accounted for, the next priority was to obtain the tools for survival. Life would be harder where they were going. She shivered at the memories of their previous life in hiding as they learned how to disappear; taking refuge in safe houses owned by her Uncle Harry’s “business associates.”
    They’d learned a lot about survival in those days. A little ferret of a man who called himself Lanford “Lanny” Skiles taught them the art of disappearing. A street-smart forgerembezzler with bulbous eyes, Lanny had worked for days to change everything about them—all the intangibles. New speech patterns, new tastes in food, new dreams, new fears, were all drilled into them to the point where reality became blurred.
    Thus, Jake and Carolyn Donovan ultimately became Jake and Carolyn Brighton, leaving the first names the same because, experience demonstrated, responding to them is too ingrained a habit. Early on, Jake suggested leaving the country, but Lanny said no. Hell no, in fact. You needed a passport to leave the country, which in turn required a birth certificate. Photos would be more carefully scrutinized, and the FBI would be reinforced by State Department investigators. Each additional step—each new involvement by law enforcement agencies—represented one more chance to screw up.
    “Absolutely not,” the ferret had insisted. “You and Miss Muffet here”—he gestured toward Carolyn—“are better off sticking to a country where you know the ropes. But that doesn’t mean goin’ back to your old stomping grounds. You better make damn sure to stay clear of any place you visited prior to going on the run. And don’t even think of calling the ‘people who knew you when.’ Do that and you’re toast.”
    Carolyn was the one who noticed that Lanny never said the word “Donovan” in their presence. If differentiation was needed between their old and new identities, he’d always say “back when you were in the world.”
    Some attributes, however, remained unchangeable in the short term, and they became the weakest links in their new identities. Height, weight, and fingerprints, for example, were not forgeable, though over time, age took care of two out of three. People on the wrong side of the law had tried for years to alter their fingerprints, but never with any meaningful success. About the best you could hope for was a lot of pain and a collection of scar tissue that would draw more attention than the original prints themselves.
    The art of disappearing hinged entirely on one’s ability to be so normal as to deny people the desire to ask probing questions. “You’ve got to live like Mr. and Mrs. John Doe,” Lanny had told them a thousand times. “No one ever questions a white shirt with a blue suit, but get all snazzed up and you may as well be wearing a sandwich board: LOOK AT ME .” No bow ties, no flashy dresses, no expensive anything—not that they could have afforded much, anyway.
    And, of course, no kids.
    Well, they’d drawn the line on that one. Truth be known, Travis was an