Rome woke up with a crick in his neck. He had to look at his phone to see what time it was, since the windowless room gave no clues. It was just a little past seven. Normally, he wouldn’t get up that early, but something told him he wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep under the circumstances anyway. He may as well let Ella try to get another hour or so with the entire tiny bed.He feared using the makeshift restroom would be enough to wake her up, but he didn't have a choice and was glad that she only let out a little sigh when he relieved himself. He put

“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 co

The plane landed in Orenburg early in the morning. Rome had arranged for each of them to get to a hotel far away from the airport by different means. He didn’t like the idea of having his eyes off of Ella for even a few minutes, but it seemed like the safest thing to do. He’d arranged for her to take the bus, so she would at least be in public. Likewise, Mary would take a hotel shuttle. Both Rome and Gus would take cabs, but not together. In fact, he waited until he was sure Gus had already gotten into a cab before he even got in line. Once again, he was thankful Bart had managed to get all of his money into an account that would be untraceable to his father so he had plenty of money to make it happen.

The ocean was an emerald green. The wind was hardly stirring, so there weren’t waves of any size, and the sound of the birds and other wildlife calling from the jungle behind her were almost as calming as the vision in front of her. Waking up to step out onto the sand every morning, to take a dip in this heavenly sea, to know that she and Rome were completely safe, that Mary and Gus were not far away and equally safe and happy, was a dream come true for Ella. She never could’ve imagined a remote island in Thailand could be so perfect.“What are you l

Ella fixed a dinner of tortillas, chicken, and a few vegetables in the modest kitchen space of their little piece of heaven. It was a different take on fajitas since she didn’t have all of the typical ingredients she would’ve put into them if she was in a place where she could go to a grocery store more frequently, but it would do. She’d made them a few times in the last few weeks, and Rome liked them.He was sitting outside on a big rock, staring out at the ocean as the tide came in and lapped his bare feet. They spent a great deal of time out there