She takes the toothbrush cap out of her pocket and sets it on the tiny little counter, and then flattens herself against a wall to give him room.
Thankfully, most of the exceptionally gross parts of the demorph happen when he is still only a few inches tall. He grows to human size roughly Trouble-shaped, but with bug eyes and a hard jointed exoskeleton. Then he regains his human skin and bones, in a rippling wave from the feet up, and finally his eyes.
"Oh, man, eyelids," he mutters, rubbing his face with both hands. "It is so awesome having eyelids."
"That's cover-up, not part of the rescue itself. We set up the hike, cut as close as we can to when the Yeerk is going to need to nip out for some Kandrona. Before we leave Andi unloads Charlie's gun in case he brings it. While we are out in the woods, we encounter some bears. You guys can rotate out, but don't let him get to the car or otherwise away. Tree him if you can, avoid hurting him if possible - Trouble, the Yeerk will come out when it's hungry enough pool or no pool, right?"
"Good. When that happens and it's good and dead, we can explain everything to Charlie, and unless he has a better way for him to plausibly meet his end - or, conceivably, can think of a way around needing to - you turn into him and Ethan mauls you and we generally stage the scene like a bear killed and dragged off our father, we go look for park rangers - whichever of you is not being a bear at any given time would be helpful if they were being pigeons and checking for park rangers who might get near Charlie. We tell the park rangers a bear killed and dragged off our father. Meanwhile Charlie gets morph-capable and turns into - something, it'll depend on what's available, probably some kind of bug."
"If you get a chance to grab a bird of prey between now and then, do, I just don't see a great way to manage it and still want to conserve morphs as much as we can." She pulls out her notebook, starts scrutinizing ciphers. "If it's got any plans to take us by force in the next couple days, we can morph our way out. Andi sleeps light enough that it can't even open our door at night without waking her and it knows that. We do the cooking when we're here so it's not like it can drug us. Am I missing anything?"
Over pizza, Bella says, "So Dad, we accidentally got Robin all enthusiastic about the national park and she wants to go. I have a nasty bruise on my ankle and want to walk even less than usually but I think it'll be all cleared up by like Tuesday, can you take off Tuesday do you think?"
Bella writes a lot. She passes the boys bread and whatever more substantial food she thinks she can sneak. And she informs them when they're going to leave for the park. They should go ahead of the Swans - traveling as flies in the car leaves too much risk of travel delay, but they'll be able to catch the family where they park. (Maps are deployed.)
Bella pats the bear she is sitting on. "This one morphs you. That one," she points at Ethan, "assuming I haven't mixed them up, mauls him and drags him off to the nearest water source, then this one demorphs, all better, he doesn't mind getting mauled. We find park rangers and tell them a bear attacked you and we barely got away. The tracks are right, the blood is right, etcetera. Meanwhile, we make you morphable, you turn into some kind of bug or something else we can catch here, we take you someplace you can hide out - probably back to Phoenix, ultimately."
"Okay. Back to the picnic stuff for the box, then you let Trouble acquire you, they try for their Oscars, we leave some of your stuff around - Andi has your bullets, you can reload the gun, maybe fire at a tree to make it plausible that you tried to hit the bear and missed, leave it on the ground. Then you turn into whatever's handy and little and me and Andi go act hysterical."
"Yeah. User-friendly, huh?" She wraps it up again. "Shake hands with Trouble, you'll go kind of sedated - and then you're going to have to give him most of your clothes. If you were wondering why me and Andi are dressing like shrinkwrap is the new fashion it's because it's easier to incorporate snug outfits into a morph."
Charlie's eyelids droop and his posture slumps when he's acquired, and then he comes around. He sighs and starts handing over clothes. "You go behind a tree or something when you morph," he tells Trouble, "all right? And - I did that 'cause Bella has a plan, not necessarily okay with being turned into for... plan-unrelated things."
The park ranger escorts them to the nearest outpost of civilization and goes out with some other park rangers to look for Charlie while the girls are plied with little bottles of apple juice by a nice receptionist of some kind.
Andi gives the nice receptionist of some kind Renée's phone number.
Andi goes to the bathroom to let Charlie demorph and remorph after it's been a while. She passes the toothbrush cap to Bella when the receptionist isn't looking so she doesn't wind up looking like she's been drinking gallons of coffee if they wind up staying here for a while.
He tries not to be too pessimistic in front of the girls, but they've apparently found the scene and it apparently wasn't good. They're going to keep looking - he doesn't say it, but presumably it's to see if they can find the rest of the body.
They will, Bella says, be as okay by themselves as they can be.
"Esclan wasn't important enough to know anything about that kind of thing," says Charlie, shaking his head, "his job was to have a respectable authority figure participating in the Sharing chapter and let Controllers off with warnings if they had to commit crimes going about their business."
"Anybody have a way to get ahold of a marine mammal that doesn't involve flying to Seattle? Can fly to Seattle if we have to, it's just a long way. We have a few days before Renée gets up here to console us, we're just lucky she's on the road trip and not answering the home phone."
"Find out what morphs they already have, work out a plan from there to get them a pigeon or crow or something, hide them roughly the way we're already hiding Trouble and Charlie, and pump them for information," Bella says. "We may need some kind of permanent hiding setup. I guess once Charlie is legally dead me and Andi inherit all his stuff - Dad, you cool with donating to the general cause of ridding the Earth of Yeerks?"
"He will probably come off when he demorphs," says Bella, "and the worst case scenario isn't irrecoverable if it's just a little dab of glue - Andi, you kind of confound all the results because you're so fast and controlled and you're the one I was trying stuff with."
"So we need to be home the rest of today, but Dad's friends - unless they're suspicious Controllers? - aren't going to go prowling upstairs uninvited if we're short with them at the door. Me and Andi and Robin are all officially here and can take turns being downstairs and awake to answer the door while everybody else naps so they can stay up late. After ten p.m. nobody is going to go bother some teenage girls whose father just died, so we can go then, pigeons aren't great for at night but we'll have city lights to go by and should be able to manage. Orcas will be in a tank open to the air, with any luck we can find one by itself so Trouble can calm down one hundred percent of the whales in the tank for us."