Dangerous Territory

Fifteen

Her notes were up to standard.

That was a relief.

By the end of the session the previous day, she wasn't sure if she had omitted to much information or if she was being too vague.

Mala hadn't been there when Tanya went to see Wellington, but the woman had come back to the camera room and given her two thumbs up, before excusing herself again, so she knew that there wasn't a problem. Plus, when they'd initially gone over the notes, right after Auden's session ended, there hadn't seemed to be anything wrong with what she had written.

She was sitting in the same place again, hidden by the wall of archived tapes with her laptop propped open on her lap. Only this time, Jon and Mattheus were in the room, tension and distrust practically flooding off them in waves.

If she had thought they were cold before, they had amped it up a level and now they were cold and unapproachable. Her feeble greeting, when she had initially entered the room in the morning, was received with a stony silence.

Tanya hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary because she didn't speak to them at the best of times, let alone the worst.

Mala's topic of research today was: how to get off the grid with a new identity.

It was a subject that was more and more thought about the longer she worked at the penitentiary.

With every contract she signed and form she submitted, even the very payments for her university education was stamping her name all over the area. She had to be sure that her and Auden would be safe beyond the walls of Irongate. The names Malandra Bates and Auden Ovilio had to be erased.

Escaping truly was the easy part compared to a lifetime of evading the law.

She thought about where she wanted to go, what her new name would be, the kind of house she would like to live in. All things that would probably be out of her control and in the hands of whoever was in charge of their new life.

She probably wouldn't be able to choose what colour she was allowed to dye her hair or the clothes she would be able to wear for a long time. She would probably be holed up in some underground cave for a couple years while the money man sorted out all the relevant paperwork and waited for things on the surface to blow over.

Did she even have money to pay for an illegal identity?

It wasn't a shock at all that google wasn't much help.

Unless you wanted to live within the boundaries of the law, you weren't going to get a new identity easily. That was reserved for the people who were in real danger. Not escaped convicts and infatuated shifter females.

Repressing a growl, she thought of the best mode of operation.

She either needed to make some contacts or find out how to access the dark web because government owned search engines would be the death of her.

"Ready."

Mala jumped up, hearing the shrill shout of Tanya from the door, and grabbed her notebook and pen, "coming."

"We're adding the second inmate to the list today," the woman explained.

"Right."

The two of them left the room and started walking towards the cell area.

"We'll pick up the inmate's folder from Zoe's office after the session and you can have a look," Tanya started, leading her towards and elevator.

"This is new." Mala mumbled.