Chapter 4: The Cost of a Name

“Where did you find it?” Elena asked.

Tessa held the narrow strip by its corners. “Inside a uniform that came from another facility. It had been stitched into the hem.”

“Who sent the uniform?”

“I can't tell from the bag.”

Ruth glanced through the window in the cell door. “You should both stop standing here.”

Elena took one careful look before Tessa folded the paper again. Seven names. The first six had dates from years earlier, close to the Greyline payments. Caleb Voss alone had a date from the previous month. No heading explained what the dates meant.

“Don't give it to me,” Elena said. “The investigators can collect it from you with a record of where it came from.”

“They'll ask why I didn't turn it in the moment I found it.”

“Tell them why. Mara asked you to look for it.”

Tessa tucked the paper into her palm. “Easy for you to say.”

“No,” Elena said. “It's a choice I shouldn't get to make for you.”

An officer called for Tessa to return the laundry cart. She left with the paper. Ruth waited until her footsteps were gone.

“That woman took a risk bringing it here,” Ruth said.

“I know.”

“Do you know what the date means?”

“Not yet.” Elena opened her notebook and wrote down the seven names in the order she had seen them. She marked the last date with a question mark. “And I need her to be able to deny she gave me anything.”

The next morning, her notebook vanished.

Elena discovered it after returning from breakfast. Her bedding was neatly made, her glasses remained under her pillow, and the notebook was gone from the inside pocket of her folded jacket. Ruth had been at a medical appointment all morning. The cell door had stood open during the routine search.

An officer told Elena no notebook had been listed among confiscated items. He said she could file a property complaint.

“I will,” she said.

She filled out the complaint with the hour she had left the cell and the hour she returned. She listed the notebook's appearance but did not copy its contents onto a form that might pass through several desks. When the officer asked whether she suspected her cellmate, Elena said Ruth had been at medical and asked him to confirm it. He frowned at the extra work. Elena waited until he wrote it down. Ruth had helped her; a careless accusation would give Mara another way to isolate them both.

By lunch, word had spread that she kept a list of women she intended to report. An inmate Elena had never spoken to pulled her chair away when Elena entered the dining hall. Another muttered, “Careful what you say around her.”

Mara had returned to her usual table. She did not look at Elena, which was worse than a smirk. She was letting the rumor do the work.

Elena carried her tray toward the wall. Tessa met her eyes for half a second and looked away. Elena kept walking.

At the serving window, Mara's friend blocked her path. Her name, Elena had learned, was Dana Kells.

“You writing this down too?” Dana asked.

“Only if you tell me how to spell your name.”

Dana's expression hardened. “You think you're funny.”

“I think you took something from my cell.”

“Then ask a guard to find it.” Dana raised her voice. “That's what you do, right?”

Nearby conversations thinned. Elena could feel the trap: deny talking to investigators and she would be lying; confirm it without context and Mara could make anyone who helped her look like an informant.

She set down her tray.

“I am cooperating in a financial case,” Elena said, loudly enough for the neighboring tables. “I signed papers I should never have signed. People lost money because I helped hide where it went. I gave investigators records about the people who paid me.”

Dana folded her arms. “There it is.”

“If you're on my list,” Elena said, “then you were doing business with Northbridge Logistics.”

A few women laughed, uncertain whether they were allowed to. Mara watched Elena now.

“You think saying you were dirty makes you clean?” Mara asked.

“No. I think it makes me responsible for what I know.”

Mara's face closed. Elena collected her tray and walked to the wall, knowing she'd won no friends. At least the lie had a boundary now. Everyone in the dining hall had heard what her case concerned.

That afternoon Price came to the interview room in response to Elena's request. Elena reported the missing notebook, the list Tessa had found, and the campaign to make her appear dangerous to other women. She withheld Tessa's name until Price explained how she intended to contact a witness without exposing her.

“If the paper is still in her possession,” Price said, “I can arrange a private interview. She decides whether to hand it over.”

“She may decide against it.”

“That's her right.”

Elena gave her Tessa's name. Price wrote it in a separate folder and asked about the missing notebook.

“Dates and names,” Elena said. “No original records. Everything important is already in your files.”

Price looked up. “You don't sound worried.”

“I'm worried about what they'll do after they read it.”

When she returned to the unit, Dana was waiting beside the water fountain. She handed Elena the notebook as if returning a borrowed pen.

“You dropped this.”

Elena flipped through it. Nothing was torn out. On a page near the back she had written a warehouse service code months ago, then crossed it out after discovering she had transposed two digits. The crossed-out code appeared again in her notes with a warning beside it:

incorrect; verify against originals.

Someone had rubbed a thumb over the warning until the pencil was faint. A corner of the page was newly creased.

“Thanks,” Elena said.

Dana's smile was thin. “You ought to keep better track of your things.”

Elena closed the notebook. She knew which entry they had copied. Mara believed the crossed-out number led to an account attached to Warehouse Seventeen.

It led to a canceled internal reference that existed only in Elena's first draft.