With how the carnival was going from one place to the next as they picked up new children to nurture while selling off others who had reached more appropriate ages, it was difficult to catch them in the act and to know what exactly they were deeply involved in.
It was needless to say that they had built up their fair share of contacts whom they frequently dealt with when they arrived in different parts of the country.
There were not just parts of England that they had various ties to, as they sometimes travelled to other areas to perform, like Scotland, Wales or Ireland.
With their contacts, they could drop in at any orphanage in the city they passed through to pick up new adoptive children, and they could make use of their connections to put one of their children in an auction or set up one themselves.
That type of operation method made them quite well known for having a higher quality of those who were being sold compared to the usual people who were pulled from their lives or fell into a difficult situation through various circumstances.
Since they had regulars who sought them out for such high-quality humans who were raised and trained in various ways, the carnival was able to build up its reputation over time and was able to continue its operations unobstructed for so long.
Perhaps there were some who had suspicions about their other dealings or those who wished to do something about it, but those connections came in handy at times for avoiding such troublesome things and to help avoid getting caught.
Unless they walked into an already prepared and staged trap that was meant to look like one of the usual trades they made, there were few opportunities to prove that they were involved in such things.
It was especially true since a lot of those living in the carnival had been living on the move constantly.
Although there were various papers related to the children who were picked up, among other things, it was easy to lose or destroy such things to avoid there being anything related to the children being left behind.
Everyone was living on the road when they were not living on the land they were set up at in their trailers or tents, so they were practically living like gypsies most of the time.
When they were living like that, there was often little need for things like documentation and other things for everyone who was a part of it.
The way that they lived was just too different to what regular people were used to when they were settled in one place, where they had to sign up for all kinds of things and pay all kinds of taxes for housing and other things.
It was still possible that they may have kept the documents for Tiffany somewhere without throwing them away, so she still needed to be careful in many ways.
Perhaps they might have already thrown them away or destroyed them once they thought that she was dead, but she did not know for sure.
If they still existed, then they were still proof that she was their adoptive child, and they were still her legal guardians.
If they found out that she was still alive in some way, then they would surely try to get their hands back on her, especially if she was able to make a name for herself and looked like she had been able to become quite successful.
If she were still a minor, then she would be an easy target for them to take advantage of, and it would make them even more nervous to have her walking around freely when they had dumped her body in such a way and believed her to be dead.
Even if they did happen to destroy those things, leaving them with no proof of them being her legal guardians, there was always a chance that they could have a backup or copy somewhere.
If they could not get it, then there were always other ways to get a new one, especially if they happened to remember where they had first picked her up.
If they were desperate enough, then they could just as easily get those documents back, even if they no longer had them.
So long as Tiffany was still a minor and was under their guardianship, it was difficult for her to fully escape them.
Perhaps there were ways of escaping and building a new life for herself, but her young teenage brain had yet to think of a valid enough solution to that problem.
It was still quite difficult for her to live on as Tiffany without the proper documents that were related to her birth and other things, so she was still quite stuck on how to proceed going forward.
The best available option was to stick with what she had been doing so far and hang out with Butch for a while until she could figure things out and find a way to build a more stable life for herself.