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“You got a lot of help after Gaia was busted.”
She’s right, yet she’s also very wrong. Debbie has no idea how wrong, though. She thinks I was adopted by a nice family in New Jersey who raised me in a comfortable, caring home, with summers spent in Italy with my adoptive parents’ extended family. That I was sent to the best day schools in New York and had a team of psychologists to help me through recovery from all those years in Gaia and the trauma of my sister’s death. My parents’ imprisonment.
How Mom testified against Dad.
How Dad hung himself in his cell.
How Mom got out on early release when I was nineteen.
Debbie thinks the stunt I pulled by breaking into Gaia’s HQ when I was nineteen was rooted in psychological trauma from my mother trying to re-establish contact then, and she’s not wrong. What she doesn’t know is that my mother moved from one cult to another, seamless and sure, to take another position in the Viking Virgins, nurturing young women.
As The Mother.
But I’m not going to think about all that now.
“Let’s focus on her. You’re right – we need an end game,” I say, playing along with the concept. “Witness protection is useless. The Luisi family and the Donegals aren’t going to just let her slip away.”
Plus, there’s a third family Debbie doesn’t know about.
“She’s young. We can change her appearance.”
“Can’t change her DNA.”
“No, but the average person isn’t getting scraped and karotyped.”
“She isn’t the average person. You know damn well anyone with that rare kidney disorder is going to be all over her kidneys. And then there’s a liver…”
“You make her sound like a side of beef.”
“I’m the one keeping her alive, Debbie.”
“We’rekeeping her alive. Don’t you try to lone wolf it again.”
I look up at the ceiling, neck straining as the arched cavern makes me smile. The waves on the fake ocean are so real, I feel my blood starting to match the rhythm, which is nothing more than an algorithm connected to a visual recording. It’s soothing, so realistic it makes me long for a dip in the water.
I’m sure there’s a saltwater pool somewhere down here.
“I did what I had to do.”
“And you ditched your dog on us. That’s cold, Cam.”
“How is Butter doing?”
“Fine. Lauren’s taking him in. We told her you got assigned to a new, emergency project.”
“That’s true.”
“That’s not true. You ran off on me, hid vital information, and triangulated.”
“Tell Lauren he really, really likes Velveeta chunks. He’s a good boy who will obey any command for a piece of plastic cheese.”
“You’re such an asshole.”
“Yes, but I’m an effective asshole. If we play this right, the ring of organ trafficking billionaires falls apart forever. Consumer DNA database companies won’t be able to play these sick games. It’s not just the Viking Virgins bullshit, and you know it. They’re doing way more gray hat crap that flies under the radar.”
“I know. All the blackmail going on. We’re getting more and more reports of people who find out they have seventeen half siblings and heyo – the fertility doctor Mom and Dad visited in 1995 turned out to be pumping his hot loads straight into Mom.”
“And all the Vietnam vets who left a little piece of love behind.”
