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“Those are sad ones,” she says with a sigh. “Sometimes the American dads take them and their kids in. Sometimes the dad died before meeting them.”
“I’ve seen the documentaries. No one’s making award-winning movies about the Luisi family creating a cult to deprive parents of their daughters and turning them into meat puppets.”
“Not yet,” she says with disgust.
“But there are plenty of other ways those consumer DNA databases create sickening messes people use to prey on unsuspecting folks.”
“Or reveal secrets people want hidden forever,” she says. “Nothing like getting a call out of the blue when you’re eighty-five from your seventy-one-year-old kid you gave up for adoption because your father raped you.”
“Ooof.”
“Yeah. That’s a new one. The kid has seven half-siblings. Turns out Grandpa raped every single daughter he had and they all were forced to go to ‘unwed mother’ homes and give up their babies.”
“Jesus, Debbie.”
“Jesus had nothing to do with what that man did. We see nothing but crazy shit in this job. Guy like that would be trafficking girls these days. Only the lack of technology held him back. Seventy years ago, all he had were his own daughters and probably a few neighbor girls to target. Now he would catfish on the internet, use burner phones, and get his hands on the right sedatives.”
“You make Luddism look good.”
“I don’t do anything, Cam. I just try to get these women and girls into safer situations. We can’t stop evil from doing what it does. We can just halt it from doing more of it when we uncover the truth.”
The fact that she can even say something so idealistic makes me nearly laugh out loud.
And at the same time, her words shore up my own need for revenge. Stopping what the masters are doing is paramount. It’s my mission. Saving Paigelynn is almost an afterthought.
Almost.
“Then again,” Debbie says with a chuckle, “I am not sure I even know what the truth is in this mess. Whose truth are you following?”
I laugh with her.
But don’t take the bait.
“Wherever you are, as long as you’re safe and she’s safe, I won’t pry. We’re working on locating the other women. We have it narrowed down to 100-mile zones. Let me work on an end game plan. Talk to Paigelynn about it, too.”
“Right.”
“She needs agency, Cam. The whole point of this operation is to give these women a real life again.”
The whole point is to make them pay.
Debbie doesn’t know that, so it’s easier to shine her on.
“Right. I am easing into that. She’s still hung up on the whole princess, queen, king thing.”
“True believer?”
“Not quite. The cracks are definitely in the facade. It’s a lot to tell someone.”
“It’s like taking a starving person and shoving a buffet in front of them. They’ll die if they eat too fast. Don’t overwhelm her.”
“I’m trying not to, but I’m not a trained psychologist. Not a cult expert like Steven Hassan.”
“You want him? I can work some channels.”
“No. Can’t compromise location.”
“Video call?”
