I related what Amber told me in the latest dream, namely that it appeared she was being held in a warehouse near the port of Tampico in Mexico, to Rachel.
Of course, Rachel maintained she didn't believe any of this stuff about telepathy. She said she was only working the angle because in the intelligence business, which she had trained in right out of college before she'd gotten out and gone into corporate sales, you run out every ground ball you can.
And we didn't have many ground balls available to us.
But Rachel said she had someone in that part of the world she could reach out to, and she was going to have him surveil the warehouses near the port, and particularly the ones known to be owned by affiliates of the Cartel del Noreste.
"Don't get your hopes up," she said. "This is the wildest of wild goose chases."
"It's something, though," I said, "and simply surveiling these warehouses with local people doing the work isn't likely to come back to us."
"Not the way I'm setting it up," said Rachel. "I have two different cutouts on this."
"What happens if we hit paydirt?" I asked her.
"Then we'll go in with the federales, and they'll be rescuing kidnapped American girls while our guy will take Amber, box her up and put her on a plane to New Orleans. All she'll have to do is clear customs. It's easier than trying to get a real girl across the border without paperwork; that would involve coyotes and seeing as though CDN controls that part of the border I think it would be pretty close to impossible."
"Damn," I said.
"It's no big deal. The big deal would be if this crazy dream stuff of yours actually panned out."
"Fine," I said, and after a bit of conversation about more mundane things we hung up.
But then the doorbell rang, and it was someone surprising.
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"Hey, is it OK if I come in?"
"I guess so, Stella. What are you doing here?"
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"Well, we heard about Amber and I want you to know that we're all very upset about it."
"Yeah, I'll bet. Stella, I'm very much under the impression that your ... whateverheis, Cole, is behind this."
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"Well, that's one reason I'm here. Danny is adamant that he had nothing to do with what happened to Amber. He swears it wasn't him and that he would never, ever do that to her."
"See, I just don't believe that seeing as though I found her blindfolded and naked in his house and three days later she was gone. It doesn't help that he claimed Amber was already his."
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"OK, I totally understand where you're coming from, but here's the thing - there was a big miscommunication about what he told you."
"Yeah, Paula tried to tell me that shit, too. She came over here saying Cole sent her here to have sex with me and she couldn't go home unless it happened. And that was basically the exact same time Amber was being kidnapped."
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"Wait, what?"
"You heard me."
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"Well, I didn't know anything about that, and honestly, that would have been a Paula thing and not a Dan thing."
"Again, I don't think I believe that."
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"Oscar, I respect you way too much to lie to you. Seriously, this is not how Dan operates. He doesn't force anyone to do anything. When you're under his wing it's all about your choices, not his. He only makes decisions for us when we ask him to, and he wouldn't have sent Paula to you for sex."
"Uh huh."
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"I know you don't believe me. I understand. But can I explain what Dan said to you and how the misunderstanding might have happened?"
"Sure. Knock yourself out."
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"OK, so, when he said that Amber was his and you would be soon as well, what he means is The Process."
"I don't know what that is, and I don't really care."
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"Well, The Process is this whole mental and emotional stability program that Dan has put together. It's all about discovering your true self and surrendering to it. It brings in stuff from all kinds of religions and philosophy - yoga, transcendental meditation..."
"Stella?"
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"You don't care. I get it. But the point is that Amber was getting into it. And Dan was sure that once you were exposed to it you'd join us."
"Well, Dan was sure wrong about that."
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"I get it. With things going this badly, we understand that the well is probably poisoned."
"And radioactive, too."
