Page 84 of See How They Hide

“Sure,” Dean said. “Are you hungry? Can I get you anything?”

“No, thank you.” She picked up the pad and pencils.

“One more thing,” Kara said. She pulled out her phone and showed Riley a picture. “Who is this woman?”

Riley stared at it. “Thalia, a few years after she left Havenwood.”

Then Riley walked into the adjoining room.

“Before you jump down my throat,” Kara said, “she needed to hear that it’s not her fault.”

“I probably wouldn’t have been so forceful, but I agree she needs to hear it and often.”

“If I was as calm as you, she would think I was placating her. I have to be who I am, or she’ll pick up on it in a heartbeat.”

Kara reached over and shut off the video.

“She trusts you,” Dean said.

“No, she doesn’t trust you or me. I can tell her she isn’t to blame, but that doesn’t mean she believes it. There’s more there, a lot more. We’ve barely scratched the surface.”

“You sound worried.”

“I don’t know if Riley is right and Thalia is already dead. She could be. But why now, why not three and a half years ago? How did Calliope find a place to start looking? There are two possibilities I can think of. Either someone who left went back and spilled the details, or Thalia did. I’m leaning to someone returning.”

“Maybe you understand cults better than I thought.”

“No,” Kara said, “I really don’t. But I understand the psychology of abuse victims, and the penchant for them to return to those who hurt them.”

30

Havenwood

Thalia was going to die.

Calliope and her followers had built this prison, practically a pit in the ground, after Thalia left. By the waste and the blood, she knew others had been kept here. How many people had to be broken before the rest saw the truth?

Everything her parents built had been destroyed.

Thalia desperately wanted to fix what had gone wrong with Havenwood. She’d been so close...and then her mother had died.

She had never wanted to leave the sanctuary she’d called home since she was born. Thalia was her mother’s daughter—she loved nature, art, the beauty of the world around her. Her mother had a hard life, and Havenwood was her chance to be reborn. She had a framed picture she’d brought from the outside world that hung in her house Thalia’s entire life. It was a picture of a sun-drenched forest with a quote by Frank Lloyd Wright: “Study nature, love nature, stay close to nature. It will never fail you.” For years they lived by that quote, and Havenwood was truly paradise. People joined them, contributed to the community in a variety of ways, wherever their talents took them. They built homes, a greenhouse, endured harsh winters like their ancestors hundreds of years before. But they were joyful and spiritual. They weren’t the Amish, but they lived life as simply as they could, focused on nature and community, love and acceptance.

Thalia was much younger than Calliope, and she had once loved her sister.

Until she saw firsthand the darkness in Calliope’s soul.

All utopias failed, that was human nature. Thalia had never believed in evil—until Calliope. Had her soul always been damaged, or did losing Glen and her baby break her? Thalia didn’t know. But there had been signs over the years, signs Thalia was too young to understand until it was too late.

She shifted and cried out in pain. She had broken ribs, bruises, a sprained ankle, more. She was angry with herself and so very depressed. Her own arrogance and selfishness had resulted in her captivity.

She’d trusted the wrong person. After Riley left, she should have stopped trying to help. Her niece was much better at picking who would survive on the Outside than she was.

Now Calliope was killing everyone who mattered to her. For the first time, Thalia was glad their mother was dead and couldn’t witness what her own daughter had become.

She jumped when she heard a key in the lock above, feared the end was near. She would be dead, and Calliope would hunt down the rest who had left and kill them like she had the others. Would Calliope kill her face-to-face? Or would she send someone else, like Anton?

The footfalls on the wooden stairs were light, barely there. Neither Anton, who was a large man, nor Calliope, who strode purposefully wherever she went.

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