Page 127 of See How They Hide

He listened to his earpiece, then said, “Rear block in place. Three. Two. One.”

The first truck came into view. It stopped almost immediately when the driver saw the Humvee, the second truck right behind it. They were fifty feet away.

Silence, except for idling motors and Catherine’s racing heart.

She willed it to slow. She signaled on her radio to Dean—three short clicks—that the trucks had been stopped.

He was supposed to signal with two long clicks in acknowledgment.

She got nothing.

Dean, Michael, and Sloane moved through the trees toward the eastern side of the Havenwood compound. They had given Kara and Toby a fifteen-minute head start.

When they were closer to the camp, he turned his radio down to silent. The air was too still, the morning too quiet. One unusual sound and the people of Havenwood would hear them.

He should have anticipated Riley’s actions. In hindsight, all the signs were there. Her fear of authorities. Her willingness to help. The drawings of her mother—the only drawings that showed something that wasn’t there. Everything else she drew was true to life—the other people, the animals, the nature. Trees were trees, flowers were flowers. But her mother was both mother and goddess, beautiful and evil. Medusa was a legendary villain in Greek mythology. That and that alone should have signaled to both Dean and Catherine that Riley might be compelled to face her mother.

Riley had insisted on coming with them. Had she planned this the entire time? He thought back...it was after Ryder Kim came in with the news of working with the forest rangers in the area. Toby Strong said he’d been in the valley, that he knew several of the people. She knew if she got closer to Havenwood, she might have a chance to slip away from them.

What was her plan? To warn her mother? He didn’t think so. After everything that happened to her, to her friends, he thought it more likely that she would either confront or kill Calliope.

Either one was a problem for them, but killing her mother was something she couldn’t come back from.

Especially if it was premeditated.

Dean understood cult mentality, but only after the fact. He had studied cults in history, could dissect them. He’d negotiated successfully to end standoffs three times, unsuccessfully once with a small doomsday group in Idaho. Five people had died that day.

He’d interviewed cult survivors and the one thing they had in common was the strong need to belong to something bigger than themselves. Many had faced tragedy, or had low self-esteem, or felt like outliers in society. But they all craved belonging, a community, a common, shared existence with other human beings.

Cult leaders preyed on the very human need for community, and through psychology and manipulation and often brainwashing, changed perception of right and wrong, good and evil, to conform to the needs and desires of the cult.

Every time Riley spoke of Havenwood, she recalled what it had been before her grandmother’s death. She spoke with affection and longing of a place that no longer existed—a place she felt her mother had destroyed. At the time, she could do nothing to stop it—she was a child. Now she was an adult with nearly four years in the “real” world to learn how to fight back.

Dean picked up his pace. Michael looked at him, mouthed,What?

Dean shook his head. He couldn’t explain what he’d been thinking, or how he had missed the signs. All he knew was he didn’t want Riley Pierce to go down a dark road from which she might never recover.

Toby Strong was a tall, lean, fit ranger who maintained a steady pace through the thin layer of snow that covered the ground. At first he chatted, saying it was good the last storm hadn’t hit western Colorado because then they wouldn’t be able to do this. There were places where the snow had melted, places where it was thinner than others. Kara tripped a few times, fell once, but Toby simply helped her up and they continued on their way.

Fifteen minutes later he stopped chattering, and five minutes after that, as they stood in the middle of trees with the sense of something vast beyond—something Kara couldn’t see—he whispered, “We’re on the edge of the valley floor. Listen.”

She did. She heard faint voices and sheep baaing. The far, distant sound of a handsaw echoing in the valley. No shouts, no panic, people weren’t hiding inside or running away. It was...normal.

Were they wrong? Was Matt not here? Had they already killed him, thinking they’d bring Riley to a meeting place?

“Where to?” she whispered.

He motioned to the left. “Follow my footsteps.”

She did as he told her. A hundred yards later, she saw a recently used gravel road, a strip of gray snow in the middle and banks of white snow on the sides. The road led into the mountains. Directly across, on an elevated plateau, was a building. The Office that Riley mentioned?

She looked around. There were cabins she could see, but no people nearby.

She saw a building near the Office that could have been the underground food storage that was turned into a jail. Matt could be there now. She itched to look.

But that wasn’t her job.

She tore her eyes away from it. She trusted Michael. He would save Matt.

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