Page 36 of See How They Hide

It would never be okay. Not if Todd was allowed to leave. Calliope knew that, why didn’t her mother see it? She tried to move but her stomach ached and she wanted to weep. But instead of tears, she gathered her strength and rage. She would need both.

“Watch them,” Todd ordered one of the men. He looked down at Athena and Calliope with a scowl, shaking his head. He, Sheila, and the other men headed to the barn.

Calliope clutched her stomach as she watched them walk away.

“It’ll be okay,” Athena murmured in her ear.

“They betrayed us!”

“We’ll find a solution. When everyone is back, we’ll find an answer. Just stay put. I don’t want anyone hurt.”

“They’ll come back with more people! Take everything we have! Tell others where we are and destroy Havenwood. We have to stop them.”

As Calliope said it, she realized the only way to save Havenwood was to make sure the interlopers never left.

“Help me up,” Calliope said. “Please, Mother, please help me.”

Athena did.

“Stop,” the stranger guarding them said.

“She’s hurt,” Athena said. “Let me take her inside to lie down.”

The man looked torn, then said, “I’ll follow you. No funny business.”

Calliope walked with great pain, but she would do anything to protect her home.

Anything.

Her mother’s house was closest, and that’s where they went. Calliope mentally prepared herself for what must be done.

Havenwood had the numbers. Against five armed people, they would win. As long as someone took charge—someone like Calliope because her mother was weak. Her mother was capitulating to these evil people. Letting them walk away with everything. Condemning Havenwood to a life of fear and servitude.

As soon as Athena walked Calliope across the threshold, Calliope reached behind the door for Athena’s shotgun. She used it to scare foxes away from the chickens. She’d never shot an animal with it.

Or a person.

There was a first for everything.

Calliope racked the shotgun and, without hesitation, shot the man on the path. He staggered back, raised his gun to fire, and she racked the shotgun a second time and fired again. Athena screamed.

“Calliope! Stop!”

Though she’d never killed a person before, she didn’t see them as people—they were predators. Evil creatures, monsters, demons who would destroy Havenwood like the people who destroyed her family all those years ago.

The company who laid off her father because they were cutting back.

The men who beat him up one night when he was working as a security guard.

The man who killed him in front of Calliope that rainy day in February, on her eighth birthday.

“No,” Calliope whispered, trying to push those awful memories far away. She hadn’t thought about her father in years. What she saw. What she heard. The smell of blood. But it came back now, washing over her. Suddenly, she embraced her feelings of helplessness when she was a child and couldn’t fight back.

She was no longer helpless. She had a world to save.

“Mother, they will return with more people. Don’t you see? They will take everything. If we can’t protect ourselves, everyone will leave because they won’t be safe. We’ll have nothing and no one.”

“You can’t—”

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