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17

South Fork, Colorado

Riley and Andrew sat in a diner only five miles from where Jesse Morrison lay dead in his own home.

They hadn’t said more than a few words since they discovered his body. The coffee they ordered was barely touched.

When they first found Jesse, they’d run from the cabin, in a panic, as if the long-gone killer was still in the house. Then, without discussion, they went back together.

The smell of death had permeated everywhere in the cabin. They spoke quietly, out of fear or respect, or both.

“He’s been dead for at least two weeks,” Andrew said. “Could be longer, I don’t know.”

“He wouldn’t betray us,” Riley said. “Right? He wouldn’t do that.”

“He was tortured.”

“How—how can you tell?”

Andrew looked at her. His eyes were bright, as if he was about to cry. “They cut off several of his fingers.”

Riley’s eyes went to the dog bed in the corner. “The dog... They didn’t—”

“They took Banjo.”

“How do you know?”

Riley followed Andrew to the kitchen. “His leash is gone—it always hung on that hook. One of his dog bowls.” He opened a large cabinet, nodded. “The dog food.”

“They killed him and took his dog?”

“Banjo is a Saint Bernard. Not really guard dogs, but he would have defended Jesse if he could. Maybe they—maybe they threatened the dog. I don’t know if I could keep silent if someone threatened to kill my pet. Jesse loved that dog more than any person.”

Tears brimmed in Riley’s eyes. She would not cry.

“Everyone is in danger,” she whispered. “They found Jane and Chris because of what they found here.”

“Did you see the computer?”

She shook her head.

“Someone shot it. My money is on Jesse, thinking that would save him, or to protect us. Maybe he gave up only who he could remember. Or he had physical records or notes or a backup drive. I don’t know. Dear Lord, I don’t know what they have or who’s in danger.”

Now, at the diner, they were quiet. Andrew called Donovan. He didn’t answer at first, then texted back that he was working and would call when he was free.

Riley wished she had someone to call, someone who cared about her. She’d had Jane, but her friend was dead. She’d had Chris, but he was dead, too.

Jesse Morrison had never been part of Havenwood. He’d helped them because Thalia paid him to do so. He created their identities, gave them backgrounds and documents. He walked everyone through what to say to get their social security card. He’d set up a message board for questions and promised to check it weekly.

No wonder he hadn’t responded to Riley’s thread.

Before Riley, eleven had escaped Havenwood. She didn’t know how many in the last three and a half years. Thalia preferred to take people one at a time, unless they were a couple like Andrew and Donovan. But when it was Jane’s turn, Riley had gone with her...

Thalia was furious. She told Riley to go back to Havenwood. That it wasn’t time, there was more work to be done.

“No,” Riley had insisted. “My mother thinks I’m dead.”

“You can’t deceive her. There’s no body.”

“Garrett and Anton saw me drown.”

Thalia didn’t believe her. But they didn’t have time to argue, so she took Riley with Jane. Later, Riley had explained how she’d done it.

“I told Garrett I hated myself, my mother, Havenwood itself. She wouldn’t let me leave, wouldn’t let me go to the craft fairs, but she’d never be able to stop me from killing myself. I used everything at my disposal—how Timmy was dead, how Cal had disappeared, how everything had changed since Grandmother died. Garrett told her, as I knew he would, and she locked me in my room. I broke a window to get out, knowing they’d follow. Garrett and Anton were only minutes behind me. It was dusk, hard to see, and I waited until I knew Garrett could see me jump into the lake and swim away.”

“That lake is freezing,” Thalia said.

Even in the summer, the runoff from the snow ensured that the lake was tolerable only for a few minutes at a time.

“I’ve been going to the lake every day for months. Staying in the cold longer each time, building my endurance.”

Thalia looked like she didn’t believe her, but Riley didn’t care. She said, “I made a show of it, screamed and went under again. Garrett swam out to find me, but the third time I went down, I held my breath and swam to the opposite bank. I hid in the forest all night, then crept back to Havenwood and watched.”

Thalia looked at her strangely. With surprise? Respect? Disdain? Riley didn’t think she’d ever know what her aunt really thought of her. But she didn’t care because she was finally free.

“Calliope believes I’m dead because Garrett and Anton told her they saw me drown. I left evidence—a shoe, a torn shirt—on the far end of the lake where the river starts, where the boulders mask the sudden drop. I did it to protect you, to protect me and everyone we rescued.”

Riley didn’t understand why Thalia was so angry.

“I solved the problem of me leaving,” Riley insisted. “If she thinks I’m dead, she won’t look for me.”

Thalia shook her head. “Without you on the inside, I don’t know if I’ll be able to save anyone else. I hope you can live with that, Riley.”

Without Jesse, no one else could escape with clean identities to start a new life. Without Chris, no one would have support and training to adapt to the Outside. Anyone Thalia rescued would be on their own without protection or help.

And Calliope would never stop looking for them.

Sometimes, Riley wanted to burn the whole place down. Because Havenwood never forgot.

“They probably don’t know where we live,” Andrew said.

“What?” Riley asked, pushing back darker memories that threatened her already fragile state of mind.

“Donovan and me. You said Jane and Chris were killed nearly two weeks ago. So they probably don’t know where I live.”

“Maybe not,” she said, but she didn’t know for certain. “They want Thalia because she took Robert and they drained all of Havenwood’s accounts. Maybe they found her... Maybe they don’t care about anyone else.” Riley didn’t believe that.

Eleven years ago when Thalia and Robert drained the bank accounts and left Havenwood, they believed that Havenwood would implode.

It didn’t. Calliope and her inner circle rebuilt the community as an open-air prison.

Andrew stared at her. “Calliope wants you.”

He sounded like he was accusing her, as if this was all her fault. And, deep down, she wondered if it was. If somehow, her mother found out she was alive.

If Jesse had been tortured, would he have given her up?

A chill ran through Riley’s body.

“We have to call it in,” Andrew said after a minute. “We can’t leave Jesse like that. It could be weeks—months—before anyone finds him.”

“Pay phone. Burner. Something.”

“Maybe,” he said cautiously, “we go to the police.”

“And tell them what?” she snapped.

He didn’t respond.

After a long minute, he said, “For the first time in my life, I haven’t been looking over my shoulder. I haven’t been living in fear. When Donovan and I first escaped, I kept expecting them to show up on our doorstep. As months, then years passed, I finally felt we were free. That they didn’t care that we left, that their threats and warnings were hollow. We have a good life, a quiet, peaceful life. And now...it’s going to take even longer to feel like we’re safe again, if I ever feel safe at all.”

“You’re going to stay in Fort Collins?”

“We’ll go on vacation. We have some savings, we can go south, enjoy the warm weather. Florida or Arizona or something. Ride this out.”

Riley nodded. It was a good plan. Except, “What about Thalia? They’re looking for her, she needs our help.”

If they haven’t found her yet , Riley thought.

“Thalia has always been able to take care of herself.”

“I need to be able to reach you.”

He didn’t say anything.

“You don’t trust me?”

“That’s not it,” he said. “Riley, I don’t blame you for what happened. But you are Calliope’s daughter. She was never going to let you go. If Jesse told her you are alive, they’ll keep looking for you.” He reached out and touched her hand. “Go far away. Don’t follow Thalia on her crusade. It was always going to end this way. Run. Hide. Go far away, back to France. I’ll call in an anonymous tip to the police so Jesse can have a proper burial. He deserved better than what happened to him. He was a good person who wanted to help because Thalia convinced him it was a just cause. Now he’s dead.”

Riley’s bottom lip quivered, but Andrew was right. That didn’t mean she was going to follow his advice. She and Thalia may have disagreed about how they handled the rescues at Havenwood. Thalia may never have forgiven Riley for leaving and not being her person on the inside. But they were family and Riley had to find a way to warn her.

If she was still alive.

Andrew put out his hand and she gave him one of her burner phones. He called the sheriff’s nonemergency number. Even though it might be recorded, it wouldn’t have the capabilities of the 911 center.

“I want to report a dead body.” He gave Jesse’s address, then ended the call before the person could ask any more questions.

“What now?” Riley asked.

“I’m going back to Fort Collins today. You can come with me, then leave in your car. If you want to stay here, I’ll return the rental for you tomorrow.”

Riley didn’t know what to do.

Their food arrived, though neither felt much like eating. Riley picked at her french fries.

“Riley, forget Havenwood, forget Thalia. Go back to France. It’s the safest place for you to be. Focus on healing.”

She snorted.

“I’m serious,” Andrew said. “We’re never going to stop Calliope and her people. They are on their own destructive path. We don’t want to be anywhere near them when everything implodes.”

“Don’t the others, the innocents, the children , deserve a chance to be free?”

“Calliope has nearly everyone brainwashed. I saw it and left six years ago. It has to be worse now. Is there anyone left who is really that innocent?”

She didn’t have an answer to that. She didn’t know. She’d walked away nearly four years ago and hadn’t gone back.

Except, Havenwood had once been paradise. Not everyone agreed with Calliope and how she ran their village. Riley knew every person who still lived there. She loved them. Blood or not, they were family. She wanted them to have a real choice, to stay or leave. Because the way Calliope ran Havenwood, the choice was stay or die.

“I have to find Thalia,” Riley said. “She needs to know what happened to Chris and Jane. Do you know where she is?”

“No,” Andrew said quickly.

“You’re lying,” she said. “You know how to reach her.”

He hesitated, then said, “Not exactly. But she comes by a couple times a year and she said once that she has a place not far from us.”

Riley almost didn’t hear the second half of his sentence.

She comes by a couple times a year...

Riley hadn’t seen Thalia since her aunt brought her and Jane to Chris’s house.

“It’s a place to start,” she said. “I know some of her aliases. Think about other clues.”

Thalia would either live in the middle of nowhere like Jesse, or in the middle of a city where she could blend in with the masses. That didn’t really narrow it down. It would be an uphill battle to find her. She needed Andrew’s help, but didn’t know how to convince him.

After two bites, Riley pushed her plate away. “I can’t eat. I’ll go back with you. Give me a minute.” She put money on the table and walked to the back where the restrooms were.

She splashed icy water on her face and stared at her reflection, but didn’t see herself. She saw her mother.

Andrew said she should forget Havenwood and everyone there. How could she?

How could she forget any of it?

She knew her grandmother’s story and her mother’s story. The truth was somewhere between them.

Her grandmother told her after the death of her first husband, when she was struggling to provide for her daughter, she met William Riley, a kind and gentle man who was also disillusioned with society. His family owned property in the mountains, and he invited her to join him and his brother’s family to move there and live off the land. They created Havenwood and designed it to be a utopia. Every year more people joined them and the community grew and prospered.

They almost lost the land because of back taxes, and that’s when her grandmother and William decided to grow marijuana. Robert, a new arrival to Havenwood along with his dying mother who wanted to live her last months in peace and quiet, was a math whiz. He set up their finances so they would never be at risk of losing the hundreds of acres deep in the Rocky Mountains. They had created their utopia, a community of people who worked together, played together, worshipped together. They weren’t religious in the traditional sense, but they were spiritual. There were no rules, other than to be kind and contribute to the good of all.

Her grandmother rarely talked about the Day of Mourning, only that it changed the hearts of everyone. Riley only remembered snippets of the fateful day that resulted in the murder of one of her fathers and her unborn sibling.

Her mother had a different story.

Havenwood was perfect, a utopia for those who wanted a safe haven. But not everyone wanted to stay. Some people didn’t like the rules. Some people didn’t like the isolation. Some people didn’t want to work. People left. And two of those people came back with the purpose of destroying Havenwood. They murdered Glen and Bobby’s mom. Riley remembered her daddy Glen, though only vaguely. He was always happy and spent more time with her than her daddy Robert and her daddy Anton, who both had lots of jobs to do.

Eventually, Calliope convinced her mother that they couldn’t bring in outsiders. That new people would destroy the fabric of their home. She would point to Todd and Sheila.

What she didn’t tell Athena, and what no one knew for a long, long time, was that Calliope wasn’t letting anyone leave. Oh, they made a big show of a goodbye party, but Riley learned much later that Calliope had those people killed.

There was a song Riley never heard until she escaped Havenwood. An Eagles song, about a place you could check in anytime but you could never leave. It haunted her because that was her life, and she hadn’t realized how dark, how evil her mother was until that fateful day when she was eleven and she learned the truth.

The day the proverbial doors shut on Havenwood for good when Thalia and Robert left, and Calliope convinced everyone that Thalia had killed Robert and run away to avoid punishment.

It took Riley several minutes to compose herself. When she left the restroom, Andrew was standing in the small waiting area, frowning. “I can’t reach Donovan. I called to talk, just to hear his voice, make sure everything is okay, and it goes to voice mail.”

“When you talked to him earlier, did you tell him about Jesse?”

“No—I didn’t want to do it over text. He said he’d call when he was free, but he hasn’t called, and he’s not answering his phone. I texted him that I was worried and to call me, but he hasn’t called and now he’s not even texting me back.” Andrew sounded panicked.

“Do you have anyone to check on him?”

“His work. Yeah. I should have thought of that.”

He ran a hand through his hair as he stepped outside. She followed. He hit a number and waited. “Maddie, it’s Andrew. Is Donovan there? He’s not answering his phone and it’s kind of an emergency.”

As Andrew spoke, Riley looked around the parking lot, getting the odd feeling that she was being watched.

A woman got out of the back seat of a black SUV with multiple antennas. A sheriff’s vehicle pulled into the lot.

Riley recognized the woman. It was the cop from Oregon. Short, blonde, focused. She looked straight at Riley.

How did she find me?

“Andrew,” Riley said, her voice a squeak.

“What do you mean he left this morning? Where is he?” Andrew was saying into the phone.

“Andrew, we have to go.”

Riley tried to pretend she didn’t see the woman, or the big black guy in a suit who got out of the passenger seat and stood behind her.

“Andrew!”

He turned to her. “Donovan left work this morning—no one knows where he is.”

She started to pull him toward his truck. Why she thought she could get away from the police she didn’t know, but panic drove her. Years of believing that the police were cruel. Years of brainwashing and indoctrination and Riley would rather die than talk to them.

She knew everything Calliope had told her were lies and half-truths, but the fear and panic she felt was real.

“What?” Andrew asked, going with her while looking and sounding confused. “Riley, what—”

“Riley Pierce,” the woman called. “Stop.”

Andrew looked confused. Riley didn’t stop. Her heart was pounding, her head thudding, her body hot and cold at the same time.

She stammered, “The. Police. Run.”

Andrew hadn’t been raised in Havenwood. He came with his parents when he was fourteen, the year before everything began to fall apart. He didn’t have Calliope as a mother. He didn’t have her loyal followers constantly chirping in his ear.

Thalia had told her that her soul protected her, that deep down Riley knew what was right and just. Riley didn’t believe that. If she hadn’t seen the truth with her own eyes, she could have turned into her mother.

Yet now, all the lessons about the evil, unjust Outside suddenly came crashing down and Riley needed to escape. Run. Hide.

Andrew was talking, but Riley couldn’t hear him through the ringing in her ears.

get away get away get away

Then he shouted, “Riley! Stop!”

She froze.

Andrew gripped her arm, pulled her to his side. “It’s over,” he said and turned her to face the detective.

The woman said, “I’m Detective Kara Quinn, this is my partner, FBI Agent Michael Harris. I saw you outside of Jane Merrifield’s apartment. We just want to talk to you, Riley.”

“No.” Riley didn’t know if she spoke aloud, but she shook her head back and forth.

Andrew said, “We’re not armed. We haven’t done anything.”

“Did you call in the anonymous tip about Jesse Morrison’s murder?” Kara asked pointedly.

Andrew didn’t say anything.

Kara said, “We really need to talk to both of you.”

“My partner—I can’t reach him,” Andrew said. “I think—I’m afraid something might have happened to him.”

“Give us his name and address and we’ll have an officer do a welfare check.”

“Don’t,” Riley whispered. “You can’t trust them.”

“He’s five hours away,” Andrew said. “I have to do something.” He cleared his throat. “Okay. I’ll tell you anything you want, answer any questions, but I need to know that Donovan is safe.”

Evan watched as Riley and Andrew got into the back of an SUV. They weren’t handcuffed, they went willingly.

He called Anton.

“We have a problem.” He explained what had happened.

“Find out where they are going, but be discreet. We’re still a couple hours away.”

“I took pictures. It’s Riley. It’s really her.”

Anton didn’t say anything. He was Riley’s last living father. This must be painful for him. It hurt Evan, too. How could she do this to them?

“Anton,” Evan said, “we have to bring her home.”

Again, he didn’t say anything.

“I’m not going to kill her,” Evan said firmly.

“No,” Anton said. “You’re right. Calliope is going to be heartbroken that Riley deceived her. Deceived all of us.”

“It explains a lot,” Evan said. He’d been thinking about it for the last hour as he followed Riley to the diner and waited. They had many theories about how Thalia had been kidnapping the people of Havenwood over the years. One or two people almost every year. They set up traps, but never figured out how she got into their valley.

She hadn’t gotten in. Riley had brought people out to her.

“She’s been helping Thalia all along,” Evan said quietly.

“We don’t know that,” Anton snapped.

But Evan knew. All the little questions they’d had over the years were answered if Thalia had an inside person.

“Evan,” Anton said firmly when Evan didn’t say anything, “we don’t know what happened. But we will learn the truth. I’ll be there as soon as I can. Keep watch, be safe. Calliope has lost too many people over the years. We owe it to her to come home in one piece.”