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29

South Fork, Colorado

Kara still didn’t know what to make of Dean Montero. He was in his midforties with brown hair graying at the temples and golden-brown eyes. He was Matt’s height—a bit over six feet tall—but thinner, on the verge of being too thin. He wore a suit, like most feds, but his was a bit more rumpled, more a college-professor vibe. She half expected him to pull out a pipe and start puffing.

Ryder had procured the only two suites in the small hotel, plus two additional rooms for the team to use. Kara, Sloane, and Riley shared one suite; Matt and Michael the other. Sloane was keeping an eye on Riley while Matt, Dean, and Kara debriefed.

Kara went to the meeting in Matt’s suite, cautious about Dean Montero. She had learned to be a bit more trusting of feds she met in the course of her job, but old wounds and all, and Kara still had a hard time trusting outside her team. They shared information and then Dean said he had some thoughts about how to approach the second interview with Riley. She was pleased that he suggested they not tell Riley at this point that someone had tried to kill Andrew at the hospital. She might think they couldn’t protect her and run.

“She’s exhibiting signs of repressed trauma,” Dean explained, “and she believes she’s vulnerable, that the people of Havenwood might find her if they suspect she’s alive. If she has something tangible to grow that fear—such as our suspicion that Mr. Gardner was poisoned while under police protection—she could regress and clam up completely.”

Matt looked at Kara and she nodded her agreement. “She’ll bolt first chance she gets,” Kara said. “I don’t think she’s consciously aware of it, but she’s identified every way out. She hasn’t asked to leave, hasn’t asked for a lawyer, and she knows she’s not under arrest. She feels safe here for now, but at the same time she believes her life is in danger if Havenwood knows she’s alive.”

“We have to go with the assumption that they know,” Matt said.

“We don’t want to share that information with Riley either,” Dean said.

“We have to,” Kara said. “She knows these people, can spot them, and they are a threat to her and others. For her own protection, she needs to know.”

“Can we agree to hold back the information at least until after our initial conversation today?”

She reluctantly agreed only because she suspected Riley would attempt to bolt if she felt threatened.

“Let’s see if we can pull more out of her,” Dean said. “Good call, Detective, on having the interview here, rather than the police station. We want her to be comfortable. Matt, if you don’t mind letting Kara and me handle the conversation alone? It’ll be recorded, but I don’t want to overwhelm her.”

“I’ll have Agent Wagner escort Riley here, then we’ll leave. Call when you’re done.” He texted Sloane, then looked at Kara, and she knew what he was thinking. It was sometimes amazing and always unnerving that he could read her so well. No one had ever quite understood her, until Matt.

He knew she was skeptical of Dean, and she suspected Matt was, as well. Dean wasn’t part of their team. Kara gave Matt a nod, acknowledging his unspoken concerns.

“We’re good here,” she said. “But I’m worried about Michael.”

“Why?” Matt asked with a glance toward Dean. Did he think she was going to air something confidential? Okay, maybe he didn’t know her as well as she thought.

“I’m worried about everyone ,” she clarified. “Michael’s in the field alone, Jim is now at the hospital alone. The killers—and we know there’s more than one—only target their victims when they are alone . They could be capable of going after a pair, but it’s easier and safer to take us out solo.”

“Point taken,” Matt said. “I’ll have another talk with hotel security, and remind Jim and Michael to be on alert. When possible, we’ll work in pairs.”

Matt answered the knock on the door and Sloane walked in with Riley.

Riley wore jeans and a sweater, no makeup, her hair damp and pulled back into a ponytail. She looked younger than twenty-two and very much alone even standing in the room with four federal agents. Kara had empathy—she knew what it was like to be surrounded by people yet feel like you were on an island.

Dean smiled and introduced himself to Riley.

“We’re just going to have a conversation,” Dean said. “There’s no need to be nervous.”

Riley looked skeptically at the recording equipment. The living area of the suite had two couches and a small round table. Dean had set up the camera next to the table, and placed unopened water bottles at three of the chairs.

“This helps us protect your rights,” Dean said. “We’re not going to share the recordings with anyone outside of this investigation.”

Riley looked at Kara, as if wanting her assessment. “I’ll be with you the whole time,” Kara said. “You need to take a break, let me know and we’ll take a break.”

“Okay,” Riley said quietly.

Riley had been worried about this conversation, but not for the reasons the police thought.

They were concerned about her mental health, about how she might feel if she talked about Havenwood. They also might be concerned that she had committed a crime. She had. Some of the crimes they might not care about. Since she’d left Havenwood she knew no one really cared much about growing marijuana. But she was pretty certain selling it in the quantities that they had was serious.

But some of her actions...she had been party to violence. To torture. To murder. It didn’t matter if she hadn’t killed anyone with her bare hands, she had been present and she had done nothing.

The guilt clawed in her gut and she almost ran to the bathroom to puke the breakfast she’d managed to eat. She was just as guilty as her mother. Calliope may have killed, but Riley let her. She’d been running from her guilt for years, and now she couldn’t. She had to face it head-on. And if she had to go to prison, she would accept the punishment.

Would you really?

She shook her head, dismissed her conflicting thoughts, and tried to do what was right. What Jane would want her to do.

Yet, in the back of her mind she feared if she revealed the truth, everyone in Havenwood would be dead before they could be rescued.

Agent Wagner and Agent Costa left, then Dean motioned for her to sit at the table. She sat. Waited.

Kara said, “Our goal here is to learn everything we can in order to catch the people who killed your friends and keep you safe. Understand? We are on your side.”

Riley nodded, but she didn’t quite believe it. Would they be on her side when they learned she had let Donovan’s brother die?

Would they be on her side when they found out she’d watched others be tortured by her mother’s hand and said nothing?

“Are you okay?” Kara asked. “Do you need anything? I’m going to make coffee.”

She shook her head. “I’m okay.”

“This probably seems overwhelming to you,” Dean said and sat across from Riley. He was smiling kindly. But evil rarely showed on the outside. Her mother was the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen.

Riley dismissed the thought. She needed to focus. She wanted to stop her mother’s henchmen. She needed to stop her mother. She didn’t know how, so maybe this was the only option.

“I’m okay,” Riley said, feeling more confident. “I want to help.” She said it and believed it.

“I want to talk to you about Havenwood before and after your grandmother died,” Dean said, “but first, you told Kara that the community made money through selling marijuana. I’m interested in how that works. Do you know?”

“Sure. We grew it, dried it, sold it. It started with my grandmother, but that was mostly just for Havenwood. My grandma sold only enough to help pay for things we needed. Like property taxes.”

“Your grandmother owned the property.”

“My grandpa Will did, hundreds of acres. The entire valley we called Havenwood. Way before I was born, they almost lost it. He owed a lot of back taxes. That’s why Grandma started taking Havenwood goods to craft fairs, but selling quilts and jams and wood carvings didn’t earn us enough money. So she started selling marijuana and within a couple years they caught up. Then Robert came to Havenwood and he was super smart with numbers. He made sure we never got in trouble again, because the government would love to take our property if we didn’t pay.”

Kara sat down with her coffee. “Robert Benson?” she asked.

Riley nodded.

“Yesterday you said Robert left with your aunt Thalia,” Kara said.

“Yes. But you make it sound like they left together, to be together, and they didn’t. They tried to destroy Havenwood.”

She’d been so lost then. She didn’t miss Thalia as much as she thought she would, but she deeply missed her daddy Robert.

“We know how hard this is for you,” Dean said, “but we need to understand the dynamics of Havenwood so we can locate the compound and stop them from hurting anyone else.”

“Thalia believed that if she took the money, Havenwood would implode and people would leave. Since Robert controlled the money after William left...” Riley frowned.

“William didn’t leave, did he?” Kara said quietly. “You talked around it yesterday, but I think it was clear. Your grandmother found a grave and believes that someone killed William instead of letting him leave the compound.”

“It wasn’t a grave,” Riley said quietly. “It was a graveyard. Everyone we were told left was killed and buried in that field.”

“You also talked about your grandmother’s death. Again, you didn’t say she was killed, but you think she was, don’t you?”

She squeezed her eyes closed and rubbed her temples. “I don’t remember a lot from that time.”

“Were you drugged?” Dean asked.

“I don’t know. I was really sick for a while. Depressed—I missed my grandma so much. I didn’t know until much later that Thalia believed my mother poisoned my grandmother.” Riley still had a hard time wrapping her mind around it. “William is Thalia’s dad. He’s not my biological grandfather, who was killed when my mother was little. But he’s the only grandpa I knew.”

“When did Thalia and Robert leave?” Dean asked.

“We thought he was dead.” She had believed her mother, until Thalia returned and told her what really happened. She wished she could have said goodbye. She had loved her daddy Robert more than any of them.

“Who? Robert?” Kara asked.

“My mother said that Thalia killed him and ran away. We had a funeral for him.” Riley paused, considered what had happened eleven years ago. “Do you know how it feels when things are strange, odd, changing, but it’s so slow and small that you don’t realize it until all of a sudden, everything is different? That’s what happened. Small changes—like my mother took over for my grandmother in running the Havenwood council. She didn’t get rid of anyone on the council, but added more people—those loyal to her. The council limited who could go to the craft fair, until it was just a few people. Suddenly, the freedom and joy we had were gone. Protecting Havenwood against Thalia and outsiders became our only mission. No one new came to Havenwood. My grandmother always invited one or two families to move to Havenwood each year, but my mother put an end to that. No one Outside could be trusted.”

“When you left, how many people were at Havenwood?” Dean asked.

“Ninety-six. At one point, we had over a hundred forty. But ninety-six when Jane and I left.”

“Were most of the people recruited by your grandmother?”

“Yes.”

“Other than you, was anyone born there?”

“Oh, sure. Jane was born there—that’s one reason we were best friends.” Her voice cracked and she drank more water.

“By our best estimates, Havenwood started between thirty and forty years ago, would you say that’s accurate?”

Riley thought. “My mother is forty-five. She was nine when she moved there.”

“That helps.” Dean smiled and it was a nice smile. He made Riley feel comfortable. But Kara was watching her closely, and Riley thought she saw things maybe Riley didn’t want her to see. Silly, she knew, but it was disconcerting enough that Riley averted her gaze.

Dean continued, “I noticed that you’re an artist. Kara showed me your doodles from yesterday when you were waiting at the police station, and you talked about sketching your grandmother. You have an exceptional eye, a lot of natural talent.” He pulled a sketch pad and box of pencils from his briefcase and slid them over to Riley. She stared at them, didn’t touch.

“I was thinking,” Dean said when she didn’t immediately reach for the pencils, “that while we talk, you can draw. Anything you want, but I’d really love to see Havenwood as you remember it. The good and the bad.”

She frowned and bit her bottom lip. She drew for herself, no one else. Not after her sketch of her grandmother in the graveyard.

“Or not,” Kara said. “It’s up to you.”

Dean glanced at Kara and seemed irritated, but then he blanked his face and said, “Absolutely up to you.”

“Did anyone teach you to draw?” Kara asked.

Riley shook her head. “We didn’t have cameras or cell phones or anything like that. So I would draw things I saw. Trees, flowers, people. Sometimes with colored pencils, but usually charcoal and regular pencils. I practiced and got good.”

“Did you like drawing people or things better?”

Riley shrugged. “No real preference.” She stared at the sketch pad, her fingers itching to draw, but she didn’t reach for the pencils.

Dean said, “Would strangers occasionally hike into Havenwood? And if so, anything memorable about those times? Anyone specific stand out?”

“When my grandma was alive, she would invite lost hikers to stay the night, have a meal, then someone would escort them out. There were no roads near us. The only way in by truck is a winding unpaved road that is unusable in the winter. So it didn’t happen often, a few times. After Grandma, Calliope wasn’t kind to people. She told them they were trespassing on private land. She had signs put up warning trespassers, and eventually, we didn’t see hardly anyone.”

“So there is a road into your valley?” Dean asked.

“You wouldn’t know it was there unless you knew about it,” she said. “It was gated and no one was allowed past the gate. I later found out there are cameras, and they could see who was coming and going.”

“And you used that road to go to the craft fairs, or buy essential items?”

She nodded. “We had three trucks. Six people from the council would go to each fair and we’d prepare for months. When my grandmother was alive, she usually went. Some people wanted to start selling our products online, but Calliope and Anton—Anton is one of my fathers—thought it would expose us.”

“Expose you how?” Dean asked.

“To people who would destroy the beauty of Havenwood. The world is corrupt, industry destroys the environment. We believe in living simply and never exposed ourselves to the Outside. My grandmother had rituals to purify our souls. Meditation and isolation, mostly. My mother...she had more.”

“Like what?” Dean asked.

Riley shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“That’s okay,” he said. “When you’re ready.”

Kara said, “How did Thalia know who to rescue from Havenwood? How did she know they wouldn’t turn her in?”

“Me.”

“I don’t understand,” Kara said.

“I didn’t tell you the whole truth yesterday. I didn’t lie—but I left things out.”

Riley pulled the sketch pad to her. She opened the box of pencils and twisted one in her fingers.

Kara Quinn had a pretty, interesting face. There was depth there, hidden things. Riley started drawing.

“After Thalia and Robert left,” Riley said, “Garrett took over the finances of Havenwood. Garrett replaced my daddy Glen when he died and moved into the house. Robert had trained him, so it made sense. I started listening. I was really good at making myself practically invisible. I learned quickly that my mother and the council knew that Robert had left with Thalia and taken all of our money. We had to work harder to make it up. We needed money, so we couldn’t just sell stuff a few times a year anymore. And while we could grow most of our own food, and we had chickens for meat and eggs, there were expenses. We had generators that needed fuel, repairs, spices and flour for baking, shoes, things like that. Supplies for our handcrafts. So Anton expanded the marijuana farm and we were doing well.

“When Thalia returned nearly a year later, I begged her to take me with her. She said I had a job to do, that I needed to find the people who wanted to leave, and Thalia would get them out, give them new identities—starting with Chris. She couldn’t take me because I was too young. I was the only person she trusted to find the right people to rescue.”

“How did Thalia get past the cameras?” Kara asked. “You said there were cameras, right?”

“Only on the gate and the office—that’s a separate building on the edge of the road on the north side of the valley. There were other ways out of the valley if you know where they are. Some are dangerous with steep drops, most impassable when there’s snow.”

“Why didn’t Thalia turn Havenwood over to the authorities?” Kara asked. “Even though marijuana has been legal in Colorado for years, it’s heavily regulated. Thalia could have turned them in, we could get a search warrant and find bodies. Get them not just for growing pot without a license, but for murder.”

Dean winced at Kara’s bluntness. “Kara, Thalia was raised at Havenwood. It’s hard enough to walk away, and almost impossible for her to share with anyone, even the authorities, what was going on there.”

“She believed that her mother was murdered,” Kara said. She turned to Riley. “Correct? Thalia thought someone—Calliope or someone else with Calliope’s blessing—killed your grandmother.”

Riley didn’t like the tension between Kara and Dean. She wanted to make them happy, to give them what they wanted, because they were going to find Havenwood.

Then Riley could finish what Thalia had started.

“We believed that the authorities would burn down Havenwood with us in it,” Riley said quietly. “My mother and Daddy Anton told us so many stories of police violence. I know what happened at Waco. I know what happened at Ruby Ridge. Innocent people died and the police don’t care.”

“Which is why you ran from me the other day,” Kara said.

“I knew you were trying to find out who killed Jane. I didn’t even think about running, I just did it.”

“It’s understandable,” Dean said, conciliatory. “I’ve researched and investigated many cults and organizations like Havenwood, and it’s rare to find someone who grew up in one and willingly walked away.”

“I didn’t walk away,” Riley said. “I escaped. And my job was to help others escape. I was never supposed to leave, but I was so lost and alone. I’ve always been a good swimmer, so started building endurance because the water is so cold. It took me weeks, but I was able to hold my breath for six minutes while swimming under water.”

Riley told them how she faked her own death, how terrified but free she felt when her mother believed she was dead.

“I had hidden supplies weeks before,” Riley said. “I hid for two days to make sure everyone believed I had drowned. The only person who knew the truth was Jane.”

“That was quite a feat,” Dean said.

“When you want something bad enough, you can do anything,” Riley said.

“Why then?” Kara asked.

“Because Jane was next.” Riley turned the page in the sketchbook. Stared at it, at the pencil and shading because it was easier to talk if she didn’t have to look at Kara and Dean. “Cal was gone—I’d already helped him escape. And Timmy had died—he was attacked by a mountain lion. That left Jane and me in our group, and if Jane left I would truly be alone. I couldn’t do it.”

“No one should be alone,” Dean said.

Riley nodded. Now it didn’t matter. She still ended up alone.

“Jane met me and I took her to the meeting place on the far northern end of the valley. There’s an old rotted-out cabin at the end of a steep trail. I don’t know if it’s on our property or not, but it’s where I brought people for Thalia to get out of the mountains. I never went beyond it. So I went with Jane, and the next night Thalia was there. She was so angry with me, ordered me to go back, but I told her my mother thought I was dead and I would never return.”

Riley stared at the pencil in her hand. “What if,” she said quietly, “they didn’t believe I drowned? What if they found my supplies and knew I faked it? What if that’s why they went after everyone else, looking for me? All this is my fault.”

“Nothing is your fault,” Dean said. “You did what you needed to do to survive.”

“Thalia warned me over and over if I walked away Calliope would search to the ends of the earth for me. That’s why she didn’t take me when I was little, that’s why she didn’t take me when I was eighteen, like she promised. That’s when I came up with the idea of faking my death. I thought it had worked. And now Jane is dead, along with Chris, Robert, Donovan, and Jesse, and I know in my heart that Thalia must be dead because she didn’t warn anyone.”

Her voice cracked and she fought tears.

“Listen to me,” Kara said, her voice so sharp that Riley jerked her head to look at her. “I don’t care what you think, the people responsible for these murders are the ones who lured them out and slit their throats. Not you.”

“Okay,” Riley said in a whisper. But she didn’t fully believe it. She looked down at the sketch pad, made a few tweaks, then pushed the pad over to Kara. “You can have it,” she said. “If you like it.”

Kara stared at the paper. “It’s really good,” she said. “Dean is right, you have a lot of talent.” She carefully tore the page out and placed it in front of her, then slid the pad back to Riley. “Keep it. If you’re moved to draw anything else, do it. No pressure.”

Dean said, “You know more about where Havenwood is than you realize. Think about landmarks. Unusual rock outcroppings. The types of trees. Any roads or signs you saw when you left with Jane and Thalia. Just draw what you remember. It doesn’t have to make sense, but it will help us narrow down the location.”

“Can we take a break?” she asked.

“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.”