Ted Dekker - Sanctuary

Do what you’re told, Renee. The priest is suffering but he’s alive. Don’t make me kill him. Set him free.

There was no salutation, no name. Only the blatant assurance that whoever had written the note had all of the strings in his fingers and was eager to pull the ones that would end Danny’s life.

Keith turned the note over, then flipped it back. “That’s it.”

“Saturday? We’re supposed to just sit around for two days?”

“Keep it down.”

“I danced with that pervert for this? Why didn’t he just say this in his first note?”

“Because that’s the way it works. He playing with our minds, knowing that you would react exactly the way you are. So don’t.”

“We can’t just do nothing! Something’s not right.”

“Nothing’s right! That’s the whole point.”

“We’ve got to find out what’s happening to Danny. I can’t just sit on my hands for two days.”

“Slow down. That’s exactly what he’ll expect.”

“What?”

“You doing something crazy. Going to the cops. Finding an attorney. Trying to contact the warden—anything and everything he’s said not to. If we do that this guy’s going to carry through.”

“So, what? We’re just his puppets now?”

“No.” Seeing the waitress headed their way, Keith folded the note and slipped it into his pocket. “Hold on.”

The smiling server with stringy mud-blonde hair held out the pot. “Need a freshen-up?” She smiled wide, bearing front teeth that should have been put in braces when she was younger.

“No, thank you,” Keith said.

She faced me. “How about you?”

“Nope.” I sounded snappy, I know, but I was at the end of myself. It struck me as her face fell at my retort that Keith was right. This was exactly what Sicko wanted. But could I help it? I didn’t think so.

In fact, if it were only me I’d probably run into the bathroom, lock the stall, and have a good cry.

“No, thank you,” I said, as she walked away. She flashed a faint smile over her shoulder.

“Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine. I’m not suggesting we do nothing.”

“Then what?”

“We have two days to think. To research. To try to figure something out. Then we go do what he says. Other than that, we go dark.”

“Dark.”

“He’s watching. We don’t react the way he expects us to. In fact, we do the opposite. We don’t break his protocol, but we don’t panic.”

I understood immediately. “Play his game.”

“Play his game. Try to shake him.”

“Make him second-guess us.”

“That’s right. We go about our lives as if nothing’s happened. We get a beer, we shop, we go to work…do you work?”

“No. And my routine is pretty simple.”

“Fine. We assume he’s listening to our phone calls, so we don’t talk on the phone. Only outside, in a park, on the beach, out of earshot. But we don’t act concerned or panicked.”

“Seems like a pretty weak play.”

“It’s a start. It’ll at least make him wonder. More importantly, it gives us some control—and trust me, honey, we need some.”

I took a sip of coffee, black, the only way I can force the stuff down. One cup and I’d be up all night, but I doubted I’d do much sleeping anyway. The next forty-eight hours were going to be screaming torture—Sicko’s whole point. Still, the thought of doing nothing without knowing what was going on with Danny was going to double me in half. I’d have to visit my therapist.

“Okay.”

“Trust me, it will drive him nuts. Take consolation in that.”

“Nuts,” I said, nodding. “We’ll drive him nuts.”

“Bananas.”

“Bananas.”

But all I wanted to do at that point was find Sicko and shove a gun down his throat.

15

SATURDAY

TWO DAYS COULDbe a lifetime: this is what Danny already knew but learned once more as he hung from the wall in the bowels of Basal. The human body was an incredibly durable vessel: this is what he had learned too many times in Bosnia and never wanted to learn again.

When the body was subjected to an overload of pain, it tended to spare the mind prolonged duress by shutting down. Unconscious, it does not shiver uncontrollably or feel pain or scream. Danny was comforted only by the thought that he’d likely spent at least half of his time in that oblivious state before his body rebooted in darkness and flared with agony.

Conscious, he also had to live with his thoughts and his emotions, which flogged him just as relentlessly. Strapped to the wall, he was acutely aware that his thoughts and emotions, though only temporal things, could affect as much pain in him as harm to the body could. Through the years he had willed himself to live in simple consciousness, stripped of the thoughts and emotions that dragged him into suffering. The brief periods of time in which he succeeded filled him with peace and clarity.

He’d often wondered if such a place of clarity was the closest thing to heaven to be found on earth. Finding it this time proved more difficult than before because of his incessant fear for Renee’s safety and his empathy for Peter’s circumstance.

Some advocated surrender as the path to peace, but Danny had always known that his mind was too strong to surrender to anything. Instead he controlled it with raw determination and willpower, a process that sometimes worked better than others.

He’d once been taken captive by the Serbian Christians in Bosnia and, because he was suspected of numerous infiltrations into their strongholds, was questioned over a two-week period before he managed to escape. Their interrogation methods had become increasingly forceful. It was the first time he’d been forced to endure tremendous amounts of carefully directed pain.

Marshall Pape’s version of hell did not match that torture, but the pain of deep meditation was severe enough that a boy like Peter would likely never survive a second encounter.

And wasn’t that the purpose of the warden’s sanctuary? To scare the wayward straight by subjecting them to the threat of extreme punishment?

Doing his best to ignore the pain in his nerves, his thoughts, and the torment inflicted by his emotion, Danny sought the stillness beyond, peering into the darkness, searching for awareness of God’s love and beauty in his own spirit. It wasn’t easy to find.

Bostich did not come with water as promised. No one did. No one came at all. The promise of water was only a hope deferred to make the heart sick, one little twist of the knife to increase his suffering. Without any food or water, his body might have shut down completely had they not come for him after forty-eight hours.

When Bostich and Mitchell did come, they came with a hose, which they used to wash him down while he still hung on the wall. He sucked in as much of the water as he could.

They finally released him from his restraints, a process that heaped pain upon pain, then stood back as he collapsed in a heap.

“Get yourself together. We’ll be back.”

Bostich left a neat pile of folded clothes on the table and left Danny to recover, this time with the light on. It took him an hour to get to his feet, work out enough of the aches in his joints to dress, and compose himself.

“I’d like to see the warden,” he said when they returned.

“Well, you’re in luck, ’cause he wants to see you too.”

Several minutes later, Danny sat in the same chair he’d first used outside the warden’s office, waiting for an audience. The clock on the wall read 7:26. Saturday evening, if he guessed correctly. He’d been at Basal for a mere six days that overshadowed his entire three years at Ironwood.

And yet he wasn’t disheartened. His resolve had not been compromised. He was only glad that he and not Peter had endured deep meditation.