Ted Dekker - Sanctuary

But I was lying, wasn’t I? A gun I could handle. Bedbugs I could starve to death. But games drove me crazy, and I was already too crazy.

The hours crawled by, and the millions of people around us went about their business, oblivious to the stakes we faced. I spent the three hours prior to our journey to Morongo Valley pacing my home, repacking my kit, then checking and rechecking my nine-millimeter with an unsteady hand. Then I cleaned the gun and checked it yet again, because three years had passed since I’d used it, and in my shaken state, I wasn’t sure I’d done everything right—even though I knew I had, if that makes any sense.

It was five minutes before eight when I turned off my headlights and rolled the Toyota to a stop on Sherman Road, where we’d been directed by the note. I had suggested taking Keith’s truck because the route was a gravel road way out in the middle of nowhere, but he’d dismissed the idea out of hand. Whoever was watching would want to see me driving my car.

Glowing haze from the city to the west hid the moon, and there were only a few stars visible above us even though it was dark. The old warehouse one hundred yards ahead rose into the night sky like a massive ancient tomb.

The car’s engine barely purred; the air-conditioning vents whispered. I sat with both my hands on the steering wheel, staring at the darkened building, mind filled with ghosts and dead bodies.

“You sure you’re up for this?” he asked.

“I can see why he picked this place. There’s not a soul within ten miles but us.”

“And whoever’s watching.”

I glanced out the side window. Scattered scrub pine hunched on the otherwise barren ground.

“I don’t like this.”

“I don’t either,” he said. “Just don’t panic.”

We sat in silence for a beat. Keith’s plan had all seemed so simple—we’d both go in together, armed. The note hadn’t said anything about me coming alone this time, just without authorities. Sicko needed us alive, Keith insisted. There wouldn’t be a threatening confrontation here, probably only more nonsense, but I knew he was saying some of that for my benefit.

Nonsense wasn’t in Sicko’s vocabulary. He liked to communicate with bloodied body parts in shoe boxes and perverted bears in biker bars. Looking at the dark warehouse, a terrible fear gripped my mind. Despite Keith’s warning, cries of panic told me to throw the car into reverse and roar away under full power before it was too late.

But the panic lasted only a few seconds before anger shut it down. If we were going in, we were going without hesitation.

I snapped on the headlights, shifted my foot off the brake, and floored the accelerator. The tires spun on the gravel, found some traction, and hurled us forward.

“Whoa…”

“Hold on.”

The rings of my headlights expanded on the warehouse’s old gray sides.

Keith gripped the dashboard. “What are you doing?”

There was a door, dead center and closed. There was a knob on it. My eyes centered on that knob, as if it was the only thing that stood between me and Danny. As if this was Danny’s prison and I was here to bust him out.

“Slow down—”

I released the gas pedal and braked hard. The car slid for twenty yards and came to a lurching halt a dozen paces from the door. Dust roiled around us, drifting through the shafts of light from the headlamps.

“Okay. That’s one way to do it,” Keith said. “Keep the lights on.” He pulled out his handgun, chambered a round, and eased his door open.

I’d lost my cool, collected self there for a moment, I knew, but that was okay. The note had instructed us to come, and we’d come. And now here we were.

What would Danny do?

He wouldn’t have come in like a bat out of hell. He probably would have scoped the place out first, found all the exits, all the windows, surveyed the surrounding landscape. Heck, he probably would have counted the number of shingles on the roof. There was a reason why he never got caught until he turned himself in, and it was in part because he didn’t come roaring up to his enemies in a Toyota spewing dust and gravel for the whole world to see.

I shoved the stick into park, grabbed my gun, and was out of my door before Keith had two feet on the ground. Staring at that warehouse, it had all became very plain to me. Keith was right—Sicko needed me. I was the key to their money. I was their leverage. I was their subject of torment. Without me, there was no game.

I was also Danny’s only hope.

So without waiting, I walked through the illuminated dust, straight for the door, both hands snugged on the butt of my gun. Keith cut in front of me, one hand raised to hold me back, eyes on that knob.

He put his hand on it, glanced back, and gave me a nod. “Easy…Follow me.” He twisted the silver knob and pushed the door open.

Darkness.

Keith slipped a small black flashlight from the pocket of his jeans, snapped it on, and shone it through the gap as I peered around him.

Empty space. Concrete floor.

Shoulder against the door frame, Keith poked his head in quickly, then pulled it back.

“What do you see?” I whispered.

He gave me a sharp look that pretty much said shut up , waited a count of three, then spun in and pulled up, wrists crossed so that both his handgun and the flashlight were pointed forward.

“Anything?”

He still wasn’t moving, so I stepped up beside him and saw the dim interior with a single glance. The warehouse looked like any empty warehouse, except for what appeared to be clothes heaped in the far left corner. Dirty floor, cobwebs on the sloping wood ceiling, three windows on each side all covered up by brown paper. Nothing else that I could see.

My eyes skipped back to the heap of clothes. Only it wasn’t a heap of clothes. A dark-haired head protruded from the top. Two arms to the sides. And two legs.

Keith ran forward, light twisting wildly in the dark. The image jerked around my field of vision as I ran, but I began to piece together what I saw.

What I had mistaken for clothing in the flashlight’s farthest reaches appeared to be the slumped form of a young man or woman with short dark hair, chin resting on a blue Bruins sweater—asleep, unconscious, or dead. A gray blanket was heaped over the person’s torso, and from it protruded two legs in jeans, doubled back to one side so that only the knees showed.

Each arm was chained to the wooden framing on either side.

Keith dropped to one knee beside what I now saw was a teenage boy, maybe sixteen or seventeen.

I felt sick. “Is he alive?”

Keith pressed his hand on the boy’s neck to check for a pulse, but it was as far he got. The boy’s head jerked up, eyes wide.

“No!”

“No, no, no, it’s okay…” Keith removed the light from the boy’s eyes. “We’re here to help you. It’s okay.” To me. “Get his hands free!”

“No!” The boy’s frantic cry echoed in the vacant warehouse. “No, you can’t!” His frantic eyes darted from Keith to me and then to his right hand. “He cut off my finger.”

I saw the bloodied hand. Three fingers. The index digit was missing, cut off at the base. An image of the shoe box filled my mind and I swallowed against the nausea rising from my gut.

The boy stared up at me with the wildest, bluest eyes I had ever seen. Tears trailed through dust on his face.

“He…he cut off my finger.”

I lowered myself to both knees next to him and rested my hand on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry. We’re here to help you. What’s your name?”

But the boy was too overwhelmed to answer. It occurred to me that nearly a week had passed since I received the shoe box. If the finger sent to me belonged to this boy…