Ted Dekker - Sanctuary

This was all a mistake! Basal was official property of the state of California, an institution protected by checks and balances meant to ensure the humane treatment of all prisoners. I was only here because someone—the warden—was going to break through all of those layers of protection to destroy Danny.

In the end none of these thoughts got my feet moving or wiped the smirk off the captain’s face.

“Let’s go, honey. He has plans for you.”

35

THE EMOTIONS THATraged through Danny as he lay on the table in deep meditation brought not a shred of reason with them. If not for years of training in the bloodied fields of battle he would have reacted to the warden’s words as any man might. He would have thrown himself against the restraints on his arms and screamed in a futile attempt to free himself.

But when he learned that the warden had been manipulating Renee all along and had led her to Basal to break him by abusing her, he reacted as only a man with so much training might.

He did nothing.

Rash movement would get them both killed. Nothing prudent could be done without thought. The only problem was, his mind wasn’t immediately capable of clear thought. It was fractured by a week of horror and two days of torture, and now it was frozen by a kind of rage and bitterness he didn’t know existed.

He didn’t thrash pointlessly against his restraints. He lay shaking with rage, trying to grasp at some kind of meaning.

Like demonic drones, the warden’s words whispered through his mind. She’s been put through the ringer, they said, and Danny tried to think of what Pape meant when he said ringer . And then he tried not to because the thoughts were too ugly.

She was led here , the words said, and Danny tried to think of how that could be. Led how? Under what threat? What terror had drawn her?

Maybe she can fill Peter’s shoes, he’d said.

The rage that came with those words shut his mind down again.

He tried to move, he really did, but he wasn’t thinking right.

Maybe she can fill Peter’s shoes, the warden had said.

For the first time in two days, Danny’s mind was merciful to him and shut down completely. His world faded to black and his shaking stopped.

36

MY MELTDOWN BEGANwith that phone call ten days earlier, but sitting in the corner of that dark holding cell at the back of the administration wing, I faded away to nothing.

There was nothing left. I had propped myself up with a blazing sense of purpose and hope for ten days, and just like that it had all been crushed in one final blow. It was done. Finished. I tried to think of a way out, but as Keith had first said, breaking into prison was one thing; breaking out was another. And this wasn’t just any prison, it was Basal.

I didn’t even question how it could be done, I knew that it couldn’t, not now. Not in time to save Danny, not in time to save ourselves.

The cell the captain had taken us to was a ten-by-ten concrete room with a thick metal door, nothing else except for the fluorescent light on the ceiling, which was off.

They’d marched us through back halls at gunpoint and ushered us into the cell without saying another word. With each step I tried to tell myself that something would happen to fix this. The real authorities would come busting in to free us. Keith would throw himself at the guards and give me a chance to escape. Danny would run through the door and save us.

But it was totally hopeless, and I knew that.

Keith tried to reason with the captain, promising to bring the whole prison down under a storm of controversy that would put them all behind their own bars. He was an attorney and knew the law. He had contacts in law enforcement on the outside. He knew congressmen and senators.

His threats fell on deaf ears, and with an ashen-faced glance at me, Keith gave up.

He sat on the floor beside me, slumped against the wall. Neither of us spoke for a few minutes. My mind was lost.

“You realize what this means,” he said. It was a statement, not a question, and I knew the answer.

“The warden can’t let us leave this place,” I said.

“We know too much.”

“He’s going to kill us.”

“No one even knows we’re here,” he said. “The records have us as Julia Wishart and Myles Somerset. None of the inmates or guards have any idea what we really look like. There’s not a single bit of evidence that Keith Hammond and Renee Gilmore ever came to Basal.”

I hadn’t thought about that.

“They’re torturing the inmates here. The only way that happens without an OIG investigation is through a high level of planning and control. Brainwashing, even. The warden was one step ahead of us all the way. He already knows how this is going to end.”

I sat like a lump in that corner, feeling ill. Too sick to cry anymore. A hundred thoughts crammed into my mind. What if I’d gone to the police at the beginning? What if I’d hired the biggest law firm on Wilshire? What if I’d refused to let Danny turn himself in to the authorities three years ago? But none of the questions had any answers.

“I’m scared.”

He didn’t respond. There was nothing to say.

“So what now?”

“Now we hope we can convince the warden to let us go.”

“But he won’t.”

“Maybe I can call his bluff, say I have a file that will be released to the press if we’re not home in twenty-four hours. Something…”

“Maybe,” I said. But then neither of us said anything because we both knew the warden was too smart for any of that.

Realization slowly settled in my mind.

“All along Sicko’s plan was to get me to break into his sick, twisted prison to save Danny.”

It suddenly made more sense than anything else. The escalating threats, the constant pressure, the progression of the game—all of it led me here, into his own house to crush Danny.

“That’s why he led us to the judge,” I said, eyes straining in the darkness. “He needed us to think we were outwitting him.”

“Maybe. But why?”

“Revenge.”

Keith sat for a moment.

“There’s something you’re not telling me, Renee. Something about who would go to all this trouble to set things straight with Danny. If we knew who…”

“I told you, I don’t know. The only victims I know about are dead.”

“Because that’s the key to this whole thing. Who? If we knew, we might be able to use the information as leverage.”

“I think it’s the warden. But I don’t know what he’s got against Danny.”

The door suddenly rattled, then swung open. Backlit by the hall stood the tall form of the warden, Marshall Pape, in his crisp suit, hand on the doorknob.

He reached over and flipped a switch. The overhead light stuttered to life.

The warden stepped inside, slid his hand into his pocket, and smiled down at us. Keith started to get up, but the warden stopped him.

“Please, remain seated. We don’t have much time.”

Keith eased back to his seat.

“I thought it would only be fair to explain why I’m going to allow what’s about to happen,” the warden said. “The common man might cringe, but he can’t understand this world any more than the politicians who pass the laws do. They send us deviants and then pass more laws that make correcting their ways impossible. Basal’s all about learning to do it right.”

I stared up at him, filled with hatred. I hated the smug curve of his lips as he spoke, the round spectacles balanced on his nose, his manicured fingernails, his perfectly pressed suit. His self-righteousness made me sick.

This was a stoning and he was going to cast the first stone.