Ted Dekker - Sanctuary

An older man sat at the far end, legs crossed underneath him, and on his face I saw a sad regret I might have expected from my own father, if he were still alive and there.

I was desperate, I know, but I really did feel a surprising sense of kinship with my fellow prisoners at that moment. We were all under the same heel.

I knew they were going to hurt me, but as I stared into the prisoners’ eyes I saw Danny. These were the kind of men he’d lived with for the past three years. These were the members of his world now. These were the ones he’d chosen to love. Even Randell, who on closer inspection looked uncertain, not vengeful.

“What we have here, my friends,” the warden said, withdrawing his hands from the pockets, “is a perfect lesson in what’s so wrong with the world. You see a man and a woman in front of you. They came to our institution under false pretenses, pretending to be two people they were not. But isn’t that the way it is with everyone who comes to this place? Isn’t that the way it is with the whole world? No one wants to confess their true nature or the evil thoughts in their minds. Everyone’s guilty. Pretenders, all of them.”

He allowed himself a subtle if insincere smile. “It’s my job to peel back the layers, strip you all down to your naked selves, and reveal the pathetic truth of your nature so that it can be rehabilitated. All things must become new, and sometimes that’s an ugly process.”

The warden wagged his head toward the inmates seated against the wall. “The men you see aren’t here by accident. They cannot and will not run to your law, because they’re under mine now. They know the cost of breaking my law is far too high to endure for very long, much less forever.”

Basal was his religion. The inmates were his flock. It made me sick.

“The question I put to you two today is, who are you underneath it all?” He looked between Keith and me. “Please show them who you really are. Both of you.”

I’d forgotten about my blonde wig, and it took me a moment to understand what he was asking. But then Keith reached up and started peeling off the goatee and mustache he’d glued to his face. I pulled off my wig. I’d left the glasses in the holding room. They were pointless anyway.

“You see? They aren’t Julia and Myles, after all. They broke into my prison with the intention of killing Randell, because they believed Randell intended to kill the priest.”

He walked up to me, and I suppressed a sudden urge to spit in his face, because for a moment he ceased being human in my eyes.

The warden began to pull the pins out of my hair, letting it fall around my shoulders.

“So pretty on the outside,” he said. “But inside no different from Slane.” He continued pulling down my hair. “You’ve abused me,” he said matter-of-factly. “You’ve breached my walls and violated my sanctuary. And that is no less of an offense than the torturing or taking of another human being. So now I have no choice but to return the favor. An eye for an eye, as we all know.”

“You can’t do this,” Keith bit off under his breath.

“Oh, but you’re wrong. I can. This is Basal, and in Basal, I preside.”

It hit me that this might have nothing to do with Danny. The warden was going to let them hurt me and Danny would be nowhere near to stop them. Maybe he was already dead. My breathing thickened.

“Now that the preliminaries are out of the way, let’s get on with the messy business, shall we?”

“How can you stand here and—” It was as far as Keith got before the warden slapped him.

Keith glared, face flushed. I had never seen such a look of hatred from Keith, and seeing him stand up to the devil both scared me and gave me a surge of confidence.

The warden turned to me. “Take off your pants.”

“No—” Keith’s objection earned another slap, this time backhanded, hard enough to startle me.

“Bare yourself!” the warden thundered. “Show us who you really are!”

Danny had worked his way through the underground passages and found his way to the administrative segregation wing. No guards. No attempt to stop him. They knew; they had to know. Why else would they have left the cell open and let him pass?

It was all planned. Danny wasn’t about to execute some clever, eleventh-hour rescue that would sweep Renee from danger without significant collateral damage.

But he could not stop, because he also knew that he had to go to her.

There were other possibilities. He could make an attempt to gain a hostage. He could hole himself up in the warden’s office and threaten to expose the prison. He could find a more suitable weapon, a knife or a gun. He could try to get to a phone and an outside line and call the authorities.

But the warden was no fool. All his bases would be covered. There was only one way to save Renee. There was only one thing that the warden wanted more than Renee, and that was him.

Danny was the key to her survival. Only Danny.

He paused at the bottom of the concrete stairs that led up from ad seg, breathing hard. A single bulb lit the stairwell and exposed the sealed steel door that led into the administration wing. From there he would head down the hall to the guarded door into the main prison.

They wouldn’t stop him, he already knew that. They had all been instructed to let him pass, let him find Renee, let him try to save her. Let him see her die.

His greatest advantage was their underestimation of his skill. They’d seen him take blows and suffer punishment, but they hadn’t seen him fight.

His right leg felt like it was filled with hot lead, and his head pounded with swelling pain, but none of it compared to the rage tearing at his heart. Again, a quiet voice deep within objected to the sudden change in him.

An image of Renee silenced that voice.

There were more ways to kill a person than to save one. A thousand times in the yards and halls of Ironwood, he’d been close enough to kill another inmate, but he’d never given the matter a passing thought. He’d put those days behind him forever.

But now he would put his vow behind him as well. How many would have to die in order for him to save Renee?

A new thought occurred to him as he took his last few calming breaths before ascending into the warden’s trap. If there was a guard stationed near the door, they might see his weapons and react out of fear, even if they’d been instructed to let him pass. They might force a confrontation early. That risk was too great.

He tossed the chair leg into the corner, where it clattered and rolled to a stop, then he pulled out the two pieces of splintered wood from his waistband and dropped them to the ground.

Barefoot and naked now except for his shorts. It was him, it was Renee, and it was the warden. At least one of them would die, and Danny only cared that it wasn’t Renee.

He put his right foot on the first step and began to climb.

I stood in front of the warden, dressed only in my white, short-sleeved blouse and my underwear. Standing there half-naked in my bare feet, staring at Keith because I couldn’t bear to look at the warden, my last strands of hope began to disintegrate.

It was what Pape wanted.

I looked over my shoulder at the door, begging to see something that would give me hope, but the door was closed.

When I turned back, my tears were already snaking down my cheeks. I could feel my naked legs trembling beneath me. I wanted to be strong for Danny, but I couldn’t seem to find any more strength in me.

“All of it,” the warden said. “I prefer that you are yourself, naked in my eyes.”

Keith stepped out, positioning himself between the warden and me. “You’ve made your point.”

“Oh? And here I thought rehabilitating Danny was my point.”