Ted Dekker - Sanctuary

Danny stood breathless, immobilized by indecision. They wanted him to rush forward in an attempt to save her. He couldn’t play into their hands so recklessly. He had to choose the moment carefully despite the terrible rage washing through his mind. He had to act with precision. How and to what end he was no longer sure, but there had to be a way. There had always been a way.

And if not?

Keith grabbed Renee’s hair and yanked her head off the floor.

“She has a new name for me, Danny. She calls me Sicko. Unless you care to stop me, I’m going to hurt her. Bad, my friend. Real bad.”

Danny’s heart began to stutter.

Sicko. Keith was Sicko…

I was on the floor, held by my hair. My jaw ached and my lips were bleeding from the blow, but it was all made moot by the sickening violation I felt.

Every conversation between Keith and me pounded through my head. Revenge, Keith had kept insisting. One of Danny’s victims was obsessed with revenge, but I’d never suspected the victim to be Keith. Now it all came to me.

Constance had told me about Randell because they knew I’d go in search of the man who brought him down. Constance was working for Keith. The phone calls had come from Keith. The boy had been taken and mutilated by Keith or someone who was working with him. The two-day waits now made perfect sense. He’d needed the time.

Keith knew about Judge Thompson because Danny, sometimes telling that story to unnerve his victims, had shared it with him. Keith had somehow tracked Danny down, found him at Ironwood, and worked with the warden to get him transferred to Basal, where he could destroy us both.

Keith, not the warden, was the mastermind behind it all. Keith was Sicko.

Everything he’d done during the last ten days was to earn my trust and push me to the brink with nowhere to turn but to him. He wanted me in the prison, in his arms. I’d been manipulated, yes, but that didn’t temper my revulsion. I’d kissed him.

I lay limp on the floor, but something in me changed when I understood what Keith was trying to do. I couldn’t understand all of his reasoning or the depths of his fury, but I could understand that he was getting what he wanted.

He was crushing Danny. Right there, right then.

Two more guards stood in the doorway, both wearing sidearms. Danny had stopped ten feet in front of them, frozen, and I felt my heart breaking for him. I didn’t know what the warden had subjected him to, but I knew those eyes staring at me all too well, and I was appalled by the desperation in them. No man had ever suffered so much for all the right reasons.

And now his suffering was for me. I couldn’t let that happen.

With a ferocious grunt, I hurled myself away from Keith, twisting with all of my strength. His grip on my hair was firm and my head jerked back for a moment before it tore free, leaving Keith with strands spilling from his fingers. Then I was stumbling forward and running for Danny.

I went like an angel, rushing across the room to save Danny. I wasn’t thinking about anything other than comforting him. I didn’t feel any danger or anger or bitterness. I only saw my broken Danny, who needed to know how beautiful he was.

My intent wasn’t to crash into him. I really meant to be gentle and touch him with a soft hand, but I couldn’t seem to slow myself because the closer I got, the more anguish I saw in his eyes. The more I saw that he really was breaking apart, and I couldn’t bear the sight.

With a loud sob I plowed into him and threw my arms around his neck. His arms wrapped around my body and held me as tightly as I clung to him. I could feel his heart pounding in his chest, smell his skin, taste his sweat on my lips.

Danny was like a boy in my arms, unsure and crushed, and it ripped my heart in two.

“No, Danny…it’s okay, Danny. You’ve done well.”

His whole body, all 240 pounds of bone and muscle, began to tremble.

Terrified, I pulled my head back and gently took his jaw in my right hand. “No, listen to me.” His eyes were closed and his face was twisted with remorse. “No, no, Danny, listen to me. You did well. You saved me. You came for me.”

He was trying to stop, trying to be strong, but he couldn’t. Tears began to seep from his eyes. I’d never seen him so undone. What had they done to my Danny?

Or was it because he knew that there was no way out for either of us now? That he’d failed?

“I’m so proud of you. You haven’t failed me. You’ve done good.”

My words sounded hopelessly pathetic in the face of his pain, but I couldn’t bear to see him this way. I wanted to claw the warden’s eyes out!

I kissed his face and eyes and I tried to wipe his tears. “You’ve done everything for me, Danny, I know that. I love you. You’ve done well. You’ve done so, so well.”

He couldn’t speak, but he didn’t need to. I had never felt so much like a woman as I did then, holding Danny in my arms. He could have given me no greater gift than his tears, because it was Danny, you see, and now Danny had even given up his strength for me. Only a very great and mysterious love could reduce him to this. And in truth, it was no reduction at all.

The man in my arms was Danny at his greatest.

He loved me. I knew it then more than I had ever known it. Danny loved me and I loved him, and I didn’t care if I lived or died anymore. As long as I was his and he was mine.

But my heart was breaking because Danny’s whole life came down to knowing if he’d done well. If he’d done the right thing. If his life, his work, everything he’d done to save and protect, had been done well.

Only I knew the full truth—that every hour he’d spent in the dark, shivering from cold, he’d spent for me. Every blow he’d suffered he’d suffered to save me. Every cry of agony, every moment of torment, every turn of the screws—all for me, because he loved me.

And still he was surely wondering if he’d done well. I could feel it in his quivering skin and I wanted to scream my love for him. I wanted to take his place in that moment and weep my regret for putting him through such suffering on my behalf.

But all I could do was hold him and offer those simple words with tears streaming down my face. “You’ve done well. I’m so proud of you, Danny. Nothing matters now, you’ve done it all so well, it doesn’t matter what happens now. I’m so, so proud of you.”

My words didn’t calm him. They pushed him deeper into that place of unyielding emotion, and I knew that I’d touched something beyond his own understanding, a core of his being that was beyond his unflinching control.

For long seconds the hard yard remained silent around us. They were giving us time to endure our own kind of suffering, but they could not know just how much healing was flowing between us.

And then, as suddenly as his tears had begun, he pulled them back with a deep breath and swept me to one side, slightly behind him.

I saw the reason: Keith was walking toward us, mouth twisted in a wicked grin that made him look like he was wearing a Halloween mask.

“So sweet, isn’t it?” The man stopped, eyes on Danny. “To be in the arms of the woman you love.”

Danny watched the man approach then stop close enough to speak without putting himself in danger of being overheard by the inmates.

Danny could have reached Keith and broken his neck before any of them could stop him, but in doing so he would leave Renee exposed long enough for one of them to end her life.

You’ve done well, Danny. Terrible emotion he hardly understood surged through his chest again, and he forced it back down.

Godfrey was there, and Randell, and a few others Danny recognized. Godfrey had tears on his cheeks. The rest looked on, stoic.