The Sanctuary

by Ted Dekker

  My palms on the wheel were clammy with sweat. “I think we should leave it running,” I said. “We might need to get out quick.”

  “Saving the three seconds it takes to start the car isn’t worth the risk.”

  “Risk of what? It’s Beverly Hills.”

  “These are public streets. A cop comes by and wonders why the car’s running? No, turn it off.”

  So I did. “What time is it?”

  “Eleven fifty-one. We have nine minutes.”

  “So I just go up and knock on the door, right?”

  Keith reached back and grabbed my black kit. “Just like we agreed. You go to the front door, I hold back until the door’s open. Assuming you’re still good with that.”

  Was I?

  The plan was mine, dredged up from my better days with Danny. He would have insisted on a thorough surveillance, but the timing Sicko had given us didn’t allow for that. The home owner probably wouldn’t see any threat in a skinny girl like me dressed in Miss Me jeans and a bright blue blouse. Once he had the door open, Keith, who was dressed in black, would step in from the side with his gun and force the man back in the house.

  Looking at the house, I was having second thoughts. We didn’t even know if the owner had a wife in there, or daughters, or guards, or dogs.

  “What if he’s the wrong man?”

  Keith pulled out his gun and chambered a round. “Whoever’s pulling our strings is too meticulous in his planning for that. The man they want is in that house, guaranteed.”

  “And then what?” I asked.

  “And then you leave it up to me.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “I don’t either, but trust me, it’s the best way. Go in fast and hard and control the situation before he has a chance to react.”

  Something about the look of that fortress struck me as odd. Maybe it was my frazzled nerves, maybe my suspicious nature, maybe my fear of bedbugs and rats—I don’t know. There was too much we didn’t know about our target. Too many things that could go wrong. I knew that as a cop Keith had been through his share of similar situations, but nothing had gone right for us so far. And we’d failed to follow the instructions on the last note. It was suddenly all happening too fast.

  What would Danny do? I’d asked that question a hundred times in the last two days, but staring at the house, a part of me saw our present situation differently. My instinct to start out with deception was good, but the part about barging in with guns drawn wasn’t sitting right. We didn’t know enough!

  Danny would already be on the perimeter circling the house. He would be patient. He would find a weakness first and then exploit it, right?

  “You ready?” Keith asked.

  “Read the note again,” I said.

  He turned his head. “We’ve been over this.”

  “I have OCD.”

  He stared at me, then pulled the note out of his pocket, fished a penlight out of my kit, and read the note under its light.

  “‘At midnight Monday night you will go to an address I will give you. You will force a full confession from the owner of the house and learn where he put the money. If he refuses, you will kill him and wait for my next instructions. If he confesses, you will have forty-eight hours to retrieve the money. Once you have the money, you will return and kill the man and wait for my instructions. Either way, you will kill the man. If he’s alive in four days, both Danny and that scumbag you’re with are dead.’”

  He lowered the note.

  “You know what I’m thinking?” I said, eyes still on the house. “This isn’t about the money. Whoever lives in that house has all the money Randell could want. He doesn’t need us to get it; he could find another way.”

  “We’ve been over that too. Randell doesn’t know who he can trust on the outside anymore. His partners turned against him.”

  “It’s not about the money,” I said. “He’s obsessed with us killing whoever’s in that house. That’s all that matters to him. But why us?”

  “And we’ve been over that too. Revenge.”

  “Against who?”

  Keith looked up at the house. “Me. You. Danny.”

  I nodded and looked at the side of his face. “Okay. But what about whoever’s in the house? What if he’s more than just a drug dealer? If it’s not really about the money, why does Sicko want him dead?”

  “We don’t know.” His voice took on a frustrated bite. “We don’t know squat—you don’t think I know that?”

  “That’s what I’m saying…we don’t know.”

  “We know Sicko’s enraged about something Danny did. Revenge. You kill this man, you take the blame, you go to prison. It’s his way of messing with Danny.”

  “I’m not going to kill him,” I said.

  “You sure about that?”

  I didn’t answer. It still didn’t make complete sense to me. There was something else we didn’t understand in play. Maybe that was what made me rethink the whole barging-in thing. Whoever was in the house might be our only real shot at getting to Sicko.

  “Like you said, we need to know more,” I said.

  “We don’t have time to know more!”

  I glanced at my phone. Three minutes till midnight. My heart was racing. Danny’s first rule had always been to know your target, and the best way to do that now was on the inside of that house. Not with guns blazing.

  “I’m going in first,” I said. I grabbed the kit off his lap. Pulled out my knife. Stuffed it and the Mace into my pockets. “Give me five minutes.”

  “You can’t go in there alone and unarmed.”

  “I’m not going in with a gun. We need to know who this guy is before we do anything. The second he sees a gun, he sees us as a threat. I need to know who he is before that.”

  “Then let me go in first.”

  “No, he’ll see you as a threat. Me, he sees as a lost girl looking for some help.”

  “That’s your plan now? Go in looking for directions?”

  I took a deep breath and opened my door. My desperation gave way to a kind of fatal hopelessness.

  What would Danny do? He would do whatever was necessary to save me. I had to save Danny, and the only way was to know his enemy.

  “I’m going in, Keith. I have to. Wait for me outside and be ready.”

  “Ready for what? A smoke signal?”

  “I don’t know.” I put my foot on the street and stepped outside. “I’ll think of something.”

  “Renee—”

  “Give me ten minutes.”

  “Ten? Or five?”

  “Ten. Wait for me.”

  “Renee—”

  I shut the door on his voice and hurried toward the house. I’d done this before. I could do it again. I had to. For Danny’s sake, I had to.

  21

  THE PILLS THE warden gave Danny were a sedative, a powerful narcotic that began to pull at his mind within ten minutes. Not a numbing drug, but a sleeping agent, which made sense if Danny understood the warden’s intentions as well-meaning. He’d been through a nightmare. It would be good for him to sleep it off so that he could face whatever came the next day.

  But Danny could not understand any such benevolence on Marshall Pape’s part. Or could he? Yes, actually he could. From Pape’s point of view, everything he was doing was well-meaning. There was simply a disparity between his and Danny’s understanding of well. In Pape’s world, it would do Danny well to conform to the punishment he’d earned. Breaking Danny would do the world well. Any suffering was well deserved, as was the suffering of every member in this sanctuary.

  These were the thoughts that mumbled through Danny’s mind as he sat on the upper bunk, looking at Godfrey, who watched him with the gentle eyes of a man who knew more than he was willing to say.

  “He wants you out cold. I can see it in your eyes,” Godfrey said, reaching for one of his books on the locker. “I don’t know what you’ve done, Priest, but I’ve never seen the warden so fixated on breaking a
man, not in the first week.” Godfrey faced him. “So tell me, what did you really do?”

  The older man’s image grew fuzzy for a moment, then came back into clear focus. “I told you. I killed some people.”

  “No, that’s not it. There’s something else. I don’t know what, but you did indeed truly cross the wrong man. The question is, why does the warden want you out cold now? I’ve seen a lot of things in my time, but I’ve never seen him help an inmate sleep.”

  Danny had been transferred to the prison eight days earlier, and in the space of that week he had spent two days in the hole, two days in deep meditation, and two days in the infirmary, leaving him only one day in general population—this all without so much as lifting a finger or raising his voice to harm a soul.

  But that was precisely the problem, wasn’t it? Like a loving father, the warden meant to flush out all of Danny’s deepest, darkest, most violent impulses and lay them bare in the light of his own justice, so that Danny might be transformed into the kind of man who never again deviated from society’s rules.

  And tonight that loving father had given him two pills to put him to sleep.

  “He wants to break me,” Danny said.

  “Break you from what?”

  “I used to kill my enemies.” The drug was flooding his veins now, pulling his mind lower into darkness.

  “He wants to break you from killing your enemies?”

  Danny felt his head shaking, slowly—no. He put his hand on the edge of the mattress to steady himself.

  “I took a vow to love my enemies,” he said. His tongue felt thick. “I don’t think he likes that.”

  Godfrey held his eyes steady. When he spoke his voice was knowing. “So he wants you to expose you. The bastard wants to justify his punishment of you by making you do it again. He wants to turn you back into a monster in his monster factory.”

  It wasn’t a new thought for Danny, but hearing it so clearly, he felt a stab of panic penetrate his foggy mind.

  “But darkness can’t drive out darkness, only light can do that,” Godfrey said. “Hate can’t drive out hate, only love can do that. Martin Luther King said that.”

  “Yes,” Danny remembered saying.

  And then he remembered nothing. Not what, if anything, Godfrey said next. Not lying down, not falling asleep.

  He wasn’t even aware that he was on his bunk, dead to Basal, drifting through a peaceful world in which he had no enemies. Time drifted by, bringing with it vague images and whispers that were gone the moment they appeared. From the fog emerged a vision.

  Peter was there, smiling, holding out a plate with chocolate cake on it. Where, Danny didn’t know—just there, right in front of him. Beaming.

  “Do you want some, Danny? If you’re good you can come to my room and we can eat some cake.”

  “I would like that, Peter. I would like that very much.”

  “I will never hurt a girl again, Danny.”

  It was a strange proclamation, but not so strange in the fabric of a dream.

  “Did you hurt her?” Danny asked.

  “The warden said I did.” Tears flooded the boy’s eyes. “I don’t want to go back into the room.”

  Danny felt a lump rise in his throat. He reached out and laid his hand on the side of Peter’s head. Drew his thumb over the boy’s temple. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to let that happen.”

  The smile returned to Peter’s face. He held up the chocolate cake. “It’s okay, Danny, we can eat cake now. I’m good now.”

  Another voice spoke. “Danny?” The female voice was etched into his mind for all time.

  He turned and saw that Renee was standing there, in his dream, looking at him with her clear eyes. Immediately that ancient warmth of hope and affection flooded his chest, swelling through his throat and face.

  In his mind he was running for her, throwing his arms around her and swinging her through the air as she laughed.

  Why haven’t you done that, Danny? Why haven’t you called her and wept on her shoulder and told her how deep the ache in your heart runs?

  Then he saw her face and his heart froze. There were tears on her cheeks.

  “Danny,” she said. “I can’t find you, Danny.”

  “I’m here, darling! Right here!”

  She stared at him and swallowed deeply. “Are you doing well?”

  Yes! he wanted to say. But he couldn’t form the word.

  “And are they treating you well?”

  Yes, my darling. Yes! But he couldn’t speak. Because in truth he wasn’t well. In truth he was falling. In truth he was melting down.

  Standing there in his dream, facing the woman he loved more than his own life, he realized that he was afraid. That he was terrified. That he was only a shell of a man, powerless to save Renee.

  Overcome by sorrow and unable to find solace through meditation because of the drugs, Danny began to cry.

  22

  I WALKED UP the three steps that led to the mansion’s glass and ironwork door, fingers tingling, and without allowing even a pause, I rang the illuminated doorbell button that was set in a brass intercom.

  I assured myself that I was safe. Apart from the knife and Mace in my pockets, I wasn’t packing threatening weapons and I had no intention of leaping on anyone with fists flying. I was only a lost soul who desperately needed to use a phone because the one in my back pocket was dead. My presence was totally innocent. Nothing strange, nothing crazy, nothing but me being neurotic, and there was no crime against that.

  I rang the bell again, and this time I saw light come to life past the glass. Clean, sparkling glass. This was it. I stepped back, heart pounding, but otherwise calm and collected—not counting my fingers, which were trembling. I shoved my Mace deeper in my right pocket so it wouldn’t stick out.

  “Can I help you?” The low male voice spoke over the intercom, startling me.

  “Yes, um…I’m sorry, but I was wondering if you could help me. I need help.”

  A pause. “It’s midnight. What help?”

  “I need to make a call. I’m sorry, I know this is strange, but my phone’s battery died and I think I might be in trouble. I have to make a call. I couldn’t find a gas station or anything…”

  “It’s midnight,” he said again.

  “You don’t understand, my husband is in terrible trouble. I have to make a call. Please, I’m a respectable girl who needs a helping hand. Just one minute, I promise.”

  The intercom was silent.

  I was about to push the button again when a figure distorted by the angular glass stepped into the dim light inside, unlocked the deadbolt, and pulled the door open a foot. A tall man with a goatee stared at me through round spectacles. He was maybe fifty or older, dressed in casual black slacks and a turtleneck, and he didn’t look anything like a drug dealer.

  “The phone?” he asked.

  “Yes. Please.”

  “Wait here a moment.” He started to close the door.

  “I also need to use the bathroom,” I said quickly. His right eyebrow arched. “Unless you’d rather I pee in your bushes. Look, I’ve been out here for an hour and I’m sorry, but I really have to pee.”

  He hesitated, then opened the door. “Please hurry. The phone’s in the kitchen.”

  “Thank you.”

  I stepped in, and just like that I was in the house of the man Sicko wanted Keith and me to kill. Looking around, I didn’t see anything remotely threatening, much less piles of guns or cocaine. The house was mostly dark, but in the shadows sat expensive furnishings made of leather: brass lamps with animal hides for shades, large oil paintings on the walls. It was the kind of decor you’d expect to see in a colonial mansion in Beverly Hills, I supposed.

  To my right, a twisting staircase rose to a catwalk. Living room dead ahead. Kitchen to my left. An office or a library next to the kitchen. A clean house. I liked that. But my fingers were still trembling.

  I stuck out my hand. “My name’s Renee
Gilmore.”

  He studied my eyes without taking my hand and I immediately withdrew it, thinking he would notice how clammy it was.

  “I thought you needed to make a phone call.”

  “I do. And pee.”

  “Then use it.” He indicated the archway leading into what I could see was the kitchen. “The bathroom’s down the hall to the left.” He nodded at a hallway next to the kitchen entry.

  “Thank you.”

  Worst case, I could slip into the bathroom and call Keith. The man didn’t seem to know my name, and we wouldn’t be meeting armed drug lords. The man we were to kill seemed entirely respectable, not the person I’d imagined trying to force a confession out of over the last two days.

  Was he alone?

  I headed for the kitchen. “Sorry for bothering you, I’ll be out in a second.”

  “Make it quick,” he snapped.

  I stopped and turned back, determined to take him off guard. “Look, I’ve had a hard night. You’re nice and comfortable in your mansion here, but there’s a world of hurt out there. Please, some kindness would be nice. I just need to use your phone and pee. We should be thankful we have running water and phones to share, not hoard them. In some places they pee on the ground and communicate with drums.”

  Disarming was good, Danny had always said. Maybe I was crossing the line between disarming and alarming. I softened my voice and changed the subject.

  “You have a family?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re afraid I’ll wake them?”

  “No, I’m here alone.”

  “Do I look like a thug who’s going to rob you?”

  “I don’t know, are you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then why are you carrying a knife and Mace?”

  I blinked at him, surprised he’d laid me bare so easily.

  “My security system scans for more than movement, dear. There’s more to this house than meets the eyes.”