Sanctuary (27 page)

“You protect the warden and you go down with him. When?”

“Two nights ago.”

“Where?”

“In the hard yard.”

“What did you do to him?”

“He made me. I’m only doing what I have to do to stay alive in this place. They killed Slane right in front of me!”

“Where’s the priest?”

“I don’t know!”

We’d been urgent, not loud, but Randell’s last denial rang through the hall.

“Shut up,” I snapped. “Where would he be?”

“In the hole.”

“Segregation?”

“No. The other hole.”

“Which hole?”

His eyes were filled with fear.

“Where is it?”

“I don’t know!”

“How could you not know? You’ve never been there?”

He was breathing hard now. I’d reached a part of his mind he didn’t want reached.

“They blindfold us. It’s below ad seg.”

I blinked. The information quickly settled into my gut. Blindfolds? The warden was a brute who was playing games with his inmates. Randell was a pawn who knew nothing. Constance had been a pawn. Messengers and thugs.

“We have what we need, Renee.” Keith gently pulled me back by my shoulder. We’d both used our real names, but it didn’t matter now.

Keith stepped up to Randell and squeezed his face with a strong hand.

“Now, I’m only going to say this once, so you listen carefully, you hear?”

We had come into Sicko’s house. It had to be the warden. We were already naked here. We had to get to Danny and get out!

“One word of this to anyone, and I’m going to make sure you end up on San Quentin’s death row for the rest of your life. Not a fun place. Keep your mouth shut and we’ll get you out early. And forget about the warden’s threats, he’s finished.”

“You don’t understand—”

“No, you don’t.” Keith released the man’s face and slapped him. “It’s over! You either go up or you go down. End of story.”

“Keith, we have to go!” I said.

He glared at Randell, then turned around, face flushed. “Put that thing away,” he said, flipping his hand at my gun.

Danny was being held somewhere off the prison’s blueprints, in a hole that made a man as strong as Randell cringe. Keith and I knew we had to find Danny now, but only I knew how. I was going to put a gun to Michael Banning’s head and force him to take us to Danny.

I shoved the gun under the strap at my calf, pulled my pant leg down over it, and hurried to catch Keith, who had just cleared the cell’s door and pulled up to wait for me.

So I’d thought, but I was wrong.

The sight that greeted me when I stepped out of Bruce Randell’s cell stopped me beside Keith. Not ten feet away stood a thick man with a blond crew cut flanked by two commanding officers in black.

Both of them had rifles hooked in the crooks of their elbows—a major breach of security protocol in any California prison, I knew. Firearms were only permitted in gun rails, towers, and control booths, out of reach of any prisoner, bar none.

The man with the crew cut looked amused. “I hear you guys need an escort,” he said.

Keith started forward. “That won’t be necessary. We were just finishing up.”

The man held up a hand. “I’m afraid the warden insists.”

I told myself to run. It had all gone wrong. Instead I pulled out my phone.

“No calls. Put the phone down. Now.”

“This isn’t your business.”

“Well now, that’s funny, because the warden told me it was. He instructed me to come find you and escort you. He said go find Renee Gilmore and Keith Hammond and bring them to me. Drop the phone.”

I glanced at Keith, who nodded. I dropped the phone on the concrete.

My heart was pounding. The warden knew our names, which meant he knew everything.

The CO flashed a grin. “Captain Bostich, here to serve. Now if you’d please follow me.”

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.”

THE EMOTIONS THAT
raged 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.

MY MELTDOWN BEGAN
with 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.

“There’s a reason for the law, my friends. Breaking it comes with consequence. But before you’re punished you have the right to know what you’ve done wrong.”

“You make me sick,” I said.

“And you, me.”

He clasped his hands behind his back.

“Danny’s guilty for many crimes that he hasn’t confessed yet. His deal with the DA was a sham. He has so much to learn from me. Now you too have broken the law in my house, and I don’t take that lightly. As punishment, I’m going to use you to break him. I hope you’ll understand the justice of that.”

If his words were meant to unnerve me, they didn’t. I felt only rage. Marshall Pape’s twisted philosophy of punishment defied reason. I stared at him, too furious to speak.

“You should have known better, you really should have. But now it’s too late. The sad part is that you still don’t really have a clue. It’s going to get very ugly, but in that you will see that I’m not your devil, Renee. By the way, I think Sicko’s an adorable name. It’s so…you.”

He looked at Keith. “As for you, Mr. Hammond, you’ll get your turn soon enough. They’ll be down for both of you soon.”

The warden turned around, flipped off the light, and left us in darkness again.

Keith muttered and cursed under his breath, then fell silent.

The trembling in my bones began then, when I had nothing to do but stare into the darkness as the warden’s words rang in my head. I tried not to think about what he meant by
very ugly
, but endless images burrowed into my mind.

I had to be strong, I knew that, but my strength was all gone. Tears began to fall down my cheeks. It was all so wrong! I hardly could remember what had happened to get me into that cell at Basal.

“I’m so sorry, Renee.” Keith rested his hand on my knees.

My tears swelled. I couldn’t speak past the knot in my throat.

“Listen to me, this isn’t over. There’s still Danny. He may still find a way.”

I began to sob quietly in the darkness. I knew Keith was only saying that for my benefit, but he couldn’t have said anything more appropriate to me in that moment. He was right, Danny was our only hope now.

Danny always saved me.

WHEN DANNY’S MIND
awoke it did so slowly, like a slug crawling from a hole in the ground.

Though the restraints no longer held him down, he was still on the table where the doctor had worked over him for two days. The lightbulb still glowed on the ceiling above him. His chest still rose and fell in a steady rhythm.

A dense fog hung over his mind, but he was alive. The torture was finished, he remembered that much. There was something else. He couldn’t put his mind on it.

He tried to lift his head, but pain flared in his neck and he abandoned the attempt. The warden had told him to move his legs. It was strange that this memory came to him even before the memory that the warden had come at all, but he’d felt pain in his neck and that pain had somehow triggered…

Danny blinked. The warden had come. He’d said something important.

Ignoring the pain in his neck this time, Danny lifted his head off the table and stared down at his feet. Red pinpricks dotted his shin. The leather straps that had held his legs dangled over the sides of the table. But the warden had said something, and as Danny lay with his head cocked up, the words came to him in one lump sum.

Renee has decided to join us.

He’d passed out.

This time Danny moved without calculation. He threw the full weight of his left leg over his right and rolled against the two restraints that bound his arms to the table by his sides. There was no reason in the movement, only a raw reaction. Instinct stripped bare of the training that might hold it in check.

The sudden shift in weight tipped the table as if it had been shoved by an angry rhino. The whole thing twisted wildly under him, wrenching his bound arms as he crashed toward the floor.

But he got his feet down first. Both of them.

He stood half bent with the wooden table strapped to his arms behind him, balanced on one of its legs. Pain sliced through his strained shoulders.

He grunted. But now his thinking was more precise, and his next movement was fully intended for a single purpose: to be freed from the monstrosity on his back.

Roaring as much from pain as rage, he hefted the table onto his back, spun around with all of his strength, and slammed the table into the concrete wall.

Wood cracked, but he wasn’t free. So he did it again, grunting loudly as the table crashed into the wall a second time. And a third.

But the table didn’t break apart. Instead, the strap that held his left arm snapped on the fourth try.

Ten seconds later, Danny stood in the middle of the room next to the inverted broken table, now missing three of its legs.

He was still locked in the cell, but setting himself free of the table wasn’t pointless. They would be coming for him, he was sure of that. The warden’s intentions were plain. He was going to use Renee as he’d used young Peter—as a means of breaking Danny. Pape would keep her alive until then.

They wouldn’t know that he’d broken free or that he now had the table legs and splinters of wood to use as weapons. Bostich would have to open the door to the cell, and when he did, Danny would kill him in any one of several ways that quickly came to mind.

Why?

In a moment of clarity he knew that he’d vacated his resolve to eschew violence, regardless of the impulse that called for it. No matter what the situation.

He stood up straight, taken by the deep conflict in front of him. And then another question struck him. Why had the warden left him in a cell with his legs free and a table to break? Why had he told Danny about Renee? The man was as shrewd as any Danny had known.

He glanced down at the leather belt still buckled around his right forearm. It had broken an inch from the buckle, but the rough edge of the tear didn’t run the full width of the leather. It had been cut with a knife two thirds of the way through.

The same with the strap on his left arm. The warden had assumed he’d try to free himself once he’d learned that Renee was in the prison. Why? Because he wanted Danny to break out of the deep meditation cell.

Why? Because he intended to lead Danny into a trap.

But that same trap could have been just as easily set by leading Danny with misinformation. Knowing about Danny’s unshakable love for Renee, the warden might have only
claimed
to have Renee. How would Danny know the difference?

Renee might very well be safe at home, oblivious to the warden’s twisted games. Danny allowed the thought to wash him with hope.

But the moment of reprieve was short-lived because it struck him just as quickly that he could be wrong. The warden might actually have Renee up in the prison as he’d claimed. And with that mushrooming thought, his instinct to save her at any cost reasserted itself like a hurricane slamming into an island.

He stared at the door. The lock was on the outside. There was no getting past it. If the warden intended to draw him into a trap, he would have left the door unlocked.

Danny moved forward on numb legs, eyes on the handle. If the door was open he would go, even knowing that he was being led. He could not remain here while she might be suffering.

He stepped up to the door, put his hand on the latch, and twisted. The latch moved freely and the door pulled open.

His pulse surged. It could only mean that the warden did have Renee. He’d made a way for Danny to find her, knowing that he did not have the strength to allow her to suffer. Knowing that Danny would follow his heart and try to save her.

The light behind him cast a glow down a corridor that ended in twenty feet before turning to the right. From there he knew he would climb one set of stairs to the segregation wing. And another to the administrative wing.

Why?

Why had the warden gone to this trouble? Why hadn’t he just come for Danny and led him to Renee?

But then Danny knew. Pape wanted him to come of his own will, even knowing it was a trap. He wanted to lead him as he’d led Renee. The act of going to save someone invested a person in the rescue and intensified the pain of any failure.

The crushing of hope, however thin that hope, was more miserable than having no hope at all.

Even knowing that his disposition now was to overthrow his vows, knowing he was throwing himself on the mercy of his own emotions, Danny retreated, picked up two large splinters of wood, each roughly a hand’s span, and slipped them under the waistband of his shorts. One of the table legs had split off at an angle so that it formed a sharp wedge at one end. He grabbed it and strode for the door.

So, then, it came down to this. There was no more room for ideology or thinking. It was Renee up there now, not him. He would crush them all to save his bride.

And if they hurt Renee, he would hurt them.

Danny stepped out of the cell and headed down the corridor.