by Ted Dekker
Under the facade, my heart refused to slow down, and my skin felt sticky. Yet with each passing hour the realization that any other course of action would only bring tragic consequences became more certain. Still, we rehearsed them all, more for Keith’s sake than mine, because I already knew what was going to happen.
We were going to play Sicko’s game. The fact was, someone certainly knew I had killed two men. And they knew Danny had killed more than two. And if they knew, they could talk. I had to get to that person, end of story. It was the only way to protect both of us.
But Keith didn’t know that. He’d suggested we play the game, but like a good lawman, his mind was always looking for the angles, the alternatives, the way out with the least amount of risk.
“For the sake of argument,” he said, “we could still involve one of my old contacts at the sheriff’s department and get him to make inquiries into Basal, just enough to put the prison on notice.”
“We’d have to assume Sicko would find out,” I said, my tingling hands stuffed in my jeans.
“There are ways—”
“Like what? Meet in the dead of night in a park like this one? We don’t know who we can trust or who’s watching. The first call into the prison would alert them that someone’s leaked something. If someone on the inside is in on this, they’ll carry out their threat.”
Keith glanced around nonchalantly, scanning for a driver or pedestrian watching us. He was always looking, always observant. “There’s got to be someone who can find out what’s happening in there without tipping them off.”
“Yesterday you said no. Now you think there is? How?”
“Probably not without tipping them off, no. Not in the time we have.”
“And you don’t think the warden’s involved,” I said.
“It would be a stretch.”
“This whole thing’s a stretch. You made the calls, right? Like you said, Pape keeps the place quieter than a corpse in Siberia. Why? Maybe this is all his doing?”
“Possible, but not likely. Going around the law isn’t as easy as it may seem.”
Unless you’re Danny, I thought.
“Either way, I’m not willing to take that chance,” I said. “This is Danny’s life we’re talking about here.”
“Fine. But if the warden’s involved, and I doubt he is, then we’re screwed.”
“This is news?”
“No. But I mean really screwed.”
“Like I said, this is news?”
He nodded and tapped a small stone to the side with his foot. The fact of the matter was, Keith couldn’t have the same motivation I had to protect and save Danny. He could only help me. God knew I needed his help, but at what cost to him?
“Maybe I should do this alone,” I said, crossing my arms. “Really—”
“It’s too late for that,” he interrupted. “People smart enough to use Randell are smart enough to tie up loose ends. I know way too much now to let go.”
I hadn’t really thought of it that way, and I felt a pang of guilt for demanding he help me. In my urgency, I’d sucked him into a place of terrible danger for my own gain. I was using him.
I pulled up, struck by the thought. He turned and looked at me with those hazel eyes. But there wasn’t any fear in them, only resolve. He was a good man, a very good man. I couldn’t help wondering what it would have been like to meet a man like Keith before Danny came into my life.
Now there was only Danny. Forever.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t be. I was meant to be here.”
“No, I came to you.”
“Only because I put Randell behind bars and you were smart enough to find me. Frankly, whoever is behind this may have wanted you to find me.”
“Seriously?”
“Why not? I could verify the validity of Randell’s threat. It was probably at Randell’s request—you’re not the only one who has enemies. This is what he gets out of it.”
“What if I hadn’t come to you?”
Keith shrugged. “He’d probably have found another way to get me involved. Doesn’t matter now, we’re here. Let’s walk.”
We moved on, and my mind returned to Danny. A question that had ridden my mind through the previous night served me again.
What would Danny do?
“We could go through a judge,” I said. “Take them at gunpoint and force them to shut the prison down.”
“You know one who could do that?”
“Don’t you?”
He considered the question. “Nope.”
“Not even if we told them the whole thing? Showed them the notes?”
“Without corroborating evidence, what would stop a judge from thinking you wrote those notes as a way to get to Danny?”
“And that corroborating evidence would have to come from inside the prison,” I said. I knew all of this, but for both of our sakes I had to get it out one more time, if only to line things up again, like checking a lock on a door three times just to be sure.
“Basal’s a self-contained city with its own rules,” he said.
“Same with the inspector general’s office?”
“OIG would be our safest best, but it would still take way too much time and require an investigation that would probably be leaked to whoever’s monitoring communications.”
What would Danny do?
“Then we go straight to the warden,” I said. “Not at the prison, but at his house. In the middle of the night.”
Keith glanced at me. “We could. You want to take the risk Sicko won’t find out? The note said no warden.”
It also said I would have to kill someone. The wind was blowing my hair in my face and I was too distracted to care. “You think Sicko’s just going to let us walk when this is over?”
“Nope.”
That was quick.
“But you think we can find a way out before it gets to that point,” I said.
“He’s gotta keep pulling a lot of strings to make this happen, so yeah. There’s a good chance he’ll slip up sooner or later.”
“Sooner, I hope.”
“So do I. Like you said, until then we’re screwed.”
I nodded and swallowed. “Don’t worry. I’m good at playing games.”
But I was lying, wasn’t I? A gun I could handle. Bedbugs I could starve to death. But games drove me crazy, and I was already too crazy.
The hours crawled by, and the millions of people around us went about their business, oblivious to the stakes we faced. I spent the three hours prior to our journey to Morongo Valley pacing my home, repacking my kit, then checking and rechecking my nine-millimeter with an unsteady hand. Then I cleaned the gun and checked it yet again, because three years had passed since I’d used it, and in my shaken state, I wasn’t sure I’d done everything right—even though I knew I had, if that makes any sense.
It was five minutes before eight when I turned off my headlights and rolled the Toyota to a stop on Sherman Road, where we’d been directed by the note. I had suggested taking Keith’s truck because the route was a gravel road way out in the middle of nowhere, but he’d dismissed the idea out of hand. Whoever was watching would want to see me driving my car.
Glowing haze from the city to the west hid the moon, and there were only a few stars visible above us even though it was dark. The old warehouse one hundred yards ahead rose into the night sky like a massive ancient tomb.
The car’s engine barely purred; the air-conditioning vents whispered. I sat with both my hands on the steering wheel, staring at the darkened building, mind filled with ghosts and dead bodies.
“You sure you’re up for this?” he asked.
“I can see why he picked this place. There’s not a soul within ten miles but us.”
“And whoever’s watching.”
I glanced out the side window. Scattered scrub pine hunched on the otherwise barren ground.
“I don’t like this.”
“I don’t eithe
r,” he said. “Just don’t panic.”
We sat in silence for a beat. Keith’s plan had all seemed so simple—we’d both go in together, armed. The note hadn’t said anything about me coming alone this time, just without authorities. Sicko needed us alive, Keith insisted. There wouldn’t be a threatening confrontation here, probably only more nonsense, but I knew he was saying some of that for my benefit.
Nonsense wasn’t in Sicko’s vocabulary. He liked to communicate with bloodied body parts in shoe boxes and perverted bears in biker bars. Looking at the dark warehouse, a terrible fear gripped my mind. Despite Keith’s warning, cries of panic told me to throw the car into reverse and roar away under full power before it was too late.
But the panic lasted only a few seconds before anger shut it down. If we were going in, we were going without hesitation.
I snapped on the headlights, shifted my foot off the brake, and floored the accelerator. The tires spun on the gravel, found some traction, and hurled us forward.
“Whoa…”
“Hold on.”
The rings of my headlights expanded on the warehouse’s old gray sides.
Keith gripped the dashboard. “What are you doing?”
There was a door, dead center and closed. There was a knob on it. My eyes centered on that knob, as if it was the only thing that stood between me and Danny. As if this was Danny’s prison and I was here to bust him out.
“Slow down—”
I released the gas pedal and braked hard. The car slid for twenty yards and came to a lurching halt a dozen paces from the door. Dust roiled around us, drifting through the shafts of light from the headlamps.
“Okay. That’s one way to do it,” Keith said. “Keep the lights on.” He pulled out his handgun, chambered a round, and eased his door open.
I’d lost my cool, collected self there for a moment, I knew, but that was okay. The note had instructed us to come, and we’d come. And now here we were.
What would Danny do?
He wouldn’t have come in like a bat out of hell. He probably would have scoped the place out first, found all the exits, all the windows, surveyed the surrounding landscape. Heck, he probably would have counted the number of shingles on the roof. There was a reason why he never got caught until he turned himself in, and it was in part because he didn’t come roaring up to his enemies in a Toyota spewing dust and gravel for the whole world to see.
I shoved the stick into park, grabbed my gun, and was out of my door before Keith had two feet on the ground. Staring at that warehouse, it had all became very plain to me. Keith was right—Sicko needed me. I was the key to their money. I was their leverage. I was their subject of torment. Without me, there was no game.
I was also Danny’s only hope.
So without waiting, I walked through the illuminated dust, straight for the door, both hands snugged on the butt of my gun. Keith cut in front of me, one hand raised to hold me back, eyes on that knob.
He put his hand on it, glanced back, and gave me a nod. “Easy…Follow me.” He twisted the silver knob and pushed the door open.
Darkness.
Keith slipped a small black flashlight from the pocket of his jeans, snapped it on, and shone it through the gap as I peered around him.
Empty space. Concrete floor.
Shoulder against the door frame, Keith poked his head in quickly, then pulled it back.
“What do you see?” I whispered.
He gave me a sharp look that pretty much said shut up, waited a count of three, then spun in and pulled up, wrists crossed so that both his handgun and the flashlight were pointed forward.
“Anything?”
He still wasn’t moving, so I stepped up beside him and saw the dim interior with a single glance. The warehouse looked like any empty warehouse, except for what appeared to be clothes heaped in the far left corner. Dirty floor, cobwebs on the sloping wood ceiling, three windows on each side all covered up by brown paper. Nothing else that I could see.
My eyes skipped back to the heap of clothes. Only it wasn’t a heap of clothes. A dark-haired head protruded from the top. Two arms to the sides. And two legs.
Keith ran forward, light twisting wildly in the dark. The image jerked around my field of vision as I ran, but I began to piece together what I saw.
What I had mistaken for clothing in the flashlight’s farthest reaches appeared to be the slumped form of a young man or woman with short dark hair, chin resting on a blue Bruins sweater—asleep, unconscious, or dead. A gray blanket was heaped over the person’s torso, and from it protruded two legs in jeans, doubled back to one side so that only the knees showed.
Each arm was chained to the wooden framing on either side.
Keith dropped to one knee beside what I now saw was a teenage boy, maybe sixteen or seventeen.
I felt sick. “Is he alive?”
Keith pressed his hand on the boy’s neck to check for a pulse, but it was as far he got. The boy’s head jerked up, eyes wide.
“No!”
“No, no, no, it’s okay…” Keith removed the light from the boy’s eyes. “We’re here to help you. It’s okay.” To me. “Get his hands free!”
“No!” The boy’s frantic cry echoed in the vacant warehouse. “No, you can’t!” His frantic eyes darted from Keith to me and then to his right hand. “He cut off my finger.”
I saw the bloodied hand. Three fingers. The index digit was missing, cut off at the base. An image of the shoe box filled my mind and I swallowed against the nausea rising from my gut.
The boy stared up at me with the wildest, bluest eyes I had ever seen. Tears trailed through dust on his face.
“He…he cut off my finger.”
I lowered myself to both knees next to him and rested my hand on his shoulder. “I’m so sorry. We’re here to help you. What’s your name?”
But the boy was too overwhelmed to answer. It occurred to me that nearly a week had passed since I received the shoe box. If the finger sent to me belonged to this boy…
“He was moved here,” Keith said. “There’s no blood on the floor. The wound was cauterized. Did they hurt you anywhere else?”
The boy began to cry. He shook his head.
“Do you have a name?” I asked again. I had to know. I had to know because in my mind’s eye, this was Danny. And he was me. At the very least, the boy was here because of me.
“Jeremy,” the boy said.
My hand on his shoulder was shaking.
“Why can’t we take the restraints off, Jeremy?” Keith asked.
“He…he said the letter first. You…” The boy was so distraught that his words came out jumbled. “It’s under here; you have to read it first.”
Keith glanced at me, then pulled the blanket off the boy. His jeans were stained where he’d wet himself. In his lap lay yellow paper folded down to a two-inch square.
There was no food or water around that I could see. Keith picked up the note, shoved the flashlight under his chin, and quickly unfolded the paper.
I took a calming breath and gently rubbed the boy’s shoulder. “Okay, listen to me, Jeremy. I need you to tell me how long you’ve been here.”
“I don’t know.” And then, “A long time.” His face was wet with tears, flowing freely now.
“When did they take you? Do you remember what day it was?”
He stared up at me again, eyes pleading. “Sunday.”
“From where?”
“Pasadena,” he said.
“You live in Pasadena?”
But he only lowered his head and began to cry silently. Something in my mind began to break. Not because Pasadena meant anything to me, but because Jeremy was an innocent boy who lived in Pasadena and was abducted on Sunday so that Sicko could use his finger to make sure I got the message. Jeremy would suffer the rest of his life on my account.
I felt faint. He needed water, and I had water in the car, but for a few moments I couldn’t move. And then I was up and running for the doo
r. Slipping on the gravel outside, dust flying. Lunging into the car for the water.
When I burst back into the warehouse, Keith was standing with both arms at his sides like a zombie, staring down at Jeremy, Sicko’s note in one hand, flashlight in the other, pointed at the ground. The sound of the car’s engine faded behind me, replaced by the pounding of my feet on the concrete.
“What is it?”
Keith didn’t respond.
“Why can’t we get him out of those things?” I demanded. “The poor kid’s been in here for a week!”
“You should read this,” Keith said. His voice didn’t sound right.
The boy’s chin was on his chest again, passed out again. Poor boy…I dropped to my knee and tilted his chin up. “Wake up, Jeremy.” His eyes slowly opened as I pressed the water bottle to his mouth. He drank thirstily, gulping like a bird. Water spilled down his chin, soaking his shirt. When he finally shifted his mouth from the bottle, he was already fading.
I set the bottle down. “We’ll get you out of here, I promise. You’re going home, Jeremy, okay? You’ll be home soon, I promise.”
Keith took my elbow and led me to the side. “Just read it.”
So I did, taking the flashlight from Keith to illuminate the note myself.
Good girl.
If you would have been one minute late, the boy would already be dead.
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 crossed the wrong man.
Be a good girl and do what you’re told.
P.S. Cut off another one of the boy’s fingers. Remind him that if he tells anyone about what happened to him, we will kill his mother.
My hands began to tremble.