Sanctuary

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