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
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.
37
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.
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
