The Sanctuary

9

THURSDAY

IT’S AMAZING WHAT even the most bland mind can conceive of when properly stimulated. But press the more imaginative among us and there is no limit to the kinds of wild thoughts that fill our heads.

There I stood, at the end of my bed midday Thursday with all of my tools lined up like footwear on a Buckle shoe rack, carefully rehearsing the use of each item. I had gone through the exercise twice already, the night after returning from Keith Hammond’s condo, and again that morning, after rising from a fitful sleep.

On the far left lay a Bowie knife with a ten-inch stainless-steel blade, good for hacking down a small sapling in the forest if you were stranded following a single-engine airplane crash and needed to make a platform in the trees so the bears wouldn’t get you at night.

Or for cutting off someone’s head.

Next to it rested a smaller, more manageable six-inch Boker tactical knife, sharpened on both sides like a dagger, good for drilling holes in the thin walls of a shack in the forest if you wanted to stay out of sight and spy on whatever deer or porcupine might wander by.

Or for stabbing a rapist’s forehead.

There was also the folding survival knife, good for more than slashing. The wire, good for many things beside strangling. The small but very powerful Steiner binoculars, good for watching more than ugly neighbors. A set of lock picks, good for entering any locked door but my own. A pair of handcuffs for restraining a bad guy. And a four-inch can of pressurized Mace pepper spray readily available from Amazon. Good for turning even the largest man into a squealing little pig.

I’d selected the tools from a chest containing many, many more. It had sat in my closet, unopened, for three years running. These would all fit neatly in my kit, as Danny had taught me to call it—a small black leather bag that some might confuse for a large purse and others a doctor’s medicine bag, although doctors no longer used such things.

Eight tools on the end of my yellow-checkered comforter. And one in my fist: the Browning nine-millimeter gun with a nine-clip round slammed up its handle. Copper hollow points with enough power to stop a much larger person than me in a full rush.

I snatched the gun up to shoulder height and twisted to my right into a firing position. The mirror on the wall said it all. Small package, major punch. Long black hair flowing over my face. Cropped black tank top and yellow-checkered flannel night shorts. Other than being too skinny, I looked like Lara Croft ready to face the world. Well, at least from the waist up. My flannel shorts and white thighs were anything but threatening.

I straightened and examined the gun. Released the clip, checked it quickly, slapped it home, chambered a round—clank, clank—and pointed the gun at my fluffy white tiger.

I tilted the barrel up. “Sorry, Tigger.”

But I wasn’t. Yes, I hated the gun in my hand. I’d never used the wire or the handcuffs or the pepper spray or most of the tools on my bed, not on another human being, at least. They all took me back to terrible days when they’d been necessary.

In the end it had been a gun that saved me. I would be dead if not for a gun, I was sure of it.

I paced out to the living room, checked the door to make sure it was still locked, and went to the refrigerator for a glass of water. The memories of that night four years earlier rushed through my head. I’d been shot up with heroin, a bag of bones after being manipulated and crushed by a man who wanted me only as his toy. He and his buddies had chased me down an alleyway. I was stumbling, falling, desperately tying to get away. It was raining. Hard.

You see, if I’d had a gun then, I might have been able to defend myself. But that would come later. I was saved by a stranger that night. A stranger who turned out to be just as bad as my first captor. Maybe worse. After a year, I finally set the world straight—and I did it with the help of a gun.

So you see, I hadn’t touched the nine-millimeter in my hand for three years because I hated it. But I also loved it. How could I not love something that had saved my life?

Danny was a purist, locked up because he always had done and always would do what he thought was right, even if that meant serving the rest of his life in prison. And although I agreed with his vow of nonviolence, the new threat to both of our lives superseded his conviction. At least it superseded mine, maybe because I wasn’t as strong as Danny.

If that meant blowing a hole in Bruce Randell’s head, so be it. I wasn’t going to let him kill either Danny or me.

I had spent hours rehearsing my options and settled on two possible courses of action. One, I could simply hole up in my apartment and wait it out, trusting that Danny was fully capable of taking care of himself. I mean, he’d survived the front lines of the Bosnian War, hadn’t he? And he’d done it as an assassin who routinely penetrated enemy lines to take the lives of key players. Danny could handle guns and explosives like most people handled breathing. More important, he could handle his wits even better than he handled guns.

Holing up in my apartment would also keep me off the streets, where I’d be a target for verbal abuse, kidnapping, rape, murder, waterboarding, thievery, blows to the head, and other disturbing possibilities. If anyone tried to break in, they would be greeted by a bullet. I would eventually have to go out, but I could get Jane to buy me a few groceries—my list wasn’t terribly complicated or long. If I didn’t drive, I wouldn’t need gas. I could pay all my bills over the Internet. Anything else I needed I could get from Amazon overnight or by using two-day prime shipping. I could live in my apartment for a few months without going out if I had to. And I would always have my phone to call Basal until they finally let me talk to Danny.

I paced back to my bedroom swimming in thoughts. Holing up in my apartment was one plan, but it didn’t deal with the obvious: if Danny and I were being threatened by someone on the outside and they had waited this long, avoiding them for a few months would only delay the inevitable.

A second option would be to go ahead and hire an attorney, then get a message to Danny asking for a list of all of his victims and anyone associated with them who might be in a position to come after us. Armed with that list, I could go on the offensive with Danny’s help once he earned his visitor privileges. I could track down each one covertly, working with Danny to identify and neutralize our enemy. Danny’s old terms.

My pacing took me back out to the living room. The problem with working with Danny to identify and neutralize our potential enemies was in the identifying part, because he wouldn’t want a list out there with all of his victims on it. And in the neutralizing part, because Danny no longer believed in neutralizing. Of course, if he knew my own safety was at risk, he might have a change of heart.

There was always the possibility that the threat was coming solely from inside the prison, after all. Bruce Randell might be the only threat, and Danny might still be unaware. But I doubted it. Randell had to be working with someone on the outside, as Keith had suggested, and that someone was likely one of Danny’s enemies.

I glanced at the front door, just a nervous habit of a glance, and I started to turn when the white envelope on the floor caught my attention. My first thought was that mail had been delivered through the slot in the door earlier than it normally came, around four. My second was that someone could fill the entire apartment with a deadly gas through the same slot. It was a hole in my dam.

My heart skipped a beat. I pinched the white envelope by its corner using my left hand and lifted it. It was sealed. No name or address.

Maybe Jane had come by and, not wanting to bother me, dropped off the twenty dollars she’d borrowed from me two weeks earlier. No, she would have at least put my name on it. Or called. Someone else had delivered the envelope in the last few minutes, and only one name popped into my head.

Bruce Randell. Someone working for Bruce Randell.

The gun was in my right hand. Whoever had delivered the envelope might still be making a getaway, hurriedly walking away as I stood frozen.

I dropped the envelope on the counter, disengaged the nine-millimeter’s safety, snapped open both dead bolts on the door, and pulled it wide, gun raised to the outside world. Pointed straight ahead at the cars driving by on Bixby Road.

My pulse was thumping and my palms were already sweaty on the warm steel. I stuck my gun out, then my head. They couldn’t have gone far.

But the yard was empty. So was the sidewalk. A woman was walking casually for her car in the parking lot, and, as she turned her head my way, I lowered the gun to my side. She would undoubtedly misunderstand my intentions. Or, worse, understand them just fine and call the police.

The woman turned away and I glanced to my right and left, searching for a sign of whoever had delivered the mail. They were gone. And I was neither in the right clothes nor the right frame of mind to go running around the complex with a nine-millimeter in my hands.

I ducked back into the apartment and locked the door.

The envelope was clean. Careful not to disturb any fingerprints on the surface, I slit it open using a butter knife and shook the contents out. A sheet of lined paper from a yellow pad fell onto the counter. On it were words written in red ink. Not just written—scrawled, as if they’d been written left-handed by someone who was right-handed.

I knew, without reading a single word, that the same man who’d breathed heavy in my ear had now followed up his call with a letter.

I slowly opened the folded sheet and read the red words.

Renee Gilmore,

I am watching. Always watching.

I saw you drive up to the prison. I saw you go to that scumbag last night, dressed in your tight skanky jeans. Both you and Hammond will go to hell. The priest did what he thought was right in the sight of man, but he made one mistake. He didn’t kill them all. If you go to the cops the priest will die. If you go to an attorney the priest will die. If you go to the warden both you and the priest will die. I will be watching.

I laid the page down on the counter, fingers trembling, and I took the rest of the note in quickly, as if by reading the words I could make them go away.

The writing filled the page, laying out careful instructions for me, and with each line my anxiety rose. The reality of the threat grew exponentially with each paragraph. The note ended plainly.

I’m as serious as the devil in hell.

I stood there in my flannel shorts and black tank top, unable to get enough breath. My fingers gripped both sides of the letter and the gun sat on the counter to my right, and all I could think was, He’s serious. He’s as serious as the devil in hell.

And then I was running for my office, searching for the number I’d written on the bottom of one of the pages I’d printed out, the one with information about Keith Hammond. I didn’t have his cell phone, but I’d found his home phone through a reverse directory, which cost me $4.99, charged to my Wells Fargo debit card.

I found it, dropped onto the edge of my chair, and punched the number into the phone by my Mac.

Pick up, please pick—

“Keith.”

“I just got a letter from him. He knows about you.”

“Renee?”

“Yes, Renee. Could you come over?”

“Who sent you a letter?”

“Didn’t you hear a thing I said last night? Someone’s stalking me and he knows I was at your house last night.”

“Slow down. What kind of letter?”

“The kind someone would write when he knows way too much and is threatening to kill you.”

“What do you mean kill me?”

“He said that if I don’t do what he says he’s going to kill us. All of us.”

That brought a short pause. “Can you read it to me?”

“You need to read it yourself.”

“Is he there now?”

“No, someone pushed the letter through the mail slot in my door. The point is, if whoever is playing this can reach me this easily, he will reach you. I’m dead serious. This isn’t funny anymore. You’re involved, whether you like it or not.”

One more hesitation. When he spoke again I could hear the nervousness in his voice, and it brought me more comfort than I like to admit.

“What’s your address?”