The Sanctuary

Chapter 25

Despair settled onto Evelyn like a thick winter mist as she stared at the walls of her cell.

Outwardly, the small room was better than what she was expecting. It wasn’t anything like the grimy, decrepit, rat-infested hellholes her recall had conjured up from the accounts she’d read of the kidnapped hostages back in the 1980s. This room felt more like something you’d find in your average Middle East hospital. Well, maybe not any hospital. More like a mental ward.

The walls, floor, and ceiling were painted white. The bed, though narrow and bolted to the floor, had an actual mattress on it, as well as the added luxury of a pillow, sheets, and a blanket. There was also a toilet and a small sink, and both worked. The lighting was on the harsh side, courtesy of two neon ceiling fittings that buzzed annoyingly at the very edge of her hearing threshold. Two features, however, undermined any sense of relief that she could glean from the relative civility of her accommodation. The only opening to be found wasn’t on any of the walls. Instead, in was a small, mirrored observation porthole — using one-way glass and allowing her captors to look in, she guessed — in the thick, metal door to the room, a door that, she also noticed, lacked a handle. Beyond that, the room was as unsettling as any cesspit she’d read about, but in a different way. Its relative comfort alluded to an extended stay, and its clinical, cold austerity was even more subtly threatening than the cells she’d read about. A palpable malice was in these walls, and she could feel it in her pores.

The burning pain that had seared through her veins was all gone now. She rubbed her bare arms slowly, still thrown that there was no aftereffect from the — what had he called it? She couldn’t remember. She thought back with anger at how the words couldn’t come out fast enough once she started to tell him what she knew. She felt weak, helpless, and, worst of all, humiliated. She’d faced adversity and difficult situations many times since moving to the area all those years ago, and she prided herself on her inner strength and the resolve she knew she could draw upon when needed. The last few hours had bulldozed clear through any perceptions she had of her own courage. Her captor had effortlessly reduced her to a cowering, terrified wreck, and the thought burned through her as fiercely as the demonic liquid he’d brutally injected into her.

The worst part of it, the most frustrating and maddening part of it all, was that she didn’t even know what she was caught up in.

The discovery of Al-Hillah had ultimately led to nothing. The trail had abruptly ended in the very chamber where it had begun, and with it had ended their affair.

After Tom had left, after the cyclone in her mind had settled, she had chided herself for allowing herself to be swept up by him, for avoiding the signs. But then again, he had been maddeningly tough to read. Throughout their brief liaison, she had sensed a deep-seated unease, a conflict deep within him that she just knew he was struggling with. She had no doubt that he’d been keeping things from her, and her being here in this cell proved it. At the time, she’d felt — she’d hoped, anyway — that it wasn’t the kind of dreary deception one would expect: a wife somewhere, a mundane life he was briefly escaping from. This seemed to cut deeper. But when she’d dared to bring it up, he’d skirted around it and moved the conversation on with deft charm. She knew his feelings for her were genuine — he’d said so himself. Of course, she knew that men lied, but deep down, she knew she wasn’t wrong about him, and her instincts had proven more than reliable over the years. She remembered, even today, the honesty that shone through his eyes when he’d told her how he felt about her, but his ability to move on with such clinical commitment was something she’d never gotten over.

She could still hear his parting words as if he were standing beside her now, whispering them into her ear.

I can’t stay with you. We can’t be together.

It’s not someone else. I wish it were that simple. But it’s not something I can talk about. Just know that if there were any way in the world that we could be together, I would do it.

And with that, he was gone.

Leaving her with the unenviable task of moving on with her life and forgetting about him, leaving her to deal with a separation made even more intolerable by the simple fact that it was unexplained and — in her eyes, anyway — unjustified. And leaving her to deal with raising his child, a child he knew nothing about. A child she’d lied to for years. A little girl whose father, she’d told her, had died.

She’d lived with the lie for thirty years, and even after all this time, just thinking about it now triggered a clawing tightening in her chest. It was a hard thing to do, but she knew Mia would have gone out looking for her father if she’d thought he was out there somewhere, and Evelyn hadn’t wanted that. He’d been very clear about things. There was no need to expose Mia to a painful disappointment.

At least, she’d managed to keep that from the hakeem. Above all else, she couldn’t let him know that Mia was Tom’s daughter. He hadn’t yet made the connection; he hadn’t asked that question. If he had, she shuddered, she probably would have told him. And that would have set him off after Mia too, which was something she couldn’t bear to imagine.

Small victories. It was all she could cling to right now.

Something beyond her cell door caught her attention. A noise. Harsh, labored movements, footsteps shuffling on the stone floor.

She edged to the door and tried to peer out through the mirrored porthole, but all she saw was the harsh reflection of her own face. She plastered her ear to the door and listened intently. She heard a door being unlocked, followed by some movement and a cry that sent shivers down her spine, a young boy’s cry, a pained, pleading yell. The haunting sound was swiftly followed by an angry man’s bark, ordering him to shut up—“Khrass, wlaa”—and a sound that Evelyn was sure was a slap, quickly followed by a pained yelp from the boy’s voice, as if he’d just been hit. She could just about make out some whimpering before she heard the door slamming shut, and the lock sliding into place.

She waited a minute or so for the man to move off, counting down the seconds, her heart in her throat, wondering if she should try to make contact with the other prisoner. Another thought occurred to her: What if others were being held here? She had no way of knowing. The man who had led her back to her cell had put a black cloth cover over her head, only removing it once she was in. She had no idea of what lay beyond that door. And the thought, the possibility, that others were being held here scared her even more.

She decided to risk it.

“Hello? Is anyone there?” Her whisper echoed in the silence around her.

There was no answer.

She repeated it again, this time a bit louder, more desperate. Still, no one answered her.

She thought she heard a low whimpering in the distance, but she couldn’t be sure. Her heartbeat was pulsing loudly in her ears, confusing matters.

She waited a few more minutes and tried again, but nothing more than a deathly silence came back. Shivering, and dispirited, she sank down to the floor and cupped her face in her hands, trying to make sense of the nightmare swirling around her.

Her mind hurtled back to the face of the man in the lab coat as he watched and listened to her story. His interest was visibly piqued when she mentioned Tom. He asked her all kinds of questions about him, wanting to know everything about the man. He was riveted and took notes, nodding ponderously as she spoke. Her instincts had been right. She should have kept Tom out of it, but, realistically, there was little she could have done to keep quiet. The flames racing through her body had seen to that.

Mia was safe, for now — at least, she hoped she would be — but Evelyn knew her captor would spare no effort in finding Tom Webster. And along with that unnerving thought, another one, even more unsettling, surfaced as she wondered if her daughter would be able to get anyone to help look for Evelyn half as diligently, and if she’d ever see her again.