Sanctuary by Ted Dekker Read Free Book Online Page A

centered on the opposite wall. Beyond him was a passage to what Danny guessed to be the showers. He’d seen no public phones yet.
    The cell Bostich took him to was located on the second tier, three quarters of the way down the hall. The front wall of each cell consisted of vertical bars and a barred door, allowing unrestricted view of the interior.
    “Here you go.” Bostich opened the unlocked door to a cell with the number 71 stenciled above it. “Everything you’ve been issued is on the top bunk, including a handbook with the rules. I suggest you familiarize yourself with it.”
    “Thank you.” Danny stepped inside and scanned the cell.
    Eight feet wide if you wore large shoes, maybe twelve deep. Two long strides by four shorter strides. A bunk bed on the right, opposite two standing lockers. Beyond the bunk, a single metal sink attached to a single metal toilet, no seat.
    On the top bunk, his kit. Two additional pair of blue slacks, two more tan shirts, two white T-shirts, two pair of white boxer shorts, two pair of black socks, one yellow towel, one yellow washcloth, one set of white sheets, one gray blanket with blue stripes at the top, one bar of soap half the size of his fist, a tube of Crest toothpaste, one yellow toothbrush, one red disposable razor with a worthless blade, and two roles of single-ply toilet paper. These and the clothes he wore were now his only earthly possessions. They’d taken the rest when he’d entered the facility.
    His cellie was an organized, educated man, judging by the clean sink, the folded clothes on the end of his bed, and the philosophy books stacked neatly on the top of the first locker. No TV, no music player, no electronics of any kind in sight.
    The cell door clanked shut but remained unlocked. Lockdown would come at night with lights out.
    When Danny turned around, Bostich was gone. There was no further explanation of the prison protocol, no introduction to the facilities, no assembly-line pickup of issued items.
    But clearly, that was part of the program. He was being watched carefully. What he did now would determine what happened to him.
    And he would do what he always did. Time.
    He would go through the motions, naturally. He would eat what they gave him to eat, try to sleep when they told him to sleep, walk around the yard when they allowed him to do so, avoid the hustlers, read anything and everything he could get his hands on, make polite conversation with whoever was predisposed to join him, and he would think.
    But mostly he would simply do his time, decades of it, trying to figure out who he really was and then attempting to live a life behind bars that allowed him to be that self. Because truthfully, behind bars a man has only himself and time.
    His memory of his past life hung in his mind like a distant fog, surreal now after three years. It was hard to believe he’d been that fifteen-year-old boy in Bosnia whose mother and sisters were raped and killed…that child who became a man when he took a pistol and shot the men who destroyed them…that young soldier who became feared for his efficiency.
    And that priest, who took the lives of far too many people when he became their judge, jury, and executioner. Through it all he’d learned two things about himself, the part of him that had been buried under years of suffering and rage in a brutal war: he would far rather be a lover than a fighter, and he made for a terrible priest. And yet he would always be known for that, wouldn’t he?
    The priest who killed.
    Danny had finished making his bed and putting his few items in the second locker when the rap of knuckles on steel interrupted his thoughts. At the door stood an older, skinny man with gray hair and a matching goatee, grinning. One tooth missing. Eyes as bright as the blue sky.
    “Hello, cellie.” The man opened the door, stepped in, and extended his hand. “Simon Godfrey’s my name. Welcome to your basal cell in-carcinoma, home of the diseased,