Free Sanctuary by Ted Dekker

green lawn, maybe a hundred yards wide, separated the monolithic structure from the three fences, which alone marked the compound as something other than a uniquely designed resort.
    Haze drifted by, thickening to obscure the valley for a few moments before thinning again.
    There were no patrol cars driving along the perimeter road, no correctional officers pacing the lawn. A single paved road bordered by a shorter fence stretched between a sally port near the perimeter and what I took to be the front entrance. The sally port was a system consisting of two gates that could not be opened at the same time. Any vehicle coming or leaving would have to pass through the first gate, then wait for it to close behind before being admitted through the second gate—a security measure used at all prisons.
    A large fenced parking lot with a pedestrian sally port encompassed thirty or forty cars on the far left side. Otherwise there was no indication that the building was even occupied. Deliveries probably came in from the back, where there would be a third sally port, but I couldn’t see over the building.
    For a moment I imagined that Danny’s world had just been filled with a ray of bright hope. Surely this would be a better place than Ironwood. But then the voice from the phone drifted through my mind and the illusion faded.
    Danny was somewhere within those walls, cut off from the reality known by the rest of the world. For all I knew they were conducting experiments on the inmates inside. Even if they weren’t, someone was going to kill him.
    “Can I help you?”
    I spun back and saw that a car with an orange light on its roof had approached without my hearing it. A man dressed in black slacks and a white collared shirt stood at the open passenger door, hand on the frame, looking at me. Inside the car, a driver watched me through the windshield, idly tapping his thumb on the steering wheel. I stared, caught completely off guard.
    “Do you have an appointment?”
    “Ah…no. I just…” I stepped around the hood of my car. “But maybe you can help me.”
    He didn’t respond. He was a kind-enough looking fellow with blond hair and a neatly trimmed goatee. The car’s door sign identified it as Grounds Control. No weapons that I could see. Not even pepper spray.
    “My husband was brought here from Ironwood this morning and I’m having trouble getting a message to him. This is Basal, right?”
    “Go through his attorney. Quickest way. It’ll still take at least a week.”
    “A week?”
    He was eyeing my body and I glanced down. Only then did it hit me that in my frantic haste to leave the condo, I had quickly pulled on a pair of jeans but forgotten to change my top. Or fix my hair. Not that my hair needed fixing—I normally wore it down, and messy hair was somewhat in style. But my yellow-checkered flannel top screamed pajamas…
    “I don’t have a week.”
    “I’m sorry, but this is a restricted area. You need to turn your car around and leave.”
    “Just like that?”
    “Just like that.”
    “You don’t understand. You have an inmate inside whose life’s in danger. I have to talk to the warden. Please, I’m begging you.”
    “And you know his life’s in danger how?”
    I hesitated. “I was told.”
    The guard didn’t look impressed. “Ma’am, if even one in a hundred threats made in correctional institutions were carried out, the prisons would be graveyards. Let me put your mind to rest. Your…husband, did you say?”
    “My friend.”
    “Trust me, your friend’s in the safest prison in California,” he said, “in part because of Basal’s strict policies regarding isolation. He’s been selected for the program for a reason, and you’re going to have to trust in that.”
    I looked back at my car, scrambling for an angle, but I couldn’t find one. Maybe I was overreacting. It wouldn’t be the first time. Then again, maybe not.
    I faced the man, who clearly had more patience than I did. “I got a