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skirted to the warden. “Sir.”
    “Take our priest to his quarters,” Pape said.
    “Yes, sir.”
    Danny stood and walked to the door. He knew nothing about Bostich other than that he was likely the primary enforcer at Basal. Already, he didn’t like the man. But this was his old judgmental nature rising. He set his disfavor aside and offered Bostich a nod, which was returned by an unflinching stare.
    “Oh, and Danny…”
    He turned to face the warden.
    “There’s a rapist in our sanctuary who continues to insist on his innocence. A dense young man named Peter Manning. I want you to see to him, help him understand his true wretchedness, the first step toward rehabilitation. Can you do that?”
    Danny hesitated. “I will do my best.”
    Pape tapped his fingertips on the desk and smiled. “Surely you know how to handle people who harbor dark secrets. How you handle Peter may very well determine how it goes for you in Basal. Hell is a miserable place, Danny. Take care not to join Peter there.”

3
    AS I SAID, my meltdown really began with that first breathy phone call.
    The priest is going to die.
    Danny. He was talking about Danny. I stood rigid for a count of three and then I was flying toward my bedroom. My first thought was of the nine-millimeter—the gun in the back of my closet, the one I hadn’t touched in three years. But my determination never to touch it again was already halfway out the window, because the nine-millimeter was the only thing I had that could blow a hole through the head of the man who’d just spoken to me on the phone. I wouldn’t hesitate if it meant protecting Danny.
    I made it to the edge of the bed before my mind caught up. I didn’t need a gun; I needed Danny. And Danny was in prison.
    I spun around and hurried back to the phone, thinking that Danny was probably already in transit to Basal. The images of that overturned transport van winked on, then off. Too neurotic. Impossible.
    The phone was harping its disconnect alert when I snatched it off the counter. I got a dial tone and with a shaking finger dialed the all-too-familiar phone number for Ironwood State Prison, whispering reason to myself.
    The line began to ring. I scanned the walls of my condo for holes and a peeping eye. But I would have noticed; I was too observant in my own environment to miss something so obvious. Who would want to watch me? One of Danny’s old enemies. Or mine. Ghosts from the past, that’s who.
    Calm down, Renee. Take a deep breath.
    “Ironwood State Prison.”
    “Yes, can you connect me with the warden?”
    A pause. I sounded like a frantic girlfriend or wife. The prison probably got them all the time.
    “May I ask who’s calling?”
    I calmed my voice as best I could. “Renee Gilmore.”
    The phone clicked, then began to ring through to the warden’s office. In prison, the warden might be God, but to get through to God you had to get through his secretary who, in this case, went by the name Susan Johnson.
    “Warden’s office.”
    “Thank God, thank God.” Still way too hyper. “I’m sorry, this is Renee Gilmore and my…a friend of mine is incarcerated there. Danny Hansen. FX49565. He was scheduled to be transferred today.”
    “What can I do for you, Ms. Gilmore?” Her tone was flat, the kind you might expect from someone trying to cope in a prison stuffed with twice as many inmates as the two thousand or so it was built to hold.
    “I need to find Danny.”
    “I’m sorry—”
    “I know you can’t just put me through, but I just received a threat on his life and if anything happens to him, I swear…You’ve got to get a message to him.”
    “I’m sorry, but—”
    “At least put him into segregation.”
    “Calm down. If you’d let me get a word in edgewise I’d tell you that my records show that he was taken out at four this morning.”
    “Four? He’s gone?”
    “Try Basal, Mrs. Hansen.”
    “Gilmore,” I said, barely hearing myself, and hung up.
    I’d never been