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Hesitation was a mistake, Marcus reminded himself.

It could get you captured.

It could get you killed.

And yet the more Marcus tried to justify what he was doing, the more uncomfortable he became. He recalled a Bible story about David, on the run for his life from the wicked King Saul. When he had been hungry and alone, David had taken and eaten the sacred bread that was supposed to be set on the altar, a sacrifice to the Lord, forbidden for mere mortals. Yet David had not actually stolen the bread. The priest, a man named Ahimelech, had given it to him. The same was true when David had been desperately in need of a weapon to defend himself. Yes, David had taken from the house of the priest the very sword he had once used to kill the giant Goliath because there was nothing else available to him. Yet, again, David had not robbed the priest. He had asked Ahimelech for help, and the man had willingly given him the sword.

Marcus shook his head and put the money back in the box. He promptly closed it, put the padlock on it, and returned the box to the drawer, just as he had found it. Then he wiped it down with tissues and threw these and the broken pieces of the paper clip into the garbage pail. There were always going to be hard choices in this line of work, he told himself. This was not one of them. Socks off a clothesline were one thing. Stealing money that a church probably used to care for homeless men was another. And after all, the Lord had provided for him—a meal, clean clothes, a roof over his head, and—lest he forget—a phone. It was time to be grateful, not greedy.

He heard someone coming. It was the jangling keys he heard first. Then a garbled voice over a portable radio. A night watchman was doing his rounds, and he was close. Glancing to his left and right, Marcus remembered that the doors to both adjoining offices were locked. The door to the hallway was the only way out. Except for the windows.

He turned quickly, pushed back the drapes, unlocked the window, and opened it. There was a narrow ledge outside, and he crawled out onto it. He closed the window behind him and moved to his right along the ledge just as the door to the secretary pool opened and a flashlight swept the area.

There was a four-foot gap between the end of the ledge he was on and the start of the next one, outside the window of one of the locked offices. There was no point looking down. Marcus knew he was four floors up and would not likely survive a fall. Still, he could not take the risk that the watchman had heard him raising or lowering the window. Without thinking, he leaped to the next ledge and nearly slipped off. Gripping the side of the building with everything he had, he regained his footing, then dug his fingernails under the sash and forced the window open. The moment he got it open and slipped inside, he could hear the watchman raising the sash two offices away. There was no way he could now lower the window he had just come through without alerting the watchman to his presence. So Marcus left it open, headed for the door to this office, unlocked it, opened it, peeked into the hallway, and made a dash for it.

Two minutes later, he was back in his bunkroom. He left the door to the hallway unlocked in case someone came to check on him. Then he stepped into the bathroom and was immediately enveloped by a cloud of steam. He closed and relocked the bathroom door and readjusted the water temperature so as not to scald himself. Then he stepped under the cascade and let it wash away the blood and the dirt and the grime, if not the memories of the past two days.

When he was done, he turned off the water, toweled down, ripped open the package of men’s briefs, and put on a pair, along with the clean T-shirt the priest had given him. Then he tossed his towel down on the bathroom floor to soak up as much of the water as he could, threw the filthy boxer shorts he had been wearing in the trash, and climbed into bed.

The symphony of snoring in the adjacent room was still underway. But Marcus barely noticed. He had done all he could to alert his team to his location. There was nothing more he could do for now. And he fell fast asleep almost as soon as his head hit the pillow.