Casey has movement privileges. Full corridor access during approved hours. He can be anywhere in this building that his schedule allows, and Hope walks these halls a few times a week with nothing but a clipboard and a smile that makes dangerous men think she's safe.
Every minute of those four days with him out there, building his story, waiting for his moment.
"Don't." Kent reads my face before I've said anything. "I know what you're thinking. I know what you want to do. But if you act, if you give them any reason to increase your security level, the hearing disappears. Everything we've built disappears."
"And if he gets to her before Monday?"
"He won't. Gage is watching. The protocols exist. She's not unprotected."
Gage's name lands differently than it would have a week ago. Before, I would have dismissed it—what can a guard do that I can't do better? But I watched her eyes find his while I was inside her, and I let her keep that moment instead of crushing it.
Gage is watching.
It's not enough. It's not nearly enough. But it's something, and that's more than I have from inside this cage.
"Monday," I say. "You're certain."
"I'll have it drafted tonight and on Hudson's desk Monday morning." Kent closes the folder, meets my eyes. "Trust the process, Jude. We're too close to lose this now."
He leaves, and the guards walk me back. The cell is twelve feet by ten. I've measured it a thousand times—paced it, memorized every crack in the concrete and every imperfection in the paint. It's been my world for three years, and I've learned to make it small enough to survive.
Today it's too small.
I lie on the narrow bed and stare at the ceiling and my mind does what it's always done. Builds plans. Constructs scenarios. Maps routes to objectives I've turned from impossible to inevitable.
My mind goes to Gage first. Remove the guard, remove the obstacle. I know his schedule, his habits, the routes he takes between checkpoints. I know which corridors have camera blind spots and which guards take long breaks. I know three ways to hurt him badly enough that he'd be out of commission for weeks, and two ways to make it look like someone else did it.
The plan builds itself in perfect detail. Every step, every contingency, every variable accounted for.
I let it run.
Then I tear it down.
My mind wants to keep it. Save it for later, just in case. I force myself to stop. Kill each step. Erase the routes, the timing, the exit.
Underneath all of it is one thing. She's mine and he's in the way.
But she looked at him while I was inside her.
My jaw locks. My fists close around nothing. Every part of me wants to pull that moment back, undo it, pretend I never let it happen. I don't. I lie still until my breathing evens out and the urge passes. It comes back. I do it again.
I start the Gage plan again. Different approach this time. Not violence but isolation. Turn Hope against him, plant doubts, make her see weakness where she currently sees strength. I know how to do this. I've done it before, with guards and doctors and everyone who stood between me and what I wanted.
The plan is elegant. Efficient. It would work.
I tear it down again. Slower this time because my hands don't want to let go. My fingers dig into the mattress and my teeth ache from clenching and I hold still until the plan falls apart and there's nothing left to act on.
My hands shake when I'm done. Actually shake, which hasn't happened since Frederick's dining room. The effort of dismantling something my mind built takes more out of me than building it ever did.
But I do it.
Because she looked at him, and I let her keep that moment. I don't get to take that back.
The afternoon crawls. I run the Casey scenarios instead. Safer ground, if anything involving him can be called safe. I map his patterns from what I've observed through corridor windows, reconstruct his schedule from the glimpses I've caught of the transfer lines.
He has privileges I don't have. Movement, access, the freedom to be in spaces where Hope might be alone. His medication is supposed to dull the compulsion, flatten the obsession intomanageable noise. But I've watched him for weeks now, and I can see the edges fraying.
He's compensating. Cheating the system somehow. Palming pills, timing doses, finding ways to be more himself when it matters. The pleasant mask stays in place for the guards and doctors. But his attention sharpens when Hope walks past, and his body angles toward her, tracks her, doesn't look away until she's gone.
