He has a story in his head where she belongs to him.
I know this because I recognize the posture. The patience. The absolute certainty that the ending is already written and he just has to wait for the world to catch up.
Every man I ever killed had that look. Powerful men, cold men, men who carried themselves like they owned everything they touched. They all had stories about the women in their lives, stories where resistance was invitation, where fear was love, where the violence they planned was something earned.
Casey's story is the same. Different surface, same rot underneath.
And I'm locked in a cage while he walks free.
The scenarios run dry by evening. I've run every version of what Casey might do and when, and none of it changes the only fact that matters. I can't get to him from here.
What's left when the planning stops is worse.
What if the door stays locked?
What if Monday comes too late?
What if the protocols fail and he finds her alone?
I know this fear. I felt it when I learned my mother died while I was deployed, half a world away and useless, and I understood that being strong enough to kill men meant nothing if I couldn't reach them.
I hunted them across cities, through security systems, past bodyguards and locked doors and every protection their money could buy. I found them in their homes, their offices, their dining rooms. I sat across from them and watched them realize what was coming, and then I made them pay for what they'd done.
But Casey is twenty feet away, and a locked door makes twenty feet uncrossable.
Night comes and the corridor goes quiet. I don't sleep. Instead I lie on the narrow bed and count. Monday's privileges restriction. The hearing next month. The future Kent promises. I try to see the future where all of this works, where the plan succeeds.
The future is blurry, uncertain, too far away to touch.
What I can see is Casey's face through the window. The recognition. The mask that didn't slip because he's learned to hold it so well.
He thinks we're the same.
He's wrong.
I killed men who hurt women because I couldn't save the two women who mattered to me. Elizabeth. My mother. Every powerful man I took apart was practice for Frederick, and Frederick was the end of a grief I couldn't put anywhere else.
Casey doesn't kill out of grief. He kills out of entitlement. The absolute conviction that his feelings create obligations, that his obsession earns him ownership.
We're not the same, not even close.
But it doesn't matter what I think.
If Casey gets to her before Monday, I'm getting out of this cell. I don't care what it costs.
The thought stays with me, not a plan, not yet.
I close my eyes and count the hours until Monday. Ninety-six of them, and every one too many.
She's the one I can't reach.
Chapter 21
Hope
The transitional corridor between Ward A and the administrative wing is empty at 4:47 PM.
I'm running late—Kennedy's session notes needed cross-referencing with the medication logs, and the discrepancies I found added forty minutes to my documentation. Now I'm hurrying through the connecting passage with my clipboard tucked under my arm and my mind already on the parking lot, on the drive home, on the shower I'm going to take before I collapse into bed.
