The corridor is long. Fluorescent lights buzz overhead, casting that institutional glow that makes everything look slightly unreal. My footsteps echo off the linoleum. The stairwell door is twenty feet ahead, and beyond that, the security checkpoint that leads to the main exit.
"Hope."
The voice comes from behind me—soft, pleasant. I turn, and Casey Robin is standing six feet away with a smile that doesn't match the emptiness in his eyes. His shirt is stretchedwrong, the collar pulled wide, bunched around something bulky underneath.
"Casey." I keep my voice professional. Neutral. "You're not supposed to be in this corridor. Your movement privileges don't extend past the Ward A common area."
"I know." He takes a step closer. "But I wanted to see you. Just us."
I can see the edge of it now—white fabric, a pillowcase, knotted at the top and stuffed, crammed under his shirt at the waistband. Clothing, toiletries, items he's been hoarding for weeks, maybe longer, smuggled out of laundry and common areas one piece at a time. He packed for this.
"You need to go back to your unit," I say. "I'll walk with you to the checkpoint, and we can—"
"I've been watching you." Another step. His voice stays soft, almost tender. "The way you smile at everyone. The way you ask questions like you really want to know the answers. I know what that means, Hope. I know what you're telling me."
My brain does something it's never done before.
It tries to send a signal—alarm, danger, run—and the signal goes nowhere. I feel the adrenaline hit my bloodstream, feel my heart rate spike, feel my body prepare to fight or flee. But the fear that should come with it, the terror that would tell a normal person to scream, doesn't come.
There's just silence instead.
"Casey." My voice comes out steady, which is wrong. It should shake. I should be trembling, crying, begging. Instead I'm standing in a corridor with a man who stuffed a pillowcase to take me somewhere, and my brain is treating it the same way ittreats a late meeting. "Whatever you think is happening between us, it isn't real. I'm a monitor. I'm friendly with everyone. It doesn't mean—"
"Don't." His face changes—the pleasant mask cracking, rage and possession underneath. "Don't lie to me. Not after everything we've been through. You're the only one who sees me. The only one who's ever—"
He lunges.
The pillowcase drops from under his shirt, hits the linoleum with a soft thud. His hands reach for my arms, and the clinical part of my brain tracks everything—his grip strength, his body weight, the angle he's coming from—all of it clean and detached, no fear attached.
I don't freeze.
My elbow comes up—instinct, or maybe a self-defense class I barely remember—and catches him in the jaw. The impact jolts up my arm, and he staggers back with a sound that's half surprise and half rage.
"You hit me."
"Stay back."
"You don't hit people you love, Hope. That's not—that's not how this works." He's rubbing his jaw, but his eyes have gone flat. Empty. "I'm trying to save you. Take you somewhere they can't find us. Somewhere we can be together. Why are you making this so hard?"
I scream. Not because I'm scared—I'm not, and that's the whole problem—but because the corridor is empty and the stairwell door is fifteen feet away and nobody knows I'm here. Thesound bounces off the walls and I aim it at the stairwell, at the checkpoint, at anyone who might hear.
"Stop it." His voice drops the tenderness. "Stop screaming. You're ruining this. I planned this for us and you're ruining it."
A body that can't feel fear can still fight.
The thought comes clearly, and I let the adrenaline do what it's supposed to do. I back toward the stairwell door, keeping my eyes on him, counting steps to the door and gripping the clipboard hard enough that my knuckles ache.
He comes at me again.
This time I swing the clipboard—hard, aimed at his face—and the metal edge catches his cheekbone with a crack that echoes off the walls. Blood blooms across his skin. He doesn't stop.
His hands close around my wrists and he's stronger than he looks, stronger than his soft features suggest, and the momentum carries us both into the wall. My head cracks against the concrete and the corridor tilts, goes fuzzy at the edges. His forearm pins across my collarbone, pressing me flat, and his face is inches from mine, the pleasant mask gone completely.
"Shh." His voice drops back to that tender whisper, the bedroom voice, the voice of a man who's rehearsed this moment a thousand times. His free hand comes up and strokes my hair while his arm stays locked against my throat. "Shh, it's okay. You're scared, but you don't have to be. I'm going to take care of you now. I'm going to—"
The stairwell door explodes open.
Gage comes through at a dead run. One arm hooks around Casey's neck from behind, the other locks his wrist, and in twoseconds Casey is face-down on the linoleum with Gage's knee in his spine.
