Karl huffed slightly. Maybe she wasn’t completely wrong. “She say how long it might take?”
They spent some time talking about it, and the guards’ shifts and routes. Finally, their plans were made—thin, desperate things, and all dependent on Karl healing, but they were something. Silence settled between them as Karl turned the plans over in his mind, searching for anything they might have missed.
Leon broke the silence, turning his comb in his hands, the way he’d been doing for some time. As if even making a plan hadn’t settled whatever had so disturbed him.
“You ever think,” he said, and his voice was too casual somehow, “we’d end up like this? A cat and a wolf locked in a room, planning a prison break?”
“No,” Karl said simply.
Leon tilted his chin. “Yeah, me neither. Feels like the start of a bad joke.”
“So which of us would be the punchline?”
“Like you have to ask,” Leon said, but it lacked his usual bite.
Karl looked more closely at him. “You really all right?”
Leon didn’t answer. Not right away. He just spun the comb once, twice, between his fingers.
“Sure,” he said finally. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Karl didn’t believe him, not for a second. But he also knew when not to press.
LEON
They went over the plan yet again, Karl questioning every assumption Leon made like it was a training exercise. He wasn’t wrong to push, Leon knew that. But it didn’t stop irritation flaring up in him, or the weight pressing harder against his ribcage every time Karl saidifinstead ofwhen.
Karl was upright against the pillows, breath a little tight but eyes steady. He looked better than he had earlier, which wasn’t saying much.
“You haven’t factored in any margin of error,” Karl said, his voice level.
“I’ve accounted for every moving piece I can.”
“Not the pieces that don’t do what you expect,” Karl said. “I may be one of those pieces, if my leg doesn’t cooperate.”
Leon folded his arms. “Then we adapt.”
“You’re banking on perfect execution, perfect timing, and perfect conditions. Not one of those is a given.”
“We’re out of options for anything else.”
Karl’s tone didn’t change. “And if it fails?”
“It won’t.”
Karl just looked at him. “You need Plan B. You need to know which way you’ll go if my leg slows us too much.”
Something sharp twisted painfully in Leon’s chest. He shoved to his feet again, the movement abrupt, unthinking. He was back to pacing. Movement helped.
“You not getting out isn’t part of the plan,” he said, too loud, too fast.
Karl’s brow furrowed. “But if I can’t—”
“You can.” Leon turned away from him, threw the words over his shoulder like a challenge. “You will.”
“And if I don’t?”
Leon froze. The silence pressed at him as Karl waited, calm, steady and infuriatingly reasonable.
