“After everyone knows she’s been kidnapped, that’s when you’ll escape?”

Lyman shoved his glasses higher up on the bridge of his nose. “Yes. I’ll put on the change of clothes you brought me and walk out the back door.”

“Which I’ll leave unlocked for you. You have the burner phone I picked up? You’ve hidden it well?”

“It’s taped to the bottom of the bed. No one’s looked under there since I got here.”

“Why would they? I’m the janitor.”

That was Lyman’s point. Even he hadn’t gone under the bed, and he was supposed to clean there. “Exactly.” Bishop liked him, but there was no question he was lazy.

“Be sure the door latches behind you when you leave,” he said. “I’ll need to repair the emergency alarm before anyone discovers I deactivated it.”

“I’m not likely to forget.” Lyman adjusted the covers on his bed. “We couldn’t have any of the lunatics in here getting out on the streets, now, can we?” He laughed at his own joke. Some of the patients in the psych ward were scary, and not only the schizophrenics. But Terry was too worked up to enjoy a little levity.

“What if things don’t go the way you’ve planned and the police jump all over this?”

Lyman waved him off. “They won’t. They’ll assume I got up, rambled around and somehow managed to get out of the building, at which point I wandered off.”

“They’ll need to account for you somehow. They might even call Hanover House to let them know you’ve gone missing.”

“Why would they? They think I’m an incoherent fool these days, not capable of surviving on my own.”

Terry picked up a piece of trash Bishop had thrown at the garbage can earlier. “And if you’re wrong?”

That was always a possibility. He couldn’t control everything. He could only put the odds in his favor and, statistically speaking, he felt his chances were good. “Let them search. They’ll never find me. I’ll be Mr. John Edmonson at that point. The ID you got me is flawless. No one will ever be able to tell it’s a fake.”

“Should be good. Cost enough,” he grumbled.

Lyman smoothed what hair he had left over the top of his head. His male-pattern baldness was getting so much worse as he aged. “I’m going to pay you for that. Don’t worry. I’ll pay you for everything, just as soon as I get out of here and can access my money.”

“I’m counting on it. You don’t know my brother-in-law like I do, but he’ll come after you if you don’t.”

Bishop wasn’t worried. An ounce of brainpower could overcome a ton of brawn. “You’ve made that clear.”

Terry retied the drawstring on his scrubs. He enjoyed looking like one of the medical staff, probably because it was more prestigious than being a janitor. “If they do find you, tell me you won’t drag me into it no matter what. I got a family now. I can’t go back to prison. And Emmett is not the type of enemy you want to have.”