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I shrug. “It was dumb.”
“I still want to know,” he presses.
“I guess I wanted to help people who can’t help themselves. Put away bad people,” I explain. It’s not a lie, but it’s not the whole truth either.
“Bad people like me?” I glance over at him, finding a tiny smirk tucking on his lips.
“Yes… and worse. I used to think everything is black and white, good and bad.”
“Then you realized everything is gray?”
“No, there are definitely bad people in the world, pure evil. But I don’t think you are one of those people.”
“I think you might be wrong about that,” Ryker says, and I recall what I’ve read in his file. Based on the crimes he committed, I would have made him out to be pure evil. I know now that he is planning on killing me on Sunday, and yet, I still don’t find him evil. There is a light in him, deep inside, that shines through the cracks occasionally.
“I think good exists in you, even if you don’t see it yourself.”
“You’re naïve,” he tells me, but not in a demeaning or patronizing way. His voice is soft, as if he wants to make me understand why I’m wrong.
“Possibly.”
“Tell me about your life before you became a cop.” He is trying to change the subject, but that’s one conversation I don’t want to have.
“I don’t enjoy talking about my past.” I continue eating, keeping my eyes on the food in front of me.
Luckily, he takes the hint. “I get it. I don’t like the past either.”
“Do you have any family?” I ask, wanting to keep him talking for two reasons. One, the silence is uncomfortable. Two, the more we get to know each other, the more the connection grows, the higher the chance is that he won’t go through with killing me. Although that chance is still low knowing his history. He knew the men he tortured as well.
“My mom died of cancer a few years ago. I never met my dad, and my brother has been in prison since I was eighteen.”
“I’m sorry your mom died,” I say honestly, knowing the pain of losing a mother. “Why is your brother in prison?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“I’ve read your file, Ryker. Not much shocks me.”
“This might…” A shiver runs down my spine. He tortured two men to death. What the hell could his brother do that is worse? “He was part of a gang in our neighborhood. Some guy had stolen some money from them and they went to his place to get it back. The guy barricaded himself inside his house, so my brother set the backdoor on fire to smoke him out.”
Ryker pauses, as if he doesn’t want to finish the story. I wait patiently, not wanting to push him. After a few moments, he continues.
“The fire spread quickly. So quickly that the guy didn’t make it out, and neither did his pregnant girlfriend.”
My mouth opens in shock, and I draw in a shaky breath. Ryker was right. That is worse. All crime is terrible, but the ones involving women and children are the most heinous.
Every death is heartbreaking, but none as much as a life taken before it lived. Ryker must be reading my facial expression.
“I told you it was worse.” I don’t disagree with him this time. He takes the bowl from my lap and sets it on the nightstand. “Hunter has a bathtub in his bathroom. I thought you might like to soak in it tonight.”
“Tonight? Isn’t it nighttime right now?” Between taking those drugs and not having access to sunlight, my inner clock is completely out of whack.
“It’s only noon.”
“But I went to sleep around noon.”
“Yes, yesterday. You’ve slept almost twenty-four hours.”
Shit, shit, shit!
I slept a fucking day away. That means today is Friday and I’m supposed to die in two days. That only leaves me forty-eight hours to find a way out of here.
“A bath sounds wonderful.” I force a smile, trying to hide my dismay about the timeline being moved up. “So, what are we are doing the rest of the day?” I ask casually.
“Why don’t we go for a walk?”
“A walk?” I echo nervously. “Yeah, why not…”
Unlesstake a walkis code for killing me?
