Chapter 30 Ryker
RYKER
Fluorescent lights in the penitentiary’s visiting room buzzed overhead, casting everyone in that special shade of prison pale that made even the healthiest person look like they needed a vitamin D transfusion.
The air tasted stale, recycled through too many lungs, and the metal chairs scraped against the floor in a rhythm of misery.
Knox sat across from me, arms folded, looking like violence had taken human form and decided to get obscenely talented tattoo work.
“You look like shit,” he said.
“Your greetings are becoming redundant. And good to see you too, sunshine.”
“Seriously, did you not sleep last night?” He tilted his head, studying me like a particularly interesting autopsy. “You’ve got that twitchy thing going on. The one where your eye does the—” He demonstrated with an exaggerated facial tic.
“My eye doesn’t twitch.”
“It’s twitching right now.”
I rubbed my face. “Judge Theodore Kearns paid me a visit. He’s the father of the man Faith’s accused of killing.”
Knox went still. The kind of still that made other inmates nervous. “Let me guess. He wants you to drop Faith’s case.”
“Got it in one try.”
“And?”
“And he threatened to tank your parole hearing if I don’t.”
The silence stretched between us like a tightrope. Around us, families clustered at scarred metal tables, trying to compress years into supervised hours. A toddler shrieked with laughter two tables over, completely oblivious to where Daddy lived.
Knox leaned back in his chair hard enough to make it creak. “Fuck that. You’re not dropping her case.”
“Knox—”
“No. Discussion over.”
“Can I at least finish explaining the situation before you go all noble sacrifice on me?”
“Fine.” He waved his hand. “Explain. But it won’t change my answer.”
I leaned forward, keeping my voice low. “Kearns has connections. Power. He can probably make your parole disappear with a phone call. And he will. He made that very clear.”
“So?”
“So?” I stared at him. “So, you’ve been in here for years. Your daughter—”
His jaw tightened at the mention of her. The only crack in his armor.
“Your daughter is growing up without you,” I continued, gentler now. “This could be your chance to see her again. To be part of her life.”
“There’s no guarantee I’ll ever see her anyway.” His voice went flat. Emotionless. The voice that meant he was feeling everything and showing nothing. “Her mom made that pretty clear.”
“But if you get paroled—”
“If I get paroled, she still might not want to see me. I’m a killer.” He picked at a groove in the table. “At least in here, she can pretend it’s just the walls keeping us apart.”
The words knocked the air out of my lungs.
Knox had survived years in this concrete tomb, but the thought of his daughter rejecting him …
that was the one thing that could break him.
I watched him trace that groove in the table, his finger following the same path over and over, and wondered how many hours he’d spent doing exactly that.
Carving out pain one repetitive motion at a time.
“Knox—”
“Besides,” he continued, his tone lightening deliberately, “I’ve got a reputation to maintain in here. Can’t have people thinking Knox Blackwood’s gone soft.”
“You literally drew a frog on that table one of the last times I was here.”
“That was abstract art.”
“It had eyes.”
“Impressionistic eyes.”
Despite everything, I almost smiled. “I can get another lawyer for Faith. Someone clean that Kearns doesn’t have leverage over.”
“Right. And how long before Judge Douchebag finds a way to ‘convince them’ to tank her case? Guy like that’s got a file on every lawyer in Chicago. Probably knows what brand of toilet paper they use.”
“That’s paranoid, even for you.”
“Is it?” He leaned forward, and I saw the calculating intelligence most people missed beneath the tattoos. “You think you’re the first lawyer he’s tried to intimidate? He’s not going to stop until Faith has some burned-out public defender who’ll plead her straight into a life sentence.”
The guard by the door shifted, and Knox eased back.
“Walk me through it,” Knox said, his eyes sharp. “Where are you at with her case?”
I scrubbed a hand over my face, feeling the stubble. “I’ve got warrants served for Daniel’s phone records, financial statements, all his digital footprints. Those should come back soon if the companies don’t drag their feet.”
“What else?”
“I’ve also got a PI digging into the surrounding security cameras.
Traffic cams, home surveillance, anything that might have caught Daniel’s or Faith’s movements that night.
The neighborhood is high end, so a lot of those homes have surveillance systems that would make NASA proud.
Digital gold. But he’s hitting brick walls.
Someone’s making it hard to access footage, which is suspicious as hell.
We’ll get through it, but the ball is moving slower than I’d like on surveillance. ”
“Someone’s blocking access?” Knox’s voice dropped. “Let me guess. Someone with Judge Kearns’s kind of reach.”
“Can’t prove it. But, yeah, that’s my working theory. If I can show a pattern … show he was the threat … Faith’s actions start looking a lot more like survival than murder.” I paused.
Knox studied me for a long moment. “So, you do think it was self-defense?”
“I believe she didn’t mean to kill him. But I don’t have proof, Knox. I have a feeling. All the facts? They point to her guilt.”
“Facts lie all the time. You know that better than anyone.”
“What if I’m wrong? What if she actually did plan it, and I’m risking your freedom on a hunch?
” The words tasted bitter. I didn’t believe them to be true, but I had to at least acknowledge the risk we were all taking here.
“God forbid she’s guilty, and I leave you out to dry for nothing. I’d never forgive myself.”
“If she killed someone, she probably had a damn good reason.” Knox’s certainty was absolute.
“You don’t know that.”
“Don’t I?” His eyes held mine, dark and knowing. “You and I both know things aren’t always what they seem on the surface.”
There it was. The elephant in the room, wearing orange. Knox’s case. The murder he’d confessed to, pleading guilty without mounting any defense. The truth he’d never told anyone else, not fully.
“Her situation might be completely different from yours.”
“Or close to the same.” He traced a pattern on the table.
I recognized it as another frog. Old habits.
“Look, if Faith belongs in a place like this, the system will do its job. But she doesn’t go down because some judge with a God complex demands it.
He doesn’t get to be judge, jury, and executioner just because his sociopath son finally pushed the wrong woman too far. ”
“Kearns follows through on his threats. I’ve researched him. He’s smart about it. Nothing traceable.”
“So?”
“So, if I stay on as Faith’s lawyer, you might rot in here. No parole. Ever.” I let the weight of that settle. His hand curled into a fist on the table. “I’m not letting you rot in here, Knox. Not for this.”
“And I’m not letting assholes like Kearns rig the system against people like Faith.” His voice was steel. “This is Blake’s sister, for Christ’s sake.”
Blake. Our brother in everything but blood. The one who’d stood by both of us through every disaster.
“Even at your expense?” I asked.
“I’m fine in here.”
“Bullshit.” I leaned closer. “You’re not fine. You’re surviving. There’s a difference.”
“Yeah? Well, surviving in here is still better than Faith dying in here.” He met my gaze directly. “You protect Blake’s sister. No matter the cost.”
“You’re talking about giving up what might be your only chance to see your daughter again. Do you understand that?”
Something flickered across his face. Pain, raw and unguarded, before the mask slammed back into place.
“You think I don’t know what I’m giving up?
Every single day I wake up in this concrete box, I think about her.
Wonder if she remembers what I look like.
Wonder if she asks about me or if her mom’s convinced her I’m just the bad guy from her nightmares. ”
His voice dropped. “But here’s the thing: If I let you abandon Faith to save my own ass, what kind of man does that make me?
What kind of father? The kind who teaches his daughter that you throw people under the bus when it’s convenient?
” He shook his head. “No. If I ever do get to see her again, I want to be able to look her in the eye and know I did the right thing. Even when it cost me everything.”
The conviction in his voice, the selflessness … it was so purely Knox that my throat tightened.
“Faith’s life is on the line right now.” He knocked on the table twice. “We don’t leave family behind. And Blake’s sister? She’s family.”
He stood, and the change in the room was immediate.
Two inmates at the table behind us went rigid, tracking his movement.
Another across the way shifted in his seat, repositioning.
Knox didn’t have to do anything. He just was.
Authority and danger, wrapped in orange scrubs, commanding respect without asking for it.
“Tell Faith something for me,” he said. “Tell her Knox Blackwood says she’s got the best damn lawyer in Chicago.”
“Knox, wait—”
“Oh, and tell her if she’s actually guilty?” He flashed a sharp grin. “Tell her I respect the hell out of that. Takes guts to take down a predator.”
“That’s not funny.”
“Wasn’t trying to be.” He was already backing away, movements slow and visible. Never give the guards a reason. “Win her case, Ryker. Then come back and tell me all about it. I’ll be here.”
Always here. That was the unspoken truth hanging between us.
“Knox—”
But he was already walking away, navigating the tables like a shark through a reef. The other inmates gave him space out of respect or fear. Probably both.
I sat there for another minute, watching him disappear through the security door. The toddler had fallen asleep in his mother’s arms. At table three, an older woman held her son’s hand through tears.
Knox had been in here for years. Years of becoming someone harder, sharper, more dangerous. But underneath all that prison armor, he was still the guy who’d draw frogs. Still the guy who’d sacrifice his freedom for a woman he’d never met, just because she was Blake’s sister.
Just because it was the right thing to do.
I thought about Faith. The way she’d looked at me last night. “I wouldn’t have killed him. Not on purpose.” The drunken honesty that had felt more real than any testimony.
I had a thirty-minute drive to Faith’s. Thirty minutes to figure out how to apologize for the way I’d reacted when she’d finally trusted me with the truth. Thirty minutes to find the words that would convince her I was still on her side.
Because Judge Kearns wanted to bury Faith Morrison.
And he was about to learn what happens when you come for someone the Sinners and Saints call family.