The silence stretched. The thin man studied me like I was a puzzle he couldn’t quite solve.
I could tell my answer had thrown him. Maybe he’d come in here, hoping for a slam-dunk denial. An unrepentant convict who’d make his decision easy. Instead, I was making him work for it.
Not that it mattered. He still had plenty of ammunition to deny me. That report was a smoking gun, and we both knew it.
But Ryker would make him go through the motions.
The sausage-fingered man shuffled through more papers, then leaned forward. “Speaking of regrets, I see in your file that you’ve repeatedly refused to accept responsibility for the crime that brought you here. Fourteen years, and not once have you expressed remorse for taking a man’s life.” The words hung in the air like a verdict. “Why don’t you tell us, in your own words, what happened that night?”
This was it. The question they always asked. The one I always refused to answer.
In my previous hearings, this was the moment I’d essentially told the parole board to go to hell. I’d stared them down with dead eyes and refused to discuss the details. Refused to apologize. Refused to give them the satisfaction of watching me grovel for a forgiveness I didn’t think I needed.
I’d killed a monster. What was there to regret?
But that was the old Knox. The one who’d convinced himself that righteous violence absolved him of consequences. The one who’d been so certain he was right that he couldn’t see all the ways he’d been wrong.
I looked over my shoulder.
Harper sat with her hands clasped in her lap, green eyes shimmering with unshed tears. She gave me a small nod.
Behind her, Gwen watched me with an expression I couldn’t quite read. Hopeful maybe. Scared. Waiting to see who her father really was.
She deserved the truth.
They both did.
“That night,” I began, and my voice came out rougher than I intended, “I was home with my girlfriend and my four-year-old daughter. It was around one in the morning when I heard a sound.”
The room had gone completely quiet.
“I went to check on my daughter. When I opened her bedroom door, I found a man standing over her bed.”
The woman with the pointed glasses leaned forward. “Standing over your daughter.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I told them everything.
I told them about the news reports I’d seen. The child predator terrorizing our neighborhood that the police couldn’tseem to catch. I told them about the cold terror that had flooded my veins when I saw him in my daughter’s room. The way rational thought had evaporated, replaced by something primal and savage.
I told them how I’d chased him through the house. Out the back door. Into the yard and beyond. I told them I hadn’t thought far enough ahead to have a plan, only that I couldn’t let him escape to hurt my daughter again, or someone else’s daughter tomorrow.
“When I tackled him,” I said, “he fought back. And I fought back harder. The fight escalated until he was dead.”
The three panel members exchanged glances.
The woman spoke next, her voice slightly softer than before. “And now, Mr. Blackwood? After fourteen years to reflect, what do you think about what happened that night?”
Here it was. The question that might determine everything.
I looked at Harper. At the way she was leaning forward in her seat, hands pressed to her heart.
I looked at Gwen. At the shock and confusion in her eyes, having heard the truth for the first time.
And I thought about all the years I’d wasted convincing myself I had nothing to apologize for.
“For a long time,” I said slowly, “I convinced myself that what I did was justified. That any father would have done the same. That the outcome was inevitable, and I was just the instrument of a justice the legal system had failed to deliver.”
