Keeping him talking was about Ray's only tactic. He could feel his gun digging into the small of his back and he tried shifting minutely, moving one of his hands away to try to reach behind him.

"See this?" Ray asked, wiggling the fingers on his other hand as a kind of distraction. "See this ring? If you're still the Asher I know, then this means more to you than a quick meal down a dirty alleyway. I'm pretty sure if I die here, I'm dead over there too."

It sounded almost like a dare, one that Ray didn't intend to follow through, not when his fingertips were so close to reaching his gun.