"My freedom. Obviously."
"I can't give you that."
"Then give me something. A phone call to my mother. Five minutes. So she doesn't spend the weekend thinking I'm dead in a ditch."
I study her. She holds my gaze without blinking, and I realize she's been maneuvering me toward this since she sat down. The evidence argument, the challenge to prove it, those were the setup. This is the ask. The woman is running a negotiation from a position of zero leverage and somehow making me feel like I'm the one being cornered.
"Convince me about Alejandro," I say. "Then we talk about the phone call."
She takes another bite and sets down the fork, and something settles between us that doesn't have a name. It is the mutual recognition of two people who are both trapped, both operating under impossible constraints, both testing each other's edges.
I refill her coffee without being asked. She accepts it without thanks.
The clock Diego set is already running. And this woman, sitting across from me, who has a negotiation she shouldn't have been able to win under her belt, is the reason I'm starting to wonder what happens when the clock runs out and I haven't done what I was sent here to do.
5
SOFIA
Ibuild my case the way I build all my cases: methodically, precisely, with the patience of someone who understands that persuasion is architecture, not demolition.
Mateo Reyes sits across from me at the kitchen table while I dismantle his brother's innocence piece by piece, and I watch his face the way I watch jurors during closing arguments, looking for the micro-expressions that tell me what the words alone cannot.
"The financial records are the backbone," I begin. "Your brother operated three legitimate businesses in the Bronx: an auto body shop, a laundromat, and a check-cashing service. Combined, those businesses reported gross revenues of roughly nine hundred thousand dollars a year. Normal for those businesses in that area. Nothing that would trigger an audit."
"So they were legitimate."
"On paper. But the cash deposits into the business accounts didn't match the volume of actual transactions. The auto body shop, for example, reported servicing an average of forty vehicles a month. We pulled the surveillance footage from the lot next door. The actual number was closer to twelve."
"Surveillance footage can be doctored."
"It can be. But it wasn't."
He absorbs this without visible reaction. He's good at that, the non-reaction, the flat controlled stillness that gives nothing away. But I've spent years reading people who are trained to give nothing away, including federal agents, career criminals, and expert witnesses coached to show neutrality. The tell with Mateo isn't what he shows. It's what he does with his hands. When I present evidence that challenges his brother's story, his right hand curls slightly, the fingers drawing together as if he's physically holding onto something.
"The cooperating witnesses," he says. "Who were they?"
"I can't give you names. Witness protection exists for a reason."
"Then how do I know they're real?"
"Because a federal judge reviewed their credibility and allowed their testimony. Because they were cross-examined by your brother's attorney for hours. Because the jury, twelve people with no stake in the outcome, heard everything they had to say and believed them."
"Juries can be wrong."
"They can be. But not usually when the physical evidence supports the testimony. And in this case, it does. Every claim the witnesses made was corroborated by financial records, phone intercepts, or surveillance. This isn't a case that relies on any single piece of evidence. It's a web. You can pull one thread and the others still hold."
I pause to drink my coffee. It's terrible, the cheap kind that he must have bought in bulk, but it's hot and caffeinated and I need both because I slept for exactly two hours last night, wedged against the headboard ready to move if the opportunity presented itself. It didn’t.
I have no illusions about my physical situation. Mateo Reyes could overpower me in seconds. He proved that in the alley. The difference between him and the men he works for, and it's a difference I'm betting my life on, is that he doesn't want to. He is a man in conflict with himself, torn between the loyalty that has defined his entire life and the truth that is starting to crack through it.
I intend to be the water that widens that crack.
"Tell me about the phone intercepts," he says.
"Court-authorized wiretaps on your brother's personal cell and two burner phones. Over a six-month period, we recorded hundreds of calls. Many were innocuous. But a significant number involved discussions of shipment quantities, delivery schedules, and payment collection that are inconsistent with any legitimate business."
"He could have been talking about auto parts."
