That doesn't excuse what he did. It doesn't erase the alley or the van or the fear. But it does mean something, something I won't put words to yet but refuse to pretend isn't there.
I get up, walk to the door of my room, and open it. The hallway is dim, lit by a single lamp in the living area. Mateo's door is closed.
I knock.
"It's me," I say.
A pause, then footsteps. The door opens.
He's standing in a white T-shirt that's too tight across the shoulders, his hair still damp from the shower. He looks at methe way he always looks at me, as if I'm the first real thing he's ever seen.
"The FBI agent is gone?" I ask.
"For now. He'll be back in the morning."
I step past him into the room. It's identical to mine, beige walls, slatted blinds, and a bed that's too firm and completely anonymous.
"I told Jon about the case," I say. "He's going to arrange a meeting with the U.S. Attorney. I'll present the cooperation proposal myself."
"You don't have to do that."
"Yes, I do. Because if someone else handles it, they'll offer you a deal that doesn't reflect the value of what you're bringing. And I didn't spend days in a farmhouse building a case with you to watch someone else botch the resolution."
He almost smiles, that thing I've seen flicker across his face a handful of times, the suggestion of a capacity for warmth that he's spent years suppressing.
"Thank you," he says.
"Don't thank me yet. What you're delivering is unprecedented, and I believe I can argue for full immunity. But nothing is guaranteed until the U.S. Attorney signs off, and the kidnapping complicates the optics. The cooperation agreement will require full disclosure of every job you've done, every body, every scene."
"I know."
"You'll be testifying against the cartel, against people who will try to kill you for it. Witness protection isn't optional."
"I know that too."
"And after all of it, after the trial and the testimony, you come out the other side with a new identity and nothing to your name." I pause. "I need you to understand what you're choosing."
He looks at me across the dim room, and I see it again, the clarity I saw at the farmhouse when he decided to destroy the cartel, the clarity of a man who has finally stopped lying to himself.
"I'm choosing the truth," he says. "For the first time in my life, I'm choosing something that's real. Whatever that costs."
I should leave, go back to my room, and maintain the distance that professional ethics and basic self-preservation demand.
I close the door behind me instead.
The click of the latch is small and definitive, and we both hear it, and we both understand what it means. This is not the farmhouse. There is no locked door, no captor, no captive. I am here because I walked here, and I can leave whenever I want. I don't want to.
"Sofia." His voice is rough and careful. "You don't have to do this."
"I know I don't have to. That's the point." I cross the room to where he's standing by the window. The blinds cast thin lines of streetlight across his face, across the scar along his jaw, across the mouth I kissed on a kitchen floor in a different life. "The last time, I wasn't free. You knew it and I knew it. And it poisoned everything."
"Yes."
"I'm free now. I walked into this room on my own feet, through an unlocked door, in a building full of FBI agents who would arrest you if I screamed. There's no ambiguity here, no power imbalance, no doubt about what I want."
"What do you want?"
I put my hand against his sternum and feel his heartbeat beneath my palm, rapid and hard, the heartbeat of a man who is holding himself still through sheer force of will.
