Chapter 14 #2
"It doesn't matter if they're right. It matters if they can make a jury believe it." She exhales. "So here's what has to happen. We complete the cooperation agreement. You testify. The cartel goes down. And until the convictions are secured and the threat is neutralized, we stay apart."
"How long?"
"Months. Maybe longer, depending on how many defendants go to trial versus plea.
" She pauses. "I know that sounds manageable compared to what you were expecting.
But months of not knowing where you are, of not being able to call, of reading about the case in the news and wondering if you're safe.
.." Her voice catches, just slightly, just enough for me to hear it. "It won't feel manageable."
"Is that what you want?"
"What I want is irrelevant."
"It's not irrelevant to me."
She closes her eyes. When she opens them, the prosecutor is gone and what's left is the woman who leaned her head against my shoulder in a safe house in Yonkers, the woman who cried on a kitchen floor, the woman who said 'be careful' and meant it with her whole body.
"What I want," she says carefully, "is impossible.
I want to be the prosecutor who brings down the Vega cartel.
I want to know that I argued for your immunity because the case demanded it and not because of what I feel for you.
And I want to walk out of this building beside you and never let go.
I want all three, and I can't have all three, because the third one poisons the second. "
"So you choose the case."
"I choose justice. It's what I've always chosen. It's who I am."
I look at her across the table. Sofia Navarro, federal prosecutor, five feet six inches of conviction and fire and the most relentless intelligence I have ever encountered.
The woman who took my case apart. The woman who took me apart.
The woman who, against every rational principle and every moral boundary, became the only thing in my life that was true.
"Then I need to tell you something," I say. "Before the case and the testimony and the separation. I need you to hear this."
"Mateo, don't."
"You told me to hear you out. Now it's my turn."
She falls silent and waits.
"If you champion this immunity agreement, if you stand in front of the U.S.
Attorney and argue that the man who kidnapped you should walk free, you lose everything.
Your career will be questioned and your judgment will be scrutinized.
Every case you've ever worked will be re-examined for signs of compromised objectivity.
The defense attorneys will call you a sympathizer and the media will call you worse.
You will become the prosecutor who fell for her kidnapper, and that story will follow you for the rest of your professional life. "
"I'm aware of the consequences."
"Then you need to decide right now whether you're doing this because the case demands it or because of what happened between us.
Because if it's the second one, I won't let you.
I won't let you burn your career for me.
I've spent years watching people sacrifice themselves for the wrong reasons, and I won't be the wrong reason for you. "
She stares at me. I watch the conflict play across her face, the prosecutor and the woman and the survivor all warring for control. Her mouth goes flat. Her eyes glisten. Her hands on the table curl slightly, the way mine do when I'm holding onto something.
"It's both," she says finally. "The case demands it, and I care about you. Both of those things are true."
"Sofia..."
"Both of them, Mateo. The way they've been true since the first morning you cooked me breakfast and I realized the man who took me was also the man who would die to protect me.
I can't separate the prosecutor from the woman.
I've tried. Since the farmhouse, I've tried.
And I can't. So yes, I'm choosing the case.
But I'm also choosing you. Whatever that costs me. "
I close my eyes, open them. She's still there, still looking at me with those eyes that have never once looked away from the truth no matter how painful it was.
"Then we do this together," I say. "The case, the testimony, whatever comes after. But I need you to promise me something."
"What?"
"When it's over. When the cartel is down and the convictions are in and the world has moved on. If there's anything left of us, if the thing between us survives the distance, find me."
"You'll be in witness protection with a new name in a new city. I'll be in another one."
"I'll find a way. Leave a door open. And if I'm worth finding, I'll be there."
She looks at me for a long time. The fluorescent light hums above us. The conference room is empty and gray and smells like stale coffee and old carpet. It is the least romantic setting imaginable.
She reaches across the table and takes my hand.
"I'll find you," she says. "When it's over, I'll find you."
She is quiet for a moment. Then she pulls the pen from the legal pad and writes something on a scrap of paper: a city, a street name, and a day of the week.
"Wherever they send me," she says, "I'll find a coffee shop on this street or the nearest one to it. And every Saturday morning, I'll be there. You find a way to find that street in that city, and you find me."
"Sofia, that's..."
"It's a thread. That's all it is. One thread. If you pull it, I'll be at the other end." She folds the paper and presses it into my palm. "Memorize it. Then destroy it."
I look at the paper. It shows a city I've never been to, a street I've never heard of, a Saturday morning ritual that may never happen.
I memorize it. Every letter.
Then I tear the paper into pieces so small they could be confetti, and I let them fall into the wastebasket of an FBI conference room, and I hold her hand, and in the ugly fluorescent light I let myself believe that somewhere, on the other side of everything that has to happen next, there is a version of the world where this story doesn't end the way it should.
A version where the cleaner and the prosecutor get to be just a man and a woman, sitting at a coffee shop, drinking coffee, and being true.