“Just call me Scoob,” Matson said, attempting the ingratiating smile that had begun to fail him a week earlier when he found himself in the crosshairs of a securities fraud investigation.

“Mr. Matson, this is what we call a Queen for a Day. It’s your one and only chance to convince me to allow you to cooperate with the government.”

Matson curled his hands inward toward his chest and adopted the practiced indignation of a professional salesman. “I thought you were asking for me to cooperate. ”

Peterson shifted his eyes to Hackett. “Your client doesn’t seem to grasp that we’d just as soon take this case to trial.” He turned to the FBI agent at his side. “What’s the loss?”

“Almost three hundred million dollars.” The agent’s voice was flat. He fixed his gaze on Matson, his face as expressionless as a spreadsheet. “And counting.”

“So we’re talking what? Twenty years? Thirty?” Peterson looked back at Hackett. “What do you think, Counselor? I’m sure you’ve done the math.”

Matson thought back to the day the SEC suspended trading in SatTek stock. Sitting in Hackett’s office. The lawyer’s black-haired, hawkish little head bent over the thousand-page Federal Sentencing Manual, working his mental calculator, then summing the total in a nightmarish bottom line: Unless Matson won at trial or delivered others to Peterson’s chopping block, he’d spend the next three decades sleeping in a concrete box, eighteen inches from a lidless steel toilet.

Peterson glared at Matson. “I don’t have time to waste on this.” He then pushed himself to his feet and reached down to gather his files.

As the six-one and two-hundred-thirty-pound former NFL linebacker loomed over him, Matson saw himself as he knew Peterson did: the twenty extra pounds bunched around his small frame, his soft hands with their manicured fingernails, and his face that fell just short of handsome; a chin just a shade too small, eyes just a shade too narrow, and a nose just a shade too large.