Matson blew past the sarcasm and reached for the prize, overcome for a moment by the urge to just give in, say whatever the prosecutor wanted, and escape the mess his life had become-

But Peterson yanked it away. “Of course, there’s no way it’ll guarantee you won’t go to the joint.”

Matson gritted his teeth against the suffocating nightmare of toilet fumes wafting toward his face.

“It comes down to this,” Peterson said. “The more people you give us, the less time you’ll do.”

Matson pasted a smirk on his face. “And who makes that little decision?”

“Me,” Peterson said. “I do.”

Matson rolled his eyes. “I figured.”

“You have a problem with that?”

“Technically, the court decides on the sentence,” Hackett said, looking back and forth between the two.

“Technically.” Peterson said the word with a dismissiveness that told Matson that there wasn’t a judge in the entire Northern District who’d rise up on his hind legs to challenge Peterson-at least not over SatTek.

“Technically,” Matson repeated, shaking his head slowly and picking at a fingernail.

“Your attorney and I have agreed that you’ll proffer information regarding the involvement of others in the stock fraud itself and in the use of offshore companies to accomplish it. Is that also your understanding?”

Matson nodded, now panicked by the admissions Peterson would extract from him and wanting to push away from the table and bolt toward the door-but he could feel neither his arms nor his legs.

“You also need to understand that the government appreciates that you have a Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination. And it’s no secret to anyone in this room that by implicating your coconspirators you’ll be incriminating yourself.”

Matson found himself continuing to nod, as much to Peterson’s words as to his even tone; there was no pulling back of a rhetorical fist, no rising toward a setup; there was just a relentless pushing forward.