“Wait,” Alice said, “so are you the one who recommended Bill call me to invest with him?”

“Yes!” This man, whoever he was, sounded so enthusiastic. “Then that way I could make us extra money off of our money.”

Our money. Huh.

“Everything was going great with the plan, but I got a little overeager because, well, I was getting really good at beating the fund’s return, so I started taking a little more and a little more. Twelve percent, fifteen percent.”

I thought back to my math. I didn’t have the full picture yet, but that was what was happening in my account!

“Then these strange economic conditions exposed my algorithms and, well, I lost a lot. A whole lot. Enough that I couldn’t fake it anymore.”

Alice leaned in and said, so sweetly, “So what did you do then, sweetheart?”

He smiled at her in a way that turned my stomach. Who was this man? And what about Elliott? A very uncomfortable feeling washed over me.

“I had always forged the client statements, obviously. So when the accounts lost money, it wasn’t like the clients were going to call my dad or someone at Capstone. They were going to call the broker.”

“Like Bill Sitterly?”

“Exactly.”

“Okay, right. But wouldn’t it be easy to figure out that all this led to you?”

“Eventually,” he said. “But I was the whistleblower. I called the SEC about Bill Sitterly, and, for the moment, they have enough evidence that it at least looks like he was the one who stole the money.” He cleared his throat. “Which is why we need to go now, Al. We have to leave the country before they start digging deeper and realize it wasn’t Bill after all.”

She nodded sincerely. “But, why, sweetheart? It seems to me that you covered your tracks. Let’s just stay here and let Bill pay for your crimes.”

My jaw dropped. Who was this woman? I didn’t know Alice Bailey at all. The man turned his head toward her fully, and I realized something: I might not have known Alice but I knew that man. I tapped over to my photos to compare. Sure, I couldn’t see his whole face. But that wavy hair, those green eyes, the crease in his forehead—that was the man in my house. I was sure of it.

He sighed deeply. “I had been doing this for so long that I got a little sloppy. I forgot to forge a few of the broker’s statements and put the real number of shares the clients were purchasing on there.” He paused. “It wasn’t a huge deal. Dad and Bill have worked together for so long, no one ever checked—or, well, the time or two Bill noticed, it was easy to shrug it off. Although I accidentally did it to his daughter’s account a few times. I guess he didn’t notice those.”