Through all the photos, Jesse noticed Davie never had a normal physique. His legs were the most deformed, but his arms and torso also looked abnormal. Yet every photo made clear that Jonathan and Susan loved their little boy. How difficult it must be to worry that he was always only one fall, one inadvertent stumble from a catastrophic health crisis.

MISC turned out to be photographs of Davie’s LEGO and Tinkertoy creations. Sometimes only the finished model was visible. The replica of Jonathan’s Ford Escape was one. In the picture, it sat on Davie’s bedroom table where Jesse had seen the boy work. A sheet of computer paper protruded from underneath the LEGO wheels. A few lines of text were visible. Jesse enlarged the image until they were legible. The first line read “the secret.” Beneath it were three lines of numbers and characters. Virtual wallet addresses. Jesse’s hand trembled as he zoomed in until the print began to blur. Was he seeing what Jonathan had whispered? “the secret?”

He wanted to let out a whoop and run down to get Ethel. But a realization tempered his enthusiasm. If he had found the addresses, surely the people who had taken Jonathan’s computer had as well. Furthermore, Lisa and Douglas were in the house. Ethel would want to keep things quiet until she knew exactly what he’d uncovered. Tell Ethel the secret. Did that mean tell no one else?

He wrote down the three addresses in the Notes app on his phone. Then he returned to the internet site for manual transactions. A cursor blinked on a blank space. Beneath it was the label WALLET ADDRESS. Carefully, Jesse entered the first one on the list and hit enter. The screen changed to a new page with the address as the header and various options offered beneath it. He clicked CHECK VALUE and a number of currency choices appeared including euros, pounds, Canadian dollars, and U.S. dollars. He selected U.S. and stared at the screen in astonishment. The virtual wallet contained Bitcoins currently worth $20,005,623.17. And that was after Bitcoin’s value had decreased three percent in the previous twenty-four hours.

Recent activity showed the transfer of over half a million dollars to the second wallet address on the list. He checked that wallet. Only ten thousand remained, but the activity report showed half a million transferred out between 4:10 and 4:15 Monday morning—the estimated time of Finch’s rendezvous at the parking deck. Jesse entered the third address. The wallet had no value, but the half a million had passed through it late Monday afternoon. The events became clear. Jonathan Finch had taken funds from CEO Dwayne Parker’s embezzled stash and used it to buy the cash, cash that turned out to be counterfeit. Was the private key he’d found written on the scrap of paper the one that would open the lock to over twenty million dollars?