As quickly as he pieced together the fraud, Christopher also figured out that he would be considered as guilty as anyone else at the firm. His digital fingerprints were on nearly every trade. He would be implicated in the Ponzi scheme as much as his father or any of the partners. Implicated, prosecuted, indicted, and imprisoned. And the feds were coming, he knew. An old friend with whom he had studied applied mathematics worked for the IRS and had confirmed Christopher’s suspicions. Christopher asked for a favor, and his friend obliged. While Christopher spent two weeks unraveling the financial crimes at Montgomery Investment Services, his friend made a few calls and did some snooping of his own. The friend didn’t know much, he told Christopher, but he had learned that there was an active investigation going on that involved the FBI’s Math Geeks—the nickname used for the forensic accountants who worked for the government. His friend had even managed to get the name of the operation: House of Cards.

There were many choices Christopher Montgomery could have made. He could have gone to the feds and cut a deal. He could provide all the access they needed. He could have been a siphon to it all. He could have confronted his father and demanded that things change, but he knew things were too far gone. He could have attempted to erase his fingerprints from the trades and plead ignorance. But each of those choices had flaws. Attached to all of them was the likelihood that he would go to prison. So, instead, he had told Claire about their father’s hedge fund and the fraud and the billions in assets that were nothing but a mirage. He told her how he was neck deep in it all, even though until recently he knew nothing about any of it. Then, he had asked for her help.

There was no perfect way to fake your own death. But he had been adamant that he needed to do it before the feds busted down the doors. Because to fake your death after an indictment was too suspicious. To fake your death a year before anyone at Montgomery Investment Services came under federal indictment was possible. If they did it the right way.

Sacrificing her Oyster 625 took some convincing, but after Christopher explained that the boat—and everything else in their lives—had come from dirty money, Claire had agreed. Knowing that the marina had surveillance cameras, he and Claire had climbed aboard the Claire-Voyance, prepared the boat for a sail, and pushed off. It was only after they were a mile offshore that Christopher boarded the dingy and made it back to land—a different marina where surveillance was less severe. Then, he had prayed that Claire would survive.