He looked at what I'd found for twenty minutes.

Not reviewing. Studying. Following the thread I'd pulled the way someone follows a thread who's already seen the cloth it came from.

When he looked up, his expression was exactly what it had been: controlled. Contained. Unreadable.

"How long have you known?" he said.

"Eight months of noticing something was wrong," I said. "Three days of being able to name it." I held his gaze. "How long have you known?"

Silence.

"Mr. Thorne," I said. "I need to know whether I'm helping you or whether I'm the problem you just moved into your house."

He looked at the screen.

"The sub-accounts were opened fourteen months ago," he said. "The structure was built by someone with full system access." He paused. "I've been trying to trace the origin for six months."

"You knew about the laundering," I said.

"I knew money was moving that shouldn't be moving," he said. "I didn't know the architecture."

"You hired me to find it," I said.

He looked at me.

"I hired you," he said, "because you noticed and you said so."

"Most people would have kept quiet."

"Yes," he said. "They would have."

I sat back in the chair.

"Croft," I said.

His expression didn't change. Which was its own kind of answer.

"My father's loan," I said. "Was it—"

"Your father's loan is real," he said. "The structure is predatory. The person who introduced him to the opportunity—"

"Was Croft," I said.

"I can't confirm that yet."

"But you suspect it."

He looked at the window.

"I suspect many things," he said. "Suspicion is not evidence."

"What is evidence?"

He turned back.

"What you found," he said. "Three accounts, same address, different entities. That's a pattern. Patterns leave traces." He looked at the files. "I want you to pull every file that touches the Cayman entity."

"That's forty files minimum," I said.

"I know."

"It'll take weeks."

"Then start today," he said.

He straightened. Moved toward the door.

"Mr. Thorne," I said.

He stopped.

"Why bring me here?" I said. "You could have hired an external forensic accountant. Someone with no connection to the firm."

He looked at me.

"Because external forensic accountants file reports," he said. "Reports go to regulators. Regulators ask questions before I'm ready for them to ask questions." He held my gaze. "And because Croft doesn't know what you found. He thinks you came to me about your father's debt. Which means he's not watching you."

"I'm bait," I said.

"You're an asset," he said.

"There's a difference?"

"One of them I protect," he said.

He left.

I sat at the desk with forty files to pull and the specific feeling of someone who had just understood, belatedly, exactly what they'd walked into.

Not a debt arrangement.

A position inside an active investigation.

And the man running the investigation had just told me — in the flattest possible way — that he intended to protect me.

I wasn't sure whether that was reassuring or terrifying.

Both, I decided.

I pulled the first file.