“About time,” Mary says as I enter The Cage. “You had me worried, Oliver.”

“Are you kidding?” I ask, smiling anxious hellos to the other four officemates who look up as I cross the industrial carpet. “I still have a good three-” The door slams behind me and I jump at the crash. I almost forgot… in The Cage, the door shuts automatically.

“You okay there?” Mary asks, immediately shifting to mother hen.

“Y-Yeah… of course,” I say, struggling to pull it together. “I was just saying… we still have at least three minutes…”

“And worse comes to worst, you can always do it yourself, right?” As she asks the question, she wipes a smudge from the glass of her oldest son’s picture frame. The one with her password…

“Listen, about Tanner Drew…” I beg. “I shouldn’t have… I’m sorry…”

“I’m sure you are.” She lowers her head, refusing to face me. No question, she’s ready to blow. But out of nowhere, her high-pitched laugh cuts through the room. Then Polly, who sits next to her, joins in. Then Francine. All of them laughing. “C’mon, Oliver, we’re only teasing,” Mary finally adds, a big smile on her face.

“Y-You’re not mad?”

“Honey, you did the best you could with what you had… but if I ever find out you use my password again…”

I wince slightly, waiting for the rest of the threat.

Once again, Mary smiles wide. “It’s a joke, Oliver… it won’t kill you to laugh.” She pulls the stack of abandoned accounts from my hand and lightly slaps me across the chest with it. “You take things too seriously, y’know that?”

I try to answer, but nothing comes out. All I see are the forms as they wave through the air.

Turning to her computer, Mary clips the whole stack to the vertical clipboard attached to her monitor. She knows the deadline. No time to waste. Luckily, the transfers are already keyed in – all she has to do is enter the destinations. “I don’t see why the state gets this,” she adds as she opens the Abandoned Accounts file. “Personally I’d rather see it go to charity…”

She says something else, but it’s drowned out by the blood rushing through my ears. On the screen, a twenty-thousand-dollar account gets zapped to New York’s Unclaimed Funds Division. Then a three-hundred-dollar one. Then a twelve-thousand. One by one, she works her way through the pile earmarked for the state. One by one, she hits that Send button.

“So I think you’re going to be able to steal it,” Mary eventually says.

A hot jolt stabs me in the legs, like someone shoving a knife in my thigh. I can barely stand. “E-Excuse me?”

“I said, we’re going to be able to go on our ski trip,” Mary adds. “Justin’s knee isn’t as bad as we thought.” Turning around, Mary catches me wiping a wave of sweat from my forehead. “Are you sure you’re okay, Oliver?”

“Of course,” I reply. “Just one of those days.”

“More like one of those years, the way you’re always running around. I’m telling you, Oliver, if you don’t start taking it easy, the people here’ll kill you.”

There’s no arguing with fact.

Flipping to the next sheet in the pile, Mary finally gets to a four-hundred-thousand-dollar transfer to someone named Alexander Reed. I expect her to make some comment about the amount, but at this point, she’s dead to it. She sees it every day.

And so do I. Hundred-thousand-dollar checks… finding decorators for their Tuscan villas… the dessert chef at L’Aubergine who knows exactly the right crispiness they like for their chocolate soufflés. It’s a nice life. But it’s not mine.

It takes Mary a total of ten seconds to type in the account number and hit Send. Ten seconds. Ten seconds to change my life. It’s what my dad was always chasing, but never found. Finally… a way out.

Mary licks her fingertips for a touch of traction, leafs to the next sheet in the pile, and lowers her fingers to the keyboard. There it is: Duckworth and Sunshine Distributors.

“So what’d you do this weekend?” I ask, my voice racing.

“Oh, same as every weekend for the last month – tried to show up all my relatives by buying them better holiday presents than the ones they bought me.”

Onscreen, the name of our London bank clicks into place. C.M.W. Walsh Bank.

“That sounds great,” I say vacantly.

Digit by digit, the account number follows.

“That sounds great?” Mary laughs. “Oliver, you’ve really got to get out more.”

The cursor glides to the Send button and I start saying my goodbyes. I could still stop it, but…

The Send icon blinks to a negative and then back again. The words are so small, but I know them like the Big E on the eye chart:

Status: Pending.

Status: Approved.

Status: Paid.

“Listen, I should be getting back to my office…”

“Don’t worry about it,” Mary says without even turning around. “I can handle it from here.”

Staring at his computer screen and running his tongue across a cold sore inside his lip, he had to admit, he didn’t think Oliver would go through with it. Charlie, maybe. But not Oliver. Sure, he sometimes showed moments of greatness… the Tanner Drew incident being the most recent… but deep down, Oliver Caruso was still as scared as the day he started at Greene & Greene.

Still, the proof was always in the pudding – and right now, the pudding looked like it was about to be sent to London, England. Using the same technology he knew Shep had, he called up Martin Duckworth’s account and scanned the column marked Current Activity. The last entry – Balance of Account to C.M.W. Walsh Bank – was still marked Pending. It wasn’t going to be long now.

He pulled a pen from his jacket pocket and jotted down the bank’s name, followed by the account number. Sure, he could call the London bank… try to catch the money… but by the time he got through, it’d almost certainly be gone. Besides, why interfere now?

His phone started ringing and he picked up immediately. “Hello?” he answered, standardly confident.

“Well…?” a gruff voice asked.

“Well, what?”

“Don’t jerk me around,” the man warned. “Did they take it?”

“Any second now…” he said, his eyes still focused on the screen. At the very bottom of the account, there was a quick blink – and Pending… became Paid.

“There it goes,” he added with a grin. Shep… Charlie… Oliver… if they only knew what was coming.

“So that’s it?” the man asked.

“That’s it,” he replied. “The snowball’s officially rolling.”

There’s someone watching me. I didn’t notice him when I said goodbye to Lapidus and left the bank – it was after six and the December sky was already dark. And I didn’t see him trail me down the grimy subway stairs or follow me through the turnstile – there’re way too many commuters crisscrossing through the urban anthills to notice any one person. But as I reach the subway platform, I swear I hear someone whisper my name.

I spin around to check, but all that’s there is the typical Park Avenue post-work crowd: men, women, short, tall, young, old, a few black, mostly white. All of them in overcoats or heavy jackets. The majority stare down at reading material – a few lose themselves in their headphones – and one, just as I turn around, abruptly lifts a Wall Street Journal to cover his face.

I crane my neck, trying to get a look at his shoes or pants – anything for a context clue – but at the height of rush hour, the density of the crowd’s too thick. In no mood to take chances, I head further up the platform, away from the Journal man. At the last second, I once again look over my shoulder. A few more commuters fill out the crowd, but for the most part, no one moves – no one except the man, who once again – like a villain in a bad Cold War movie – lifts the Journal to cover his face.