Chapter 22: What It Cost

Wylie's POV

On Monday morning I sat across a desk from the head of the bank's compliance office.

I put a folder in front of her.

It held my statement, the vendor's booking record and the number of a card I had given away without thinking.

She read it with her glasses pushed up on her head.

When she finished she closed it and said, "You resigned on Saturday. You don't have to do this."

"I do."

"The bank would be glad to say you left for personal reasons. I could write you a good reference."

"I don't want one."

"Wylie, you trained half this building. Tellers will say your name when they catch a scam."

"Then they should know the man who taught them the three questions never asked them once," I said.

"Put it in the file. Put it in the training too."

She looked at me for a long moment.

"Slide eleven," she said.

I hadn't known she had seen it.

"Take it out," I said. "The Overconfident Learner."

"I made it about a woman who was never overconfident. I just liked being the one who knew."

She picked up a pen.

I signed away the bonus I was owed.

I walked out of the building with a cardboard box that held a stapler and a plant.

I did not feel better.

I hadn't expected to.

At eleven I sat in a plain room at the testing board's office.

A woman with a recorder took my sworn statement.

She asked me to say it in order.

I said that I had paid for a false exam room.

I said that I had told a woman it was a lesson.

I said that I believed it had been my idea, and then I said that it hadn't.

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