She typed out a quick reply: "I'll let you know. I’m working on a case that’s pretty intense right now."
Her sister, as well as her parents, had come to expect that sort of response from her. And she responded immediately with: "Be safe. Love you."
Sloane pocketed the phone and kept walking. Her thoughts kept circling back to the case, to the framework Margaret Ellis had created, to the way Crawford had distributed it among multiple participants.
Three victims. All featured prominently in promotional materials. All using business concepts that originated with Ellis. But Ellis wasn't the killer.
So who was?
Sloane thought about the interview with Ellis. The woman had been genuinely shocked by the murders. Her boyfriend had backed up one of her alibis and she’d readily given other alibis, even indicating at least two other people who could back her us. She was working as a bookkeeper now, rebuilding her life piece by piece. She'd made peace with the business failure and moved on.
But someone hadn't moved on. Someone was angry enough about those stolen concepts to kill the people who'd benefited from them. Sloane's analytical mind started breaking down the problem into components, the way she'd been trained to do.She started with a very basic question: what did they know for certain?
The victims had all graduated from Second Act Success. They'd all used elements of Ellis's framework in their business plans. They'd all appeared in promotional videos. They'd all been killed with personalized letter openers that had been gifts from the program.
Whatdidn'tthey know?
Well, they didn’t have a complete list of everyone who had ever been in the program… though given the reams of information they’d gotten through Crawford and Paula, those details would be readily available if it came to that. Also, who else had submitted business plans that might have been cannibalized for parts? Who else might have watched those promotional videos and recognized their own concepts being credited to someone else?
Sloane stopped walking abruptly, standing just a few feet away from her Kia. Somewhere else in the parking garage, someone’s electronic locks gave way with a slightbeep beepsound, but it was so far away it may as well have been on the moon.
The promotional videos…
Kate had complimented Sloane on recognizing Hayes in that brief clip. Sloane had watched that video multiple times, and Hayes's face had stuck with her even though the clip was only a few seconds long.
Sloane stopped walking, her breath visible in the cold air. She could feel a connection starting to form, some answer lurking in the mental depths.
Kate had complimented her on recognizing Hayes. That compliment had meant something to Sloane because Kate Wise didn't give empty praise. She'd genuinely been impressed that Sloane had caught such a brief appearance in a five-minutevideo. But Sloane had only been able to recognize Hayes because she'd watched that video multiple times while looking through notes and resources. She'd studied it, absorbed the faces, the businesses, the success stories Crawford was promoting.
What if someone else had also watched those videos multiple times? Not once or twice, but repeatedly. Obsessively.
Not a failed participant studying them with envy. That theory had led them to Margaret Ellis, and Ellis wasn't their killer. That had been a colossal waste of time.
But who else would watch Crawford's promotional videos over and over again? Maybe…
Maybe someone else who was in them.
Sloane felt something click in her mind, like a puzzle piece finally finding its proper place. She'd been thinking about this backwards. They'd been looking for someone who'd failed, someone who'd watched others succeed using stolen concepts while they’d floundered and lost. Someone consumed by jealousy and rage at being left behind.
But what if the killer wasn't someone who'd been left behind at all?
What if they were someone who'd succeeded? Someone who appeared in those same promotional videos, who'd built a thriving business using Crawford's program, who'd watched those videos not with envy but with calculation. Someone who'd studied every other success story Crawford promoted, memorizing faces from brief clips, learning about their competition. Not just to see their own face in the light of success, but to watch and judge the others? What if they were watching to size up their competition?
Sloane pulled out her phone and opened the YouTube app, navigating to the Second Act Success channel. She clicked on the most recent promotional video and watched it again, this time with different eyes.
There were at least fifteen different graduates featured in the four-minute video that had allowed her to find Hayes. Some appeared for several seconds, others for just a moment. Rachel Thornton appeared at the thirty-second mark. Patricia Holmes showed up for maybe six seconds around the two-minute mark, standing by a clearly fakeOPEN FOR BUSINESSsign. Susan Hayes had been in the older video for an equally brief moment. All of them bright and beaming pictures of success…pictures if success that were apparently driving someone to kill.
But there were others too. Other success stories. Other thriving businesses that Crawford showcased as proof his program worked.
What if one of those other success stories was watching? What if they'd recognized that their own appearance in the videos was being diluted by all these other graduates? What if they'd started to see the other success stories not as colleagues, but as competition for Crawford's attention and promotion?
Sloane thought about the business world, about how success often meant being the standout, the memorable one, the face people associated with a brand. If Crawford kept adding more and more success stories to his promotional materials, each individual graduate became less prominent. Less special. Less likely to be remembered.
Unless the competition was eliminated.
At first, it felt like a stretch but then it started to make a sick sort of sense.
Sloane's hands shook slightly as she pulled up a text window—not her sister this time, but Kate. She almost didn’t send the text, not wanting to come off as jumping at every little theory. But in the end, it felt like the right thing to do. After all, this made more sense than the failed participant theory. It explained why the victims had been featured in promotional videos specifically. It explained the personalized letter openers, whichhad been gifts from Crawford to his most successful graduates. The killer was using them because they meant something to the killer, too.
