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very public figure. People follow him. They jump into his stocks when he buys and run away when he sells. We don’t allow that. We keep our trading secret. We’ve got a dedicated dark pool that hides our trades, and we spread them over a variety of market makers. And we control our overall investment. I could have a half a trillion dollars in assets under management if I wanted. I’ve got the clients lined up outside my door. But then we’d be big enough to tip the market. People would see our trades move the prices. We’d have information leakage, and we’d lose our advantage. I don’t need that. That’s why we’ve kept the heart of Spike a secret ever since I invented it.”
    â€œAnd you think Preston stole it from you.”
    Some anger finally slips past the ice wall. “He did steal it. He’s taken the knowledge I’ve spent fifty years building, and is now getting rich from it.”
    â€œI thought you said he was in data mining. Not stock picking.”
    â€œIt’s all numbers,” Sloan says. “The heart of Eli’s business is a piece of software called Cutter. It analyzes the data for him. But the engine that drives Cutter is the same one that drives Spike. The one I built. It can be used on any set of facts, provided you can reduce those facts to computer input. Phone calls, credit-card purchases, social-media posts—my algorithm can find the patterns hidden in all of it. Everything OmniVore does, it’s doing on the back of my work. That’s the genius of my discovery.”
    â€œAgain, not to boast or anything.”
    Sloan waves that off. He doesn’t have time for false modesty.
    â€œStill doesn’t explain why you’ve waited two years to go after him,” I say.
    â€œIf I knew he’d stolen from me, I certainly would have done something about it sooner. I thought my security was adequate. There are no records of any breach. The software behind Spike is located inside secure computers that would have recorded any attempt to hack them. Access is strictly controlled. Every email is monitored. My analysts walk through a scanner and a strong magnetic field on their way into and out of the office, which means I would know if they carried any thumb drives or disks from the office, or they would be wiped clean if I didn’t. Then, about six months ago, I received information from one of Eli’s former employees. Someone upset with his own pay package, of course. He told me that he’d heard Eli bragging to a client that his computer models were better than Spike—that he’d improved them.”
    â€œThat doesn’t prove he stole them from you.”
    â€œNo. But Eli’s security isn’t as thorough as mine. This informant showed me several blocks of the source code Eli uses for Cutter. With a few changes here and there, it’s the same as Spike. No question.”
    He takes a manila folder and places it on the table. He opens it and shows two different printouts. One is marked SPIKE and the other is marked CUTTER . They look identical to me, but only because I can’t make sense of either of them. Sloan seems pretty convinced, however.
    â€œSo if he didn’t download it from you, how was he supposed to steal it? Did he break your security system? Pay off one of your other employees?”
    Sloan shakes his head. “No. Again, I would have noticed any breach. I have redundant systems and loyal, well-paid people. He might have been able to corrupt one or two, but not all of them. It would have shown up.”
    â€œThen how did he do it?”
    â€œHe took my ideas out of here the old-fashioned way—in his brain.”
    That staggers me for a moment. “Is that even possible?”
    Sloan radiates ironclad certainty. There’s no doubt in him. “He’s smart enough, yes. He read the underlying computer code of Spike, line by line, until he found