Pound Foolish (Windy City Neighbors Book 4) (33 page)

     “Glad to help.”

     “Hey, shut off your engine and come on up for a cup of coffee. It’s the least I can do. Or . . . do you only drink that energy stuff you’re sellin’?”

     “No, I like coffee. But aren’t you in a hurry?”

     “I’m good. Got a few minutes now that my battery’s charging. I was just worried that I’d have to call a tow truck or somethin’. No tellin’ how long it’d take for them to get here. But thanks to you, it’s all copacetic.” Harry chuckled as he closed the overhead door to the alley, leaving the side door to the yard open since his car was running.

     Seated around the kitchen table a few minutes later with steaming cups of coffee in their hands, Harry shook his head. “Wow! Must’ve been the Lord movin’ my feet. Can’t even recall why I went out to the garage, but as soon as I opened the car door, I noticed the dome light didn’t come on, knew something was wrong.”

     Greg sipped his coffee in silence as Harry made small talk for a few minutes. Harry seemed to give God credit for every little thing. Didn’t feel like he had that much to be thankful for himself—

     “So how’s it goin’ for you, Greg? Your business takin’ off?”

     Harry’s question pulled him back to the Bentley kitchen. “Ah, not really.” Greg was surprised at himself. Why had he admitted that? He usually put on a good face, projected success for success, and all that. But somehow the tone of sincerity in Harry’s question had taken him off guard. “What I mean, is, you know, working at home . . .” Greg clinched his fists in front of his chest and moved them from side to side like a tug of war. “A little tension with the missus. But it’ll pass.”

     Harry nodded thoughtfully, staring at him with a calm gaze. “Sorry to hear that.” Greg felt as though the man could see right through him, but there was no judgment there.

     Still, he wasn’t ready to go into his suspicions about Nicole and Lincoln Paddock. “Oh, say, good thing you asked Josh Baxter to come over and help me with the new water heater. He made some modifications to get the pipes connected. Would’ve taken me twice the time, even if I could’ve figured it out by myself.”

     “Yeah, he’s a good kid.” Harry glanced down at his watch. “Uh-oh. Now I do have to go. Sorry ’bout that.” He stood up, and Corky jumped up, too, wagging her tail eagerly.

     “Yeah, I gotta get back to work myself.” Greg followed Harry and the dog down the outside back stairs and started around the house toward the street when Harry called him back.

     “Hey, where you goin’ so fast? Your car’s still in my garage!” Harry laughed as Greg sheepishly came back. “Thought I had myself a new Jeep there. Besides, man, I want to say one more thing . . .” He laid a hand on Greg’s shoulder. “I was out of work for a long time, too, and I know it’s tough. But it’s gotta be just as tough on your wife. Be sure you pray together about the frustrations you’re feeling and decisions you gotta make. Know what I’m sayin’?”

     Greg nodded politely as he got into the Cherokee and backed out of the Bentleys’ garage. But . . . pray together? He and Nicole weren’t even speaking right now.

* * * *

To Greg’s relief, Nicole was holed up in the basement working on Paddock’s project when he got back, and the kids were out with Tabby at the park or somewhere. Greg didn’t try to keep up with their whereabouts. Right now, his domestic concerns involved his wife and Paddock, but he didn’t know what to do. He had no proof of anything actually wrong happening, just a feeling in his gut. He either needed proof or he needed to put aside his suspicions.

     But by Friday, nothing had changed with SlowBurn, and he felt frozen. Didn’t know how to move forward. Didn’t know whether to throw in the towel. And not knowing what to do, he realized he’d been frittering more and more of his time away on the computer, running down rabbit trails that had nothing to do with his business. Already, he’d whiled away most of the morning.

     This was becoming a crisis!

    
Crisis
. . . the last time he’d thought of his life in those terms had been after being released—
fired
—from Powersports. That was when Pastor Hanson’s teaching had brought him hope: The two Chinese characters making up the word for “crisis” meant
danger
and
opportunity
. Well, he was there again. But what could he do about it?

     His mind looped back to Nicole, and he typed “Watkins, Ellis, and Katz” into Google search and came up with the firm’s familiar website. Maybe this time he would learn something new. It certainly was a big firm, and Paddock was named as a junior partner. He clicked on the tab describing the firm’s services.

     A refined descriptive page came up, and then a gaudy popup ad. How did that happen? He had his popup blocker turned on, but he knew an ad sometimes got through anyway. He clicked on the X to delete it, but it popped right back up. Who was doing this?

     Couldn’t miss the bold, golden words on a black background for the Big Returns website: “Make up to 81 percent on your investment in less than 60 seconds by trading binary options.”

     What? He’d never heard of binary options. Eighty-one percent? Unbelievable. But he kept staring at the words. Were they
danger
and
opportunity
or just a scam?

     Almost without realizing he was doing it, he clicked on
Learn More.

Chapter 33

Danger
and
opportunity
. . .

     The
Learn More
link took him to the Big Returns’ website. It looked like a casino, and he nearly clicked out of it, except for the box titled, “A No-Risk Way to Earn Big Returns.” He leaned closer to read the smaller print, which explained that anyone could participate in trading binary options without special training, licensing, or experience . . . and there were no fees. “You’re in total control of how much you invest or how long you participate. You can withdraw any time.”

     Greg frowned at the screen. But what exactly was binary trading? He’d never heard of it. Apparently, other people were just as unfamiliar, because the website offered an answer at the top of the page: “A binary option is simply making a prediction on the direction a stock, commodity, index, or foreign currency will move within a designated period of time, from as little as 60 seconds to 24 hours.” Below was a trading simulator, inviting anyone to try it out without investing a single cent.

     Greg murmured, “Thanks,” when Nicole put a plate with a sandwich and an apple on the edge of his desk along with a tall glass of iced tea, but he was relieved when she left without trying to claim any more of his attention. Should he try the trading simulator? Why not? Just as a matter of curiosity. He might learn something.

     When he clicked, the simulator asked him to enter his first name. Greg hesitated . . . but then it was only his first name. The instructions explained that the simulator offered options on the US dollar against the euro. In the next sixty seconds, did “Greg”—ah, that’s why they wanted his first name, to make it more personal—think the dollar would increase or decrease in comparison to the euro? A real-time chart was displayed showing how the dollar had moved over the last few hours. So far that Friday morning, it had increased in a saw-tooth incline, but the repeated down jags showed that during many sixty-second periods, it had lost value even though the overall trend was up. The challenge was, what would it do in the time period Greg chose?

     It looked like a gamble, but so what, he didn’t have to risk anything to try the simulator. He selected one hundred dollars as his pretend investment, and clicked the up button. He watched the graph, and just after the value had clicked down for a few seconds, he hit start, presuming it would soon reverse its loss and continue increasing in value. The hand of the onscreen stopwatch swept around while the dollar value continued declining. At 20 seconds, its graph line was still headed down. Nearly halfway through the time period, Greg saw a momentary blip upward, but it didn’t survive. More loss continued until 38 seconds into the minute when the line finally began a steady climb. But would it be enough? Greg held his breath. And then just as the bell sounded, the border of the graph flashed green, indicating that the final value of the US dollar had ticked fractionally above Greg’s starting point.

     He slapped his hands together. “I won!” he shouted.

     A moment later the screen flashed in large print.
“Congratulations! Your payout would have been $170.”

     A hundred and seventy bucks? His initial $100 plus $70 more? Wow! That was huge! An astounding 70 percent profit in one minute was more than he’d ever dreamed of earning doing anything.

     Greg pushed back from his computer. Could it be true? Was there really a legal way to earn such a high percentage so quickly? He slowly rolled his chair forward, as if creeping up on his computer, and typed in a Google search for “binary options.” Up came over a million hits. He clicked on the first few top links and discovered dozens of companies offering online binary trading options. Some looked like casinos—similar to the Big Returns site he’d been on—but others were more refined, projecting an image as staid as a Wall Street bank. Unlike the glitzy sites, Greg noticed these more dignified companies carefully referred to their activity as “trading,” not “playing.” Money was called “earnings,” not “winnings.” Participants were “investors,” not “players.” Obviously, they didn’t want the public to think of their enterprise as gambling. Okay, he could see that. He wasn’t a gambler himself and wouldn’t want to be involved in anything suspect.

     But with so many prominent sites, it seemed like the concept had to be legitimate even if a few companies played fast and loose, otherwise the Securities and Exchange Commission or some such federal agency would shut them down. Right?

     He visited site after site, and while the tone was different, the concept and the way one participated was basically the same. A few online articles warned about the risks of losing a lot of money with binary trading, but even these “negative” sites didn’t say it was illegal or necessarily a scam. Participants just had to be wise and not get in over their heads. Which was true of any high-risk venture.

     But then, ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained.’ Right? And Greg definitely needed to gain a lot right now.

     Should he try it?

     After a couple of hours of research, Greg selected TopOps as the site he felt most comfortable with. It wasn’t as stuffy as a gray granite bank, but it didn’t feel like cheap thrills either. Just a straightforward presentation of the company’s operation and how he could participate. The introductory video for TopOps clearly explained how wins and losses were calculated. When he won on a 60-second trade, he would earn 70 percent on the money he invested. If he lost, he would only lose 85 percent.

     Gulp! That was a lot, but it wasn’t like risking
all
of his capital. He’d still have 15 percent to move forward. After all, a loss was a loss. He understood that.

     Taking a deep breath, Greg clicked on the link to
Open a new account.
He’d try it and pull out immediately if anything seemed fishy. But his hands shook as he entered his credit card information. That felt more risky than providing such information when ordering a product online, but of course TopOps needed some way to receive his investment, and a credit card was so much simpler than making a bank transfer. Besides, if anything backfired, his credit card company was supposed to provide some degree of protection. Besides, the card was nearly maxed out anyway, so they couldn’t get too much from him.

     Within ten minutes he was ready to make his first actual investment.

     The house phone rang . . . and rang . . . and rang. “Nicole, can you get that?”

     No answer from the basement. Where was she anyway? He heard the answering machine click on, but rather than leaving a message, the caller hung up. A few moments later, the phone began ringing again.

     “Nicole!”

     This time the caller recorded a message—a male voice, definitely not Lincoln Paddock, so Greg didn’t pay any attention until he heard the words, “. . . have her come home immediately. There’s been a family emergency.”

     What? Who was calling?

     He jumped up and ran into the kitchen, catching the last few words of what he finally recognized as Jared Jasper’s desperate voice asking them to have Tabby come home. He yelled down the stairs to the basement. “Nicole, you down there?”

     “What?”

     “Where have you been? Didn’t you hear the phone ringing?”

     “Sorry. I had earphones on listening to music. What’s wrong?”

     “It’s Jared Jasper. There’s been some kind of emergency, and he wants Tabby to come home immediately. Where are the kids?”

     “Tabby took them across the street to play with the Horowitz children.”

     “Well, can you go get her? He sounded urgent.”

     “Uh . . . okay. Just give me a sec.”

     Greg didn’t notice when Nicole left the house or when she and the kids returned, but some time later, they were just there, making noise and running up and down the stairs.

     By then he was too deep into TopOps to ask Nicole why Tabby had to go home early. When he finished reviewing all the steps to making a trade—it was actually rather simple—he invested one hundred dollars on a sixty-second option on the euro/US dollar platform, and clicked
Down
and then
Start
. The dollar had been going up so steadily for the last several minutes, so he was sure it was time for a dip. But as he watched with his heart pounding, it wasn’t happening. And then in the last fifteen seconds, the value plummeted, and when the bell rang, his payout was $170, just like the simulation. Only this time, he had actually earned $70.

     He gleefully slammed his fist into the palm of his other hand. Even though the introductory videos and articles and simulator had told him it was possible, he’d expected to be disappointed and feel like a fool. But he’d won!