Maybe Alex brought him in, but Simon volunteered in his own way didn't he? Making a scene until someone had to reach out to the show to contact Richard Strand. It worked, it put them in contact, and Simon managed to make a convincing enough bid to at least keep her attention. Enough that she called him herself when she wanted some advice on sacred geometry and the kidnapped boy. They were all tied in now, even if back home Simon was still keeping physical distance he was still involved. Somewhere on the periphery, ever watchful.

Arguably, Alex was going to dig with or without his warning, even if he absolutely probably did make it worse. Maybe it was intentional. Maybe it backfired. Hard to say with Simon, as he wasn't prone to volunteering such information freely. Either way the end result was Alex biting off more than she expected, but at the end of the day was it worth it to find the truth?

"It's always been Strand," Simon agrees. That much is easy to reason out. Richard's been at the heart of it all along, regardless of his insistence otherwise. "And you are in the middle with him." Inexorably tied now. Alex probably couldn't leave even if she wanted to. All of Richard's skepticism was never enough to protect him from this inevitability. Eventually it would all come back around, would it have been better to be blindsided?

"We don't know everything yet. There's still more. I was... working on something before arriving here." Maybe he could risk telling her now. It wouldn't change anything if she knew.