But all Tom could think about was that cop clubbing his father, about the way Hank almost got away with it, about the way he must’ve gotten away with stuff like that so many times before.

Tom wasn’t sorry. He wasn’t. And he wasn’t delusional, either—he knew he was done for. There was no coming back from this, so he decided to embrace the moment. He flashed a broad, apologetic grin.

“Good to see you again,” Tom said to him. “I didn’t recognize you at first, but then again, you’re not naked and shrieking like a frightened little girl today. So, make any new friends in jail?”

TOM DIDN’T BOTHER going into the mansion for the party. While the others shook hands and schmoozed, he trudged out through the trees and bypassed the stately house of the CEO of Matchett-Reddy, Sigurdur Vitol. Then he crested a ridge and gazed upon the view seen every day by those inside the mansion.

Tom’s breath caught. A massive valley stretched out below him. He stared and stared, gazing over the rolling green fields ringed by trees, cut through by sparkling rivers. The jagged, rocky mountains had silvery waterfalls streaking down them. The immensity of the place made Tom feel strange, like he’d slipped into a VR sim and hadn’t realized it. He gazed at one of the mountains that resembled a vertical wall and another that resembled a flattened half circle.

He kept staring and staring at the waterfalls, the trees, the mountains. He’d never seen something so magnificent, so beautiful. Surely a place like this couldn’t actually exist.

There was a rock jutting out like a platform. When Tom got his head on straight, he headed out onto it and stood there, feeling like he was astride the entire world, a breathtaking drop below. The sun was beginning to dip over the horizon, casting a golden haze over all the cliffs, when footsteps crunched up behind him, and Elliot’s voice drifted to his ears. “Yosemite Valley’s really something, isn’t it?”

Tom glanced back at him. So he’d fixed the mess at Nobridis and caught up with them. “I can’t believe this is what Sigurdur Vitol wakes up to every single morning.” He couldn’t get his head around that.

He remembered the only time he’d seen something near as amazing as this. He’d been little, and he and Neil were having trouble getting a ride; the only person they ran into worked as a miner for Nobridis. Neil made a rash decision to take advantage of their in and get free admission to the Grand Canyon.