5

“You know,” Darren said after he and Hope had been seated and served a glass of wine, “I’ve been thinking a lot about gratitude lately. Today, during my morning meditation, an interesting thought occurred to me and I think it might apply to you, too.”

She looked at him, those snapping dark eyes under the curtain of her black bangs, and Cross fell a little bit more in love with her. “How’s that?”

“Gratitude can be forgiveness,” he said, and meant it. “I spent years carrying around my anger for Hank Pym. I devoted my genius to him.” Maybe that sounded arrogant, he thought, but it was true. Darren Cross knew how brilliant he was, and why should he pretend otherwise to Hope? “I could’ve worked anywhere. I chose my mentor poorly.”

She listened. That was one of the things he really liked about Hope. She was an excellent listener. That was a rare thing. Everyone always wanted to talk. “You didn’t even have a choice,” Darren said. “He never believed in you. It’s a shame what we had to do, but he forced us to do it, didn’t he? But we shouldn’t be angry; we should be grateful. Because his failures as a mentor, as a father, forced us to spread our wings.”

He was being utterly sincere, but at the same time he was testing Hope a little. If she was angry or feeling guilty about the way Darren had manipulated her father’s work—while keeping it secret from him—Darren had to know. He knew she’d talked to him after the presentation that morning, and although he would never ask her, Darren was burning to know what they’d said.

But most important, he had to know she was on his side.

“You’re a success, Darren,” Hope said with a dazzling smile that stole his heart once and for all. “You deserve everything coming your way.”

She understood, Darren thought. Good. They would move forward together. Hank Pym’s faults and failures didn’t have to doom them, too.

Scott tried every way he could think of to make the math work. If he took the income from a minimum-wage job, subtracted rent, child support, and all the other debts still hanging over his head from his time in prison...according to what Maggie had said that afternoon, in a little over a year she would let him start having visitation with Cassie.

More than a year.

No , he thought. I can’t handle that. I’ve already missed too much.

But what else could he do?

When he got back to the hotel room, Luis and Dave were playing a video game. Kurt was of course glued to his laptop. “Stop cheating,” Dave grumbled as Scott headed for the fridge.

Luis heard Scott come in, and called out, “Hey, what’s up, hotshot?”

“Maybe he didn’t hear you,” Dave suggested when Scott didn’t answer.

“How was the party?” Luis said, a little louder.

Scott had found a drink in the fridge. He popped it open, took a long swig, and said, “Tell me about that tip.”

“Wha?” Luis dropped the game controller and stood up.

“I wanna know about that tip,” Scott repeated.

“Oh, baby, it’s on!” Luis shouted.

“Hot dog!” Kurt added. The expression sounded weird in his thick accent.

Luis looked like he might be about to explode from the excitement. “It’s so on right now!”

“Calm down, all right?” Scott was all business. This was one of the most important decisions of his life and he needed to know every detail about it before he took the final step. “I just need to know where it came from. It’s gotta be airtight.”

“Okay,” Luis said. He took a deep breath, and Scott knew he wasn’t going to get the short version of the story. “I was at a party with my cousin Ernesto. And he tells me about this girl Emily we used to kick it with. She’s working as a housekeeper now, right? And she’s dating this dude Carlos from across the bay and she tells him about the dude that she’s cleaning for. Right? That he’s, like, this big-shot CEO that is all retired now, but he’s loaded. And so Carlos and Ernesto are on the same softball team and they get to talking, right? And here comes the good part.”

About time, Scott thought. He’d already lost track of who was saying what to whom, or what he was supposed to be getting from the bit about the softball team.

Luis caught his breath and went on, acting out the different parts as he told the rest of the story. “Carlos says, ‘Yo, man. This guy’s got a big safe just sitting in the basement. Just chillin’.’ Of course Ernesto comes to me ’cause he knows I’ve got mad thieving skills. Of course I ask him, ‘Did Emily tell Carlos to tell you to get to me what kind of safe it was?’ And he says, ‘Naw, dog. All she said is that it’s, like, super legit, and whatever’s in it has gotta be good!’ ”

Luis beamed at the end of the story. Scott, completely lost, just said, “What?”

“Old man have safe,” Kurt said helpfully.

“And he’s gone for a week,” Luis said.

“All right,” Scott said. One of the keys to a good operation was knowing which details to keep and which to throw away, Scott thought. But with Luis, you always got everything all in a big avalanche and had to pick through it first to figure out what was important. “There’s an old man, he’s got a safe, and he’s gone for a week. Let’s just work with that.”