Page 1 of The Company We Keep

Prologue

July 2015 • AIIB Mission Month 11

“Show ‘em what you got, kid.”

Dust Wrenshall had beenitchingto hear those words. Finally, his boss, hunched to his left, had given him the signal to go.

It hadn’t taken him long to plant the dozen charges that would get them into the vault, distract the Las Abras police department, and then cover their tracks as The Company sped away with their bounty. Carrow had been waiting for him with a smile when Dust returned from setting up the explosives, looking more in his dark jacket like a common thug than a billionaire crimelord leaning in the shadows outside the jeweler’s shop entrance.

Dust was getting better and better at this — and during the off weeks when there weren’t any scores and there was no chaos to be made, he found that heachedfor it. He wanted to feel the aftershocks of blasts that rocked through his bones, wanted to taste the gunpowder and ozone that always seemed to fill up the air after a perfect explosion, craved the unique silence that only existed between an ear-splitting detonationand the wails of police sirens responding — a lull like the eye of a hurricane, quieter than quiet and whollyzen.

“Leta, Herron, you two in position?” Dust asked into the comms unit in his hands. “You’re gonna wanna duck and cover.”

“Roger that, we’re hunkered down,” Leta said. He could hear the smile on her voice. She would be practically vibrating with excitement waiting for the first blast. The Company’s second-in-command hadn’t gotten to do anything on the ground since the museum job the year before. She and Herron were tasked with keeping eyes on the cops as they arrived at the decoy blast scene. If the cops started to come towards Carrow and Dust, Herron and Leta would do their damndest to draw the heat off while they completed the retrieval.

He looked to Carrow.

“Vi, Wayles, touch back with your positions,” Carrow said into his own comms unit.

“Bloody hell, we’re all ready,” Wayles shot back immediately.

“You getting cold feet or what, Dust?” Vashvi teased.

Carrow grinned and accepted the ear plugs that Dust held out to him, letting his palm linger over the other man’s for a moment.

“Now or never,” Carrow said. They both pressed plugs into their ears. Then Dust produced the little tablet from his pocket, thumbed it open, and navigated to the first screen he needed.

One tap of his fingertip and twin charges detonated six blocks away. The sound of the blast reached them a moment later — a hollow pop that was deceptively quiet but unmistakable in the quiet mix of street sounds after midnight.

Adrenaline coursed through him like a powerful drug, bringing the world into sharp focus. Everything felt realerthan real: the jacket hanging on his shoulders, the breeze wafting in over the Pacific, Carrow’s steady breaths beside him. Dust’s finger hovered over the button that would simultaneously detonate the bombs planted at the base of the vault and the smaller charge that would allow Carrow entry into the jeweler’s shop.

That moment of anticipation, of knowing you were about to rock the street with a perfect explosion — it always seemed to hit him a bit like the thrill of arousal, waking up the sleepy parts of him until every bit of him was throbbing with need.

An impulse seized him.

Dust stepped closer to Carrow, took him by the front of his jacket, and drew him abruptly into a deep kiss. His boss didn’t fight it, his hands flying to Dust’s hips and humming into his mouth.

Dust tapped the button.

Chaos erupted around them, the blast impossibly loud even through the powerful earplugs. The asphalt beneath their feet shook and the tinkling of broken glass landing on the street was accompanied by the deep groan of the building’s foundation shifting where the bombs had blown the vault door off.

They both shuddered as adrenaline coursed through them, their bodies unable to suppress the moment of fight-or-flight instinct at the close blast. Instead of pulling back and breaking away, though, Carrow caught him by the back of his neck, holding him closer, pressing in and deepening their kiss. They were both half-hard as they ground their hips together, Dust unable to stop himself from moaning into his boss’ mouth at the combination of arousal, fear, and unbridled excitement.

“You’re gonna kill me one of these days,” Carrow said,finally breaking, dragging a hand down the front of his dark pants, and turning to make his way to the target.

Dust laughed and followed him in a trot towards the blasted-out front door of Lefebvre Jewelers.

The score, Carrow had explained in the week before, was a simple one.

On its face, it looked like a diamond heist: blast open the vault, grab several high-profile stones, and then scram.

But the real client this time was a Lefebvre, and the real goal was insurance fraud. The youngest of the jeweler’s sons, Antoine Lefebvre, had grown weary of waiting for dear old pa pa to pay him what he felt he was owed out of the store’s coffers. So Antoine had hired The Company to rip off his family’s store. Carrow would deliver the diamonds to the son, the father would get his fill of insurance money, and everyone would walk away richer.

It was an ideal situation for Dust Wrenshall, The Company’s demolitions expert. When he was done blasting holes in the place, there’d be no mistaking that Lefebvre had been ripped off by Las Abras’ most notorious gang of criminals, and no room for slippery insurance adjusters to claim that it had been a home-brewed scam.

They wouldn’t need anyone else but the main six of the crew on the job — which was ideal, since Carrow preferred to keep everything in house if he could.

Sniper Vashvi Dhillon would take her normal spot on a rooftop nearby, scanning for cops and other ne’er-do-wells approaching the scene through the scope of her rifle. Russell Wayles, The Company’s in-house tech man, would run security from a van on the street, tapping into Lefebvre’s ownsystems to keep track of Carrow and Dust when they were inside.

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