Page 13 of The Company We Keep

"Needed to hear you say it, I guess," she said, almost apologetic.

She stubbed her cigarette out on the railing, pocketed the butt, and embraced him. He was shocked and it took him a moment to go pliant in her arms. Leta smelled like Marlboros and bourbon and something summery he couldn't put his finger on.

She smelled like he remembered.

No one had touched him in so long. There was something hard and large in his chest suddenly, and he squeezed her once, tight, and let go. She stepped back, understanding what he meant by the touch, knowing that anything longer would be too much to bear, and then the moment was over and she walked to the door, leaving him alone on the penthouse roof once again.

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April 2014 • AIIB Mission Month -2

Dust cheered the day Abe finally got Nick Short.

It took three attempts and countless hours of work — none of which he had been involved in. He was too busy prepping to infiltrate The Company itself, but the team working on Short kept Dust apprised of the situation. They all knew his real work couldn't begin until Short was gone, anyway.

He tried not to be disappointed after the first failure. They hadn't really been given an attempt, that first time. The team from Abe had always planned on taking him out during a heist, but that led to myriad questions. Would they be able to coordinate with the cops on the ground in Las Abras — both to keep them out of Abe's way and to keep them safe from the mayhem The Company would surely create? Would it be better to have a cop kill him in plain sight or should they get the cops involved at all?

It hadn't mattered. That first heist had been postponed or cancelled or changed in some way that Abe wasn't privy to. The elite team from Abe showed up on site, ready to make their assassination under the cover of chaos that TheCompany itself would provide. They had waited for hours, tapping their ear pieces, trying to stay sharp even as their calves cramped and backs spasmed.

Finally, they called it. The Company was not coming that day.

The second attempt had been even more disappointing.

It was four months later — fourmonths!Dust lamented. He sat with his fat binder for four whole months. By then, he was so familiar with the contents, he could speak each line backwards if Leiby had wanted him to.

During the day, he had to leave it tucked safely in his desk — but it came home to his empty apartment with him every night, where Dust toted it from room to room.

The binder sat on the counter as he cooked a plain dinner, the mug shot of Leta Wright staring up at him. (It looked more like a modeling Polaroid, Dust thought, than a mug shot. Wright had dark, perfect skin and the light of the police station played over her features in the photograph in a harsh way that somehow made the woman more beautiful. Her head was clean shaved and shining in the photo — Wright was somehow more glamorous bald than Dust could believe. He tried to imagine Wright's voice and never could).

The binder followed him to the dining room table, where he sat cross-legged and stared at Vashvi "Vi" Dhillon. (They had many pictures of Dhillon: posed photos and headshots from her life as a civilian and candid shots from security monitors and through long lenses. Dhillon was smiling in every one, whether she was looking at the camera or not. It was a brilliant white grin — Dhillon had significant orthodontic work done as a kid. While her teeth were straight, the smile was crooked, as if there was a joke on the tip of her tongue. Her long black hair flowed around her, picked up by the wind in some shots. She looked like a chubby, good-natured kid and Dust already had to remind himself of thelives that have been lost at the end of Vashvi Dhillon's sniper rifle).

He laid the binder across his lap in the living room, turning on a television that he wouldn't watch because he was arrested again by the sight of Herron Dent without their mask. (Dent was not at all what Dust had expected. They — Abe called Herron Denttheybecause no one had gathered sufficient evidence to assign them a gender — looked almost fragile, almost skeletal, and older than they were. Behind the assassin's skull mask were two big, brown eyes that looked almost mournful, an equine nose, and a thin, serious mouth. They had straight hair the same color as Dust's, a dark brunette — Dust couldn't tell how long, but it flowed past their shoulders, at least. He wondered how on earth Abe had laid hands on the photo.)

He carried the binder to bed with him, knowing that he wouldn't sleep well, that at some point during the night he’d wake up and switch on a light and open up the binder to a page at random. At 2 a.m., Russell Wayles would stare up at him from the page. (Russell Wayles, born "Edith," looked friendly and open and childlike. In every grainy security image, he was touching someone else in the crew — a gentle hand on Dhillon's arm or a shoulder jostling into the taller Leta. He looked like he wasskippingin a photo that Dust had come to regard as his favorite. It was full color and clearer than the rest, showing the deep tan he sported that made his skin almost the same golden color as his close-cropped hair. Wayles was tawny and lanky and simply looked, Dust thought sometimes,like a nice guy.)

Carrow he saved. He couldn't say why, exactly. But he only spent time with Carrow’s page early in the morning, when he was still waking up and blowing cool air over the surface of his milky cup of coffee... As if it were only possible to look at the head of The Company through the haze of a drowsymorning — too frightening to stare at him sober and fully conscious.

They had plenty of pictures on file of him — so many, in fact, that they hadn't bothered including them all in the binder that Leiby gave to him.

The ones they had included were clear and curated to teach him things about the man.

They showed his slouching posture as he walked by Leta’s side — and Dust was surprised when he first saw that photo by how much taller Leta seemed than Carrow, even though she only had one or two inches on him. He didn't feel the need to posture up around his partner, Dust gathered. He wasn't worried about appearing shorter, smaller than her.

In another photo that Dust always thought looked like a still from a movie, he was half-lit and examining a heavy tumbler of brown liquor in his hand, seated alone in a back booth at Kamarra.Hisback booth, Dust knew from the information printed on the opposite page.

He allowed himself to wonder why Carrow had been alone that night and what he'd been thinking about as he watched the liquid swirling in his glass. Whiskey, he assumed, apropos of nothing. The strange angled light cut across his face to show heavy-lidded eyes, dark hair that had gone a little shaggy in between trims, and full lips framed by several days of beard growth.

He looked exhausted in that photo and Dust always wondered why and when it was taken and how the photographer had gotten the shot. His posture looked bent as if by some increased gravity that only had power over Carrow.

He wasn't smiling in any of the pictures — as if he had known Abe was taking them. Or maybe the man just didn't smile.

Dust was quick to fill in the gaps when it came to the other people in the crew. He could imagine from the smalldetails given to him that Vashvi Dhillon and Herron Dent would toss jokes back and forth over the dinner table. He would conjure up the fantasy of Russell Wayles playfully and softly kicking Leta Wright under the table when she was in a bad mood until finally she smiled. He could almost hear their voices in his head, see their baby pictures, pick out their favorite music and their individual quirks — who casually overslept, who checked the door locks five times until they were satisfied, who insisted on riding shotgun.

But he could never make Carrow fit into that little fantasy world he built in those four months that he waited for them to try and kill Nick Short again.

The second attempton the ballistics expert's life was not as fruitless as the first — it just wasn't successful.

Again, a heist. Again, the question of whether or not to involve the cops.

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