Page 19 of The Company We Keep

Dust did as he was told. He cursed himself for not being more careful on the approach — had let himself be lulled into security by the idea that he was at the wrong spot and that Emerson had fucked him over.

Leta walked him into the dim shop. It was clean and quiet, the only sounds coming from the occasional animal adjusting in its cage or terrarium and the hum of many air filters pumping coming from a room towards the back of the shop. The doorway, hung with a beaded curtain, glowed with the faint pink of neon lights.

“Go on,” Leta said.

He continued, crossing the shop and walking through the doorway. In the next room, he found a middle aged man sitting on a lawn chair surrounded by fish. Hundreds of fish. Large goldfish pressed together in schools, living in too-small tanks lining the walls of this second room.

The man — washed, too, in the pink light from the tanks — put down the newspaper he was reading to look up at Dust and his captor as they entered.

“Hi Mr. Jhun,” the woman behind Dust said pleasantly. “They’ve got dinner waiting for you next door.”

The man nodded once, folding his paper neatly and tucking it under his arm.

“Miss Leta, my staff isn’t back until Monday,” the man said as he passed, looking down at his feet. Dust didn’t miss the note of apprehension in his voice — the fear. “If you need cleanup again this time, perhaps…”

“I’ll send one of ours over,”Miss Letasaid. “Of course. And anything else you need — just let them know next door.”

Cleanup.

Dust set his jaw and started looking for exits.

As the man disappeared, so did the gun at Dust’s back. Leta stepped around him, gesturing to the card table in the middle of the room, set up over an open grate on the floor. She was more gorgeous in real life than she’d ever been in pictures, standing well over six feet tall in the generous heels and wrapped in a sheer dress the color of sunflowers. The neon and chiffon made her skin seem to glow.

“I’m guessing you came strapped?” Leta asked him, raising an eyebrow.

Dust nodded.

“Of course. Smart boy. Go ahead andunstrap,if you will?”

He knew he’d be asked to disarm and hadn’t bothered to suit up with anything but the normal handgun he carried. (A few knives tucked here and there certainly would have made him feel safer, but also would’ve sent the wrong message, he thought, in the case of a pat down.) He retrieved the weapon and set it on the folding table.

“Fabulous,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m Leta Wright. Which you already know. Please, take a seat.”

She set her own gun on the table, apologizing a second time for the way she had started their meeting.

“Do I get points taken off for not hearing you coming from a mile away?” Dust asked, forcing himself to match her informal tone, to muster up enough bravado to match the fearless (and wholly fabricated) reputation that preceded him.

“Not at all,” she said, laughing easily. “In fact, you’d have hurt my feelings.”

The meeting that followed was more thrilling than terrifying, with Leta continuing to size him up in between cracking disarming jokes. The sound of the bubbling air filters in the fish tanks surrounding them was like a wall of solid sound, a sensation that took up residence in Dust’s skull even as he tried not to miss a beat in responding to Leta’s questions.

Other than the fact that it started with a gun aimed at his kidneys and was conducted in the back room of a closed pet shop, the meeting with Leta had gone very much like a normal job interview.

Back at AIIB, Caroline Leiby had drilled him for countless hours, taking him through a huge variety of scenarios. He’d been deprived of sleep, half-starved, and confined to a cell for several days before being interrogated by Abe’s best —and he’d had the story of Dust Wrenshall down pat, reciting it backwards and forwards, never lapsing, never slipping up on a detail.

He’d been prepared for the worst.

And what he got was a friendly interview by one of America’s most wanted criminals. It felt remarkably low pressure.

She wanted to know how he’d gotten into demolitions, why he’d never joined a crew before, why he wanted to join up now. The answers came to him easily because he’d been living the truth of Dust Wrenshall for weeks now.

He got into demolitions because he loved the thrill of blowing things up, and had eventually learned that people would pay him to do so. He chose crime because — although it paid better — terrorism made him sick to his stomach.

He’d never joined a crew before because he’d never needed to, and he was making enough money on his own to last a lifetime.

He wanted to join up with The Company becausethey were The Company. No other gang was like it, and it was not likely that there ever would be.

She liked his answers. She never reached for her gun.

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