Page 2 of The Company We Keep

Leta Wright, who normally plotted their escape but was happy to fit into any position in which she was needed, would stay on the street with the terrifying and masked Herron Dent, ready to cause mayhem if the cops weren’t distracted enough by the blasts that Dust planted.

Dust would plant bombs as a distraction several blocks away and more explosives at the scene.

Carrow and Dust, then, were the boots on the ground — Carrow entering the vault to pocket the diamonds and Dust covering him.

Vashvi and Wayles would escape in the security van, Leta and Herron in the sedan they arrived in, and Carrow and Dust would leave on the back of one of The Company’s fastest motorcycles. They’d all rendezvous at a safehouse an hour up the coast.

All in all, it was a night every one of them had been looking forward to.

After the blast, Dust hung back as Carrow entered the vault through the ruin of its door. (He’d only decided to blow the front door off of the building at the last minute, unable to resist the temptation of dramatically defeating a barrier he’d already successfully made his way through.)

The target was a dozen diamonds — some uncut and others perfectly polished — altogether small enough to fit in the breast pocket of Carrow’s jacket.

They’d only budgeted several minutes in the timeline for Carrow to make it into the vault and pocket the jewels. Then they’d exit, Dust would detonate several more charges to make it absolutely clear beyond a doubt that it had been thework of The Company and not someone inside the Lefebvre family, and the six of them would mount their escape.

Dust scanned the street through the ruined door at the front of the shop. There was no movement. The decoy blast had worked and any cops were busying themselves responding to the explosion several blocks away. His heart pounded with the thrill of victory, of an easy success.

“Dust?” Carrow called from the vault, his voice uncharacteristically high and unsteady. “Would you join me in here for a moment?”

With a stripe of cold panic down his spine, Dust spun and entered the vault.

It was exactly what he had expected — and the schematics that Lefebvre had given them were very good. Lines of armored boxes, industrial lighting, several tables used to sort and count and examine the jewels and…

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah. Holy shit is right,” Carrow said.

In one corner there was a stack of gold bullion the size of a large armchair.

“Did Lefebvre say anything about gold bars?” Dust asked, trying to do the mental calculation of how much the stack might be worth.

“He sure as hell didn’t say anything about half a billion in bullion sitting in the vault,” Carrow said.

“That’s a hell of a detail to leave out, boss.”

Carrow nodded, his eyes narrowing.

“New plan.”

Dust held the comms unit to his face as they exchanged grins.

“Wayles, you got a dolly somewhere on that van?” Dust asked.

The answer came after a moment.

“Think so, yeah,” Wayles said. “What’s up?”

It only tookDust 90 seconds to retrieve his stash of extra explosives from the back of Wayles’ vehicle and blast a new, cargo van-sized hole in the front of Lefebvre Jewelers.

Wayles drove straight in. Back in the vault, Dust and Carrow loaded up the dolly as fast as they could while Wayles set up a ramp to allow them to roll the bounty into the back.

Each bar was surprisingly heavy — though Dust didn’t know what else to compare it to, having never held a brick of solid gold — and after several trips, the back of the van was sagging visibly.

“Get everyone organized to fall back,” Carrow said, nodding at Dust while he struggled with Wayles to get the last load up the ramp. Dust stood to the side and started the sequence.

“Vi, Wayles will pick you up at the base of the tower in three minutes,” Dust said into the comms.

“Roger that,” she said. Through the comms unit, he could hear the click of her rifle snapping apart as she prepared to leave her position.

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