Page 53 of The Company We Keep

The apartment was hot and stank and he hated looking at its nondescript walls while he made the call back to his mentor.

“The more I leave the penthouse alone, the more suspicion I’m drawing. I mean, I really shouldn’t even keep this apartment.”

“We can move it to Emerson’s name, if it would help you,” Leiby said. “But we need a meeting place that isn’t under their control.”

“That’s fine. We need to talk about the frequency of these calls, though.”

“What are you thinking?”

“Six weeks would be better.”

“We can cut it down to once a month, but no less than that.”

Dust sighed.

“Charlie, we don’t have a great way of verifying that you’re evenaliveunless you touch base with us,” Leiby protested. “Unless you’d, what, recommend we just read the newspapers like everyone else? You and The Company have been busy.”

It was true. They’d been in the news almost every week since he’d joined up. The Company was making up for lost time now that they had a demolitions man back in the gang. It had been a thrilling three weeks of settling old scores and ripping off drug shipments. It was the most fun he could remember having in any month of his life, and that didn’t even take into account the four-day vacation that Carrow had sprung on him the week before, secreting him away to the presidential suite of the nicest hotel Dust had ever seen.

“Once a month is fine,” he conceded, sensing Leiby’s growing irritation.

“Good. What do you have for me?”

Dust had turned his attention to gathering intel on other gangs, learning whatever he could about what was happening in Las Abras through his access to The Company. This, at least, he could give to Leiby while he decided how he could continue to walk the razor edge of balance.

He told her about the large drug shipments they were intercepting, where they were coming from, whose hands they were intended to pass through, and who within The Company was gaining access to the information.

He gave her some insights into the monitoring equipment that Russell Wayles had created, allowing them to intercept information from other crews. He also gave her a rough idea of the comms technology that Wayles had created, the private communications units that allowed them to communicate seamlessly during heists.

She wanted to know more about Carrow’s finances. Dust insisted once again that he didn’t know (a truth) but that he was working on finding out (a lie).

They set a date to talk again in August.

Dust got out of the apartment as fast as he could, anxiety growing and blossoming in the pit of his stomach on the motorcycle ride back to the penthouse.

He wasn’t afraid of being discovered. He was afraid of giving AIIBtoo much.

It was so much to hold in his head all at once.

He went straight to the shower in his suite, speaking to no one on his way, feeling as if he needed to get the smell of the AIIB apartment out of his pores, the grime of the doorknob off of his hands.

Hot water pounded the knots in his neck and all at once Dust felt as if he couldn’t catch his breath.Thiswas how he’d expected to feel when he first faced The Company — not whenhe was actually doing the job he’d been sent here to do. So why did he want to vomit and shake and cry, now that he was beginning to do what he’d spent years of his life preparing for?

His internal monologue seemed to change every hour.

He was all at once Dust Wrenshall — always had been, always would be. Half a day later, he was an impostor, a fool, a dangerous wreck of a human being, a disappointment to both his agency and to his new friends. Then he would wake the next morning and everything would seem different yet again: he was Dust Wrenshall and he could make this work. He could escape into Carrow’s arms for as long as The Company would have him.

But in that moment in the shower, he felt all of it at once. A wreck. A tangle.

If he’d have had the opportunity to join The Company before he’d ever heard of AIIB, would he have done it?

No,he answered himself quickly. Charlie Judge didn’t have the balls to do something like that. Charlie wouldn’t have even been able to sit in that back booth with Carrow, let alone ask him for the job, let him know how badly he wanted it.

Had his fascination with crime, then, only flourished because he saw the elements of these criminals in himself from the beginning? Maybe his obsession with justice mirrored the experience of the stereotypes like the man who is homophobic because he himself is closeted.

Had Charlie Judge, then, been the criminal closet for Dust Wrenshall?

Dust wanted to collapse under the weight of suspending the two realities in his mind. He wanted to drink himself silly or dip into the sedatives that Carrow kept around for the nights when old memories came to haunt them — but he knew even in seeking this release, he would be riskinghimself. Anything could loosen his lips, could make him slip up.

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