Page 69 of The Company We Keep

Goddamn him, the agent knew that Dust wasn’t going to shoot. This was useless. It was over.

“Dustin, we’re going to help y—”

Dust watched the man’s face going strange before the sound of the gunshot even registered. The agent’s mouth fell open in shock. Then two more shots. The man crumpled.

Carrow.

14

March 2015 • AIIB Mission Month 10

Carrow wasted no time, grabbing Dust hard by the arm and pulling him back up the alleyway.

He was moving slow — far too slow. Whoever else was in that van would surely be just a few paces behind them. Not to mention the cops who would be on their way by now, responding to the robbery.

“Vi, I need you at Third and Executive,” he barked into the mic, trying to drag Dust faster. “If we’re not there, just head south on Third.”

“Roger, boss.”

The kid must be in goddamn shock. It was like he was moving in slow motion.

“Dust, let’s go,” he said, softer. “I’ve got you. You’re ok. But we have to go. Vi’s coming for us.”

The words seemed to finally reach him. He shook his head as if clearing his vision, nodding at Carrow.

He braced himself to cover Dust every time they took a corner, prepared to shove the kid to the ground at the sound of the first gunshot if he had to.

But the firefight he was prepared for never came.

Vashvi was waiting for them in the sedan right where he’d told her to be. Wordlessly, they piled into the backseat and the sniper squealed away, back home, back to the safety of the penthouse.

Dust feltnumb as Carrow pulled him to his chest, curling fingers into his hair.

“Jesus, Dust.Jesus.You’re ok.”

There was an AIIB agent back there, dead in the street.

He’d looked older than Dust. Maybe he had a family.

The man hadn’t even drawn a gun. He knew Dust wouldn’t shoot.

Sounds seemed to be reaching him the way they would if he were underwater: slow and muffled and strange. Carrow’s hands were on him. He was getting motion sick from being in the back of the sedan. Vashvi squealed around corners. He felt like a zombie.

McBride was waiting for them when they arrived back at the penthouse, and idly Dust wondered who had called her in and for what. Nobody — on their side of the law, anyway — had gotten hurt.

She took his blood pressure in the living room, shined a light in his eyes. It felt like he was watching a movie — as if the body being moved around wasn’t his own. Every sensation was secondhand, like reality was slightly out of sync with Dust’s understanding of it.

He was losing his goddamn mind.

It was as if the border between Dust and not-Dust was blurring, like his sense of self was bleeding out into the ether.

Someone pressed a cool glass of water into one of his hands and a pill in the other.

“It’s just acute stress,” McBride said.

The two of them had gotten Dust to lay down in Carrow’s room and then moved to his office to talk.

“All of his vitals are normal,” she said. “Obviously something happened that shook him the hell up, though. You’ll want to watch him for a few days — keep him out of alcohol and get plenty of fluids in him. If he’s still acting jumpy or morose in a week, call me and I’ll come back. You don’t want it to swell up into full-blown PTSD.”

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