Page 83 of The Company We Keep

She squeezed a hand around his wrist. The little gesture made him want to cry. He’d never witnessed the staid doctor try to comfort or consoleanyone, not even a dying patient.

“I’m sorry, Ansel.”

McBride stood then and went back inside.

Carrow was alone.

16

July 2015 • AIIB Mission Month 13

“He could still come back.”

“Russell — don’t.”

“Why would he set up a blast that would killhim, too?”

“Maybe he thought he didn’t have a life with us anymore. If he thought it would help us… You know he would’ve done it. You know as well as I do.”

“He couldstill come back.”

“This isn’t about Dust, is it? This is you and Short all over again —”

“Itisabout Dust, Leta. I’ve mourned my brother. This isn’t about him.”

“You’re just putting off the inevitable, thinking that way.”

“Fuck the inevitable. We don’t work under the inevitable. Everything wedois goddamned improbable, isn’t it?”

Carrow lingered there by the door to the room where Wayles and Leta had retired. He felt conflicted about eavesdropping but… Nobody seemed to be able to talk about Dust to him out in the open — not in the first hour there in the safehouse, not as the sun set and it seemed less and less likely that Dust would show up, and certainly not when they all retired to their rooms in varying degrees of acceptance that Dust was truly gone.

He wanted to know what the other members of The Company were thinking and what they were feeling — and so if all he could get was a stolen conversation at 4 a.m. between his second in command and his tech man, then Carrow would take it.

The thought of Wayles holding out hope that Dust would still roll up on his motorcycle, against all odds and all signs to the contrary, evoked a whole spectrum of emotions in Carrow. He wanted to burst in and tell Wayles to give up hope and start mourning Dust — to start mourning the entire year they had spent together, the bonds they had forged and the friendship they had developed — before it was too late, before it would wound him further. At the same time, he wanted to hoist Wayles up, to embrace him, to confess,Yes, me too! I still have hope!

“If he’d made it out of that alive, he’d be here by now. Think about what you’re saying, Russell. He knows exactly where we would take the helicopter. If he’d survived that blast, he would’ve come straight here to meet us.”

Leta was right. Carrow knew she was.

“And if he didn’t come here? He paid his dues and he’s done with us. Back at Abe or ran off for good. We won’t see him again, and the faster you accept it, the easier it’s going to be.”

Carrow felt bent and broken. He retired to his room.

The next day was terrible. It was like a replay of the day after Short’s death.

No one wanted to talk shop. No one wanted to talk to Carrow.

Everyone was thinking about exactly the same thing, and nobody could bring themselves to say it out loud — not even Herron.

Dust was a traitor.

Dust died for us.

Dust loved us.

There was so much to doubt about the last year of their lives, but those three facts stood irrefutable.

Carrow ran through the circuit in his mind a thousand times. Did the second two statements somehow come together to eclipse the first? Did it matter that Dust had come to them under false pretenses if he had left this world simply because he loved them too much to see them get hurt? Or did Dust’s traitor status erase any good that his actions had done?

---