Page 85 of The Company We Keep

“I cannot do this to you,” Carrow said. “You deserve better.”

“This isexactlywhat we deserve, boss,” Herron said, their voice even and steady. “This is what we signed up for. We knew the risks when we took the job.”

“You thought you did — but now you’re in the crosshairs of a cartel, and they know where you live. I can’t stop this and yesterday was proof that I can’t protect you. My judgment is... I let an Abe agentlive with us, for christsakes.”

Leta tried to break back in, but he was on a roll.

“We’re disbanding, Leta. I’ll pay you as quickly as I can and we’ll go our separate ways.”

Leta’s hand found his under the table.

“I know you’re heartbroken, Ansel, but —”

“Heartbroken over a traitor?” Carrow said, his voice going high, betraying all of the emotions that he was fighting so hard to punch down. “No. He got what was coming to him —”

“You can’t possibly mean that,” Wayles protested.

Carrow drew his hand away from Leta’s and pushed away from the table. He couldn’t have this conversation. His decision was final.

“He died for you, Carrow,” Wayles called after him as he made his way to the back yard. “Call him a traitor if you want — it doesn’t change what he did for us.”

“It doesn’t change the last year,” Vashvi said, quieter. “I don’t care who Emerson said he was. He was Dust, to me.”

Carrow paced out into the night and closed the door behind him, shutting it louder than he’d intended.

What did it matter how they remembered Dust? Why did they feel the need to rail against him like that?

It was easier to tell himself that the only thing he lost inthat blast was a traitor. He could keep the nightmares at bay, maybe, if he didn’t have to add Dustin Wrenshall to the list of people who had trusted him, who had died because of his stupidity.

Carrow lit a cigarette and stared into the dark.

Dust woke in a panic.

Something was veryvery wrong.

For starters, he wasn’t dead.

Apparently.

His chest ached, his head felt like it was filled with broken glass, and he couldn’t seem to move.

But he wasn’t dead.

The sound of sirens somewhere nearby sliced pain through his skull. He could smell smoke and something like gunpowder. Things started to come back.

Emerson. The cartel men.

After the men had broken through the reinforced garage door, Dust had drawn them back into the garage, trading gunfire with them as long as he could while he used one of the jeeps as a shield. So many of them had streamed into the space — a dozen, two dozen, it was impossible to count when he could only peek out at them for a second before disappearing again.

When he was out of bullets, he let them fall in towards his makeshift barricade in front of the elevator.

It had only taken a minute to set up the charges at the entrance to the garage and the concrete pilings within. He’d had more than enough explosives left over from the Lefebvre job the night before, still stashed in the back of the truck.

Dust didn’t have anyone or anything to pray to in the last moments that he sat behind the jeep. He held the makeshiftdetonator in his hand, and instead of praying, Dust thought of everyone he owed an apology.

I’m sorry, Mom and Dad.

I’m sorry, Leiby.

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