Page 90 of The Company We Keep

“Hmmm,” he said, waking up slowly. A smile played over his lips, and he looked up at The Company’s second in command as if she were the most welcomed sight in the whole universe. He leaned into her touch and closed his eyes again. “Good morning to you, too.”

Carrow shot her an incredulous look.

“Don’t tell me you already taught him goddamn Vietnamese on the trip over.”

She shrugged, smiling.

“Maybe he’s more open to new languages when he’s half asleep.”

“I can hear you two, you know,” he said, eyes still closed. They both chuckled. “It wouldn’t hurt you to try and pick up a few of the local phrases, boss.”

“See?” Leta said, fanning out a hand.

“Don’t you gang up on me.”

“There’s at leastonething he needs to learn,” Dust said, looking up and smiling at Leta.

“What — how to ask for the check?” Carrow ventured.

Leta snorted.

“As if you resent picking up the bill,” she said. “What wereyougoing to suggest, Dust?”

“Tên ti?ng Vi?t c?a tôi x?u.”

Leta laughed hard at that.

“Oh Christ. Do I even want toknowwhat that translates to?” Carrow asked.

“It means ‘My Vietnamese is bad.’”

“OK. Well… fair enough,” Carrow said. “Say that one again. Slower, please.”

Leta— the only one of them fluent in Vietnamese — had made their travel arrangements from the safehouse in the middle of the first night that Dust was back.

Carrow had shocked them, pushing back through the porch door as suddenly as he had left them, barking at Herron to call up McBride and get her there, fast. They hadn’t even finished cleaning up from the dinner that had been interrupted.

And then The Company had seen who Carrow had with him.

Battered and bloodied. Against all odds.

Wayles had been the first to reach him, feeling every plane of Dust’s body with his hands as if he didn’t fully believe that his friend was back from the dead. Then he’d grabbed Dust hard and kissed him again and again — covering his face with kisses until Dust was laughing and clutching his ribs and begging the other man to stop.

Vashvi cried. Leta cried. Herron went so still and quiet that Carrow suspected they, too, were fighting tears.

In the quiet of the safehouse, they welcomed that ghost back into their midst.

They were angry and confused and betrayed and relieved.

That night, The Company had become a family again.

“Carrow wasready to fire us all before you came back,” Wayles had said, cutting his eyes at Carrow.

McBride had come and gone, patching Dust up, binding his ankle and wrist, giving him several stitches, a lot of antibiotics, and some painkillers.

Then they’d fed him what was left of the meal Leta made, plying him with anything they could find in the safehouse after he relayed to them the long, strange journey he’d been on since leaving the penthouse garage.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Carrow said, smoothly. “But there’s a new plan.”

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