Page 26 of The Company We Keep

He hated the thought of being so transparent.

The quiet penthouseseemed to spring to life as Herron Dent and Leta Wright entered through the front door both balancing a stack of thin boxes.

Dust could have sworn that they werepizza boxes.

“Ah, you’re heroes!” Wayles crowed, loping towards them to help with the load. “We were just lamenting the dinner options.”

Theywerepizza boxes, Dust realized.

He was watching two of the most efficient killers on the West Coast surprise their friends with pizza.

Dust wondered, idly, if any part of this setup would stop being strange to him — if he would ever settle into hownormalthey all were.

He hung back, watching Herron and Leta and Wayles spread out the pizzas along the polished concrete countertops. Leta nodded at Dust but didn’t bother introducing herself. Vashvi went from box to box and peeked inside the lids.

“Is that tempeh?” she asked Herron. They nodded and Dust watched a smile spread across their face. It was almost unsettling to see their face naked like this. When they were behind the grim reaper’s mask they wore on jobs — the one so often photographed by professionals and bystanders alike — it was easier to think of them as a cop-killing monster. But here, with their long mousey hair pulled back in a ponytail, smiling because Vashvi had found the pizza with tempeh, it was harder to reconcile this person’s past with their present.

“I’ll get Carrow so we can eat,” Leta offered.

Herron moved into the kitchen to retrieve plates.

“Herron,” Dust said, stepping forward with his hand outstretched. “I’m Dustin Wrenshall.”

“I know,” Herron said, not stopping their chore but smiling at him. “Welcome to the penthouse. Do you eat pepperoni? We have vegan options, but I’d recommend the pepperoni.”

Dust smiled and nodded.

“Yeah. Pepperoni works. Why mess with the classic, right?”

They hadall dispatched several slices, seated in the living room, when Carrow finally made his appearance.

Dust had been settling in, wondering if all of this would someday feel normal to him, if he would be able to take for granted the fact that he was sitting on a piece of custom furniture and looking out at one of the best views of Las Abras that existed, eating dinner with a group of people who could — if they chose — kill him ten different ways before he ever hit the ground.

They talked excitedly about mundane things — whose turn it was to do dishes at the end of the night, when Wayles would be sending out their supplies lists, who had moved into the unit on floor 38 — and they talked blandly about exciting things — who was going to meet with The Scorpions next week to fence the emeralds they’d scored, whether or not the infamous drug lord El Comandante was going to unseat Carrow as the FBI’s most wanted man on the West Coast this month, what the budget was like for weapons acquisitions.

When Carrow entered with Leta at his heels, the conversation dissolved.

The silence that took its place wasn’t unsteady or intimidated. It was as if the group acknowledged immediately that anything Carrow would have to say would hold more weight than the current conversation — and so they held their voices and simply waited.

Carrow was wearing the same sort of fine, dark suit he’d been dressed in the night before. The only clue that he was more relaxed here in his own home than he had been at the back booth in Kamarra was the fact that tonight, he wasn’t wearing a tie.

(Dust tried to ignore the abrupt thrill that rolled through him at seeing the sliver of skin that was revealed by theunbuttoned shirt, the ropey muscles that spanned his neck and the area around his collar.

On closer examination, his hair looked almost slept-in. It was just long enough to gain traction if someone were to curl their fingers into it and pull. Would Carrow be the type of man to like that, Dust wondered, or would he always want control?

Dust realized his heart was pounding hard in his chest — and not from fear. He tamped down the thoughts.)

“I see you’ve helped make our guest comfortable,” Carrow said, not unkind. The comment still made Dust sit up straighter from his place on the couch, unsure of what he should do with the slightly greasy dinner plate sitting in his lap.

“Yes, everyone’s been wonderful,” Dust said. Carrow nodded at him.

The man seemed to look through him instead of at him, and whatever electricity that had sparked between them in the booth was set aside for the moment. Of course, Dust thought. Things would be different with the whole crew around.

(After all, he thought: maybe he had only imagined the crack in Carrow’s visage the night before. Maybe the thickness of the air between them had simply been Dust projecting his own desire out into the ether. Maybe Carrow didn’t want him at all. He could live with that.)

“Gonna have some pizza, boss?” Vashvi asked. It did not escape Dust that she didn’t straighten up at all in his presence — still had her feet on the furniture, in fact. She called him boss and deferred to him but still treated him as a roommate.

“Maybe after our meeting,” Carrow said. “Unless you already ate all the tempeh?”

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