Page 88 of The Company We Keep

There were lights on.

Without thinking about it, Dust broke into a sprint.There were lights on.Someone was inside. The Company had made it out alive. He’d bought them the time and they’d escaped.

His family was goddamned alive. Even with his entire future there hanging in the balance, with all of the questions and the horrible possibilities etching patterns that grew like fractals in his mind, at least his family was goddamned alive.

Lungs burning, Dust approached the house in a limping jog that grew more difficult with each step, bolts of hot pain cutting through his lungs, through his skull. From the lawn, he couldn’t see anyone through the windows. Maybe… Maybe he should go to the back and see who was there. Maybe this wasn’t a situation to walk into blindly. He caught his breath and forced himself to slow down.

He’d had his confirmation, the proof he needed to put at least some of his worries to rest. There was no reason to rush it now.

He circled around, making a wide loop to approach the house through the stand of trees at the back. The undergrowth caught at his half-shredded clothes. Dust tried and failed not to make what felt like an impossible racket out there in the dark on the large piece of land.

Finally, he came to a spot where he could approach the safehouse from the back. His eyes adjusted to the moonlight. There was a figure in the clearing.

Carrow.

The man was hunched on the porch steps, his head in his hands. A dot of light flared in front of his face and Dust realized he was smoking.

Carrow was the only one who could make a decision about him. His timing had been perfect. Let Carrow make the call now. He could make Dust disappear quietly out here in the dark — the rest of The Company would never have to know, if he didn’t want them to.

Yes,he thought.This is the right way to do it. This, at least, I can offer to him.

He stood in the darkness, catching his breath and watching Carrow. The man was dressed in basketball shorts and a t-shirt, and under any other circumstances, Dust would’ve laughed at the getup that was so out of character for him.

He gathered his thoughts. He went through the circuit again, preparing for his end, apologizing to those who deserved it.

Then, Dust stepped out of the stand of trees at the edge of the backyard.

“Hey, boss.”

Ansel Carrow peered out into the darkness. Dust took a few steps forward.

“No.” Carrow was moving in an instant.

Dust didn’t know if he should move towards him or away.

“No,”Carrow repeated louder, even as he sprinted across the backyard.

Don’t let him call me Charlie — please don’t let him —

“Dust,” Carrow said, grabbing him hard, squeezing him, his ribs aching, his head throbbing. “It can’t be you.Dust.”

“It’s me, boss.”

Carrow drew back, holding him at arm’s length, running a hand through Dust’s hair and shaking his head.

And there he was: the man who had come to mean everything to Dust, the person who he knew now meant more than his whole life. Carrow was a ruthless man with a dark past and a wake of crime behind him, but he was also the man who had smiled sleepily at Dust every morning, who had shared his secrets with Dust and asked for nothing in return, who had squeezed his hand in the dim quiet of a sedan before they made the world explode into chaos together.

Carrow was his future, whether that meant a sprawling line of years where they’d add meaning to what they shared, or a merciful end here in his familiar hands.

“How the hell? Where have you — Fuck! Dust,” he said, pulling him close again. “How did you get here? How are youalive?”

“I took the bus. Then I walked. I got… really lucky, I guess.”

He hung slack in Carrow’s arms. None of this felt real. Carrow wasn’t smiling at him — but his eyes were glossy in the moonlight. He was blinking back tears.

“You’re happy to see me?”

“You motherfucker,” Carrow said, shaking his head, squeezing his eyes shut against the tears and finally smiling. “Yes, I’m happy to see you. You fucking asshole. You fucking liar. You don’t know what the last day was like, thinking you were gone —”

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