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W hen Carrow woke just a few hours later, he felt as if he’d slept for days.

It was rare for him to sleep peacefully, dreamlessly, and he never felt rested immediately upon rising. Getting up was a slow ritual that involved ludicrous amounts of coffee and usually didn’t get started until midday if he didn’t have an appointment in the morning.

But he had slept well. And he did have an appointment.

Dust had a strange moment of feeling unmoored as he came back to consciousness. He could hear the ocean, and for one abrupt minute of panic, he thought that the night at his back — maybe even the years before it — had been some sort of especially vivid, extended dream... That he was back on the coast in the bedroom where he had grown up. When he left the window open overnight in his childhood home, he would wake up to the thick humidity that pervaded the bedroom now, could hear the waves lap at the shore .

But no. It took just one look around the room to become reoriented, to acknowledge that the vast ocean he was hearing in that moment was the Pacific, not the Atlantic. No part of it had been a dream. Evidence of Carrow was all over the room, from the neatly folded clothes that had been so hastily discarded the night before to the newspaper placed on the bed where Carrow had slept.

Dust reached for it, smiling.

They’d made the front page.

Hell: he’d made the front page.

Not his face, thankfully, but Dust’s handiwork was getting top billing.

“ Museum burns in massive blaze” — and then the subheadline, “ LAPD points to organized crime.”

Dust snorted. They didn’t know the half of it.

He dug into the article, hoping to find more details about the aftermath of the destruction he’d wrought at the museum.

Carrow’s message had been received loud and clear.

Dust had set up the charges in such a way that the facade of the museum had crumbled, barring all entry and exit from the building. He’d picked out the weakest points and calculated the trajectories of the tools at his disposal, strategically plotting each blast to cause the maximum damage to the exterior of the building while minimizing any disturbance to the artifacts that the museum housed.

The anthropologists and archeologists and curators would be forced to excavate their own goddamn museum before they could gain access to the treasures within.

The article reported that there had been no fatalities, that police were seeking someone of indeterminate gender and race who had traded fire with the responding units and then fled on an imported motorcycle.

They were also seeking Dust and Wayles .

The grad students had gone on to recount breathlessly to the police the entire story of why they’d been in the hall so late, of the two strangers, “Pete” and “Joel,” posing as museum employees who had bullied them out of the hall.

They didn’t have much to go on beside the fact that it was two white guys, young, brown hair, one with a Jersey accent and the other with a British accent.

That would be an interesting detail for the cops to try and figure out, then. Wayles and Herron were known entities — and despite what few details the LAPD may be releasing to the media, it was impossible to imagine that they hadn’t immediately identified the two members of the notorious Company.

But Dust would be a wildcard. Did the LAPD even know for sure that Short was dead?

God, he bet Carrow was pleased.

The safehouse was silent around him except for the sounds of the shore. He stood, pulling on his boxers as he went to look for his boss.

Carrow , as it turned out, was entertaining company in the sunshine. He sat at a folding table on the back deck, overlooking the Pacific, across from an elderly woman. She was squat but surprisingly fit, her lined skin a deep tan, white hair falling in a thick braid down her back, dressed like she was out for a morning of gardening — not a meeting with Las Abras’ reigning king of crime.

Carrow looked incongruous with his surroundings, dressed already in a fresh suit. They made an odd pair. The woman laughed hard at something Carrow said, laying a hand over his for a moment and then producing a thin envelope. Carrow said something else, frowning and holding up a hand — but it was clear that she was insisting he take it. Reluctantly, he accepted the envelope and slid it into the front of his jacket.

Then he produced the artifacts they had retrieved the night before.

The little baubles seemed so small and inconsequential without all of the trappings of the museum, without the neat little embossed tags and the intimidating glass cases. She held them up, one by one, examining them in the sun.

This was their client?

Dust moved to another window, wanting a better look at this woman who had managed to hire The Company, this woman that he had practically razed a building for the night before.

Her face, as she looked at each item, was a mixture of joy and… relief. She was crying, he realized. She began saying something to Carrow again, touching his hand again, shaking her head.

The man smiled, looking satisfied. She continued talking. He nodded.

Finally, she produced a roll of suede from a bag at her feet, gently laying each artifact down before rolling the suede, tying it, and replacing it in the bag. Carrow stood with her and she caught him in a hug. The top of her head barely crested his shoulders. Carrow accepted the gesture, wrapping her in his arms for a moment. It was all so goddamned odd.

He escorted the woman around to the side of the deck, helping her down the stairs. Dust moved to the other side of the room, peering through a window in the kitchen as Carrow saw her to her car. Then she disappeared.

“You’re up,” Carrow said as he strode through the back door. “Are you hungry?”

“ That was our client?”

“I’m goddamned famished,” Carrow said, brushing past him and into the kitchen. “God, I hope someone stocked this place before — oh thank Christ.”

Carrow was squatting with his head in the refrigerator, and he began to gather ingredients for breakfast, setting things out on the counter.

“ Carrow. Was she a go-between or what?”

“No,” Carrow said, a smile playing across his face. “You were right the first time. That was our client.”

“So is she going to, what, fence some ancient baubles we stole for her?”

“We didn’t steal anything for that woman. We retrieved things that belonged to her — her family, her people. And you, Dust, put the finishing touches on quite a message to the people who did steal from them. I assume you saw the Las Abras Times I left out?”

Dust shook his head, trying to process it all.

“A Robin Hood job? Seriously?”

“Not a Robin Hood job. A restoration of culturally, religiously significant items to the culture and religion that imbued them with significance in the first place.”

Dust narrowed his eyes at the other man. This was beyond the scope of what he thought The Company did — beyond anything he’d ever read in his fat binder. Carrow had risked their lives to retrieve some religious items for an old woman?

“Am I allowed to ask what you made off of that job?”

Carrow snorted, pulled out the envelope, and tossed it to the counter in front of Dust.

“A thousand dollars, maybe? I certainly hope it’s not much more than that. You can count it if you like,” Carrow said, his mouth curling into a deeper smile. “Dust… Did you really think that we still take jobs for the money ?”

Even as he said the words, it made sense. Of course they wouldn’t be taking jobs like that for the value of what they’d earn.

“You work strictly for charity, then?”

Carrow chuckled, swiping a pepper from the counter and examining it idly.

“Not just charity. We do it to stay sharp. We do it because it’s fun — because it’s what we’re good at. But money is no object for The Company.”

Gingerly, he set the pepper back down and leaned against the counter.

“Do you get it? You don’t have to worry about money and scores anymore, Dust. Whatever you want, it’s yours.”

The enormity of the words hit him viscerally. The whole of Las Abras lay at their feet, glittering and theirs for the taking. Carrow was his, too, if he wanted.

And he did. Dust wanted it all.

“Does this mean I’m hired?”