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June 2014 · AIIB Mission Month 1

" A cool million says you two will hit it off."

Leta's words slipped into Carrow's office before she did. He pushed back from the desk and cracked his neck. It had been hours since he took a break, and he'd half forgotten that Leta was out on assignment, interviewing their first potential replacement for Short.

Carrow had always had a tendency to lose track of time when he was planning. On a job, his measure of time was near-scientific, but the minute he sat down behind a desk or sidled up to one of the glass boards they used for notetaking in the penthouse, he might as well be in another dimension.

"Since when did cash enter into the equation?"

Leta answered with a little shrug and crossed the room to the leather sofa at the big window on one side of the office. Las Abras sparkled out beyond.

"Hitting it off is one thing. We need someone better than Short ever was."

"Hitting it off is everything, " Leta said quickly. "We can teach demo. We can't teach someone how to be a good roommate. Short is evidence of that. "

" Was, " Carrow corrected softly. She nodded.

"He had the right feeling," Leta continued. "He'll slot in just fine."

Carrow considered her words. Short had slotted in, too, but his only allegiance to The Company had been the money and work they provided. Yes, he'd loved Wayles — but Carrow had always been struck by the thought that Short was probably the only human on the face of the planet who could've convinced Wayles to leave The Company behind if he'd had a compelling enough argument.

"Did you get a sense that he wants to be a part of the crew?"

Leta chuckled softly and Carrow raised an eyebrow.

"I'm telling you — you'll just have to meet the kid. He's right for us. He wants it."

The meeting with Leta Wright had set Dust on edge from the very beginning.

First, the directions Emerson had given him for the meetup point led him to a pet shop , which he assumed couldn’t be right. Still, he parked his motorcycle on the street and approached the dim storefront.

There was the cock of a pistol behind him and two stilettoed footsteps. He froze and accepted the feeling of a gun muzzle being pressed into his lower back.

“Dustin Wrenshall,” Leta said cooly. “Sorry for the precautions. I hope you’ll understand. Go ahead and step inside — it’s open.”

Dust did as he was told. He cursed himself for not being more careful on the approach — had let himself be lulled into security by the idea that he was at the wrong spot and that Emerson had fucked him over .

Leta walked him into the dim shop. It was clean and quiet, the only sounds coming from the occasional animal adjusting in its cage or terrarium and the hum of many air filters pumping coming from a room towards the back of the shop. The doorway, hung with a beaded curtain, glowed with the faint pink of neon lights.

“Go on,” Leta said.

He continued, crossing the shop and walking through the doorway. In the next room, he found a middle aged man sitting on a lawn chair surrounded by fish. Hundreds of fish. Large goldfish pressed together in schools, living in too-small tanks lining the walls of this second room.

The man — washed, too, in the pink light from the tanks — put down the newspaper he was reading to look up at Dust and his captor as they entered.

“Hi Mr. Jhun,” the woman behind Dust said pleasantly. “They’ve got dinner waiting for you next door.”

The man nodded once, folding his paper neatly and tucking it under his arm.

“Miss Leta, my staff isn’t back until Monday,” the man said as he passed, looking down at his feet. Dust didn’t miss the note of apprehension in his voice — the fear. “If you need cleanup again this time, perhaps…”

“I’ll send one of ours over,” Miss Leta said. “Of course. And anything else you need — just let them know next door.”

Cleanup.

Dust set his jaw and started looking for exits.

As the man disappeared, so did the gun at Dust’s back. Leta stepped around him, gesturing to the card table in the middle of the room, set up over an open grate on the floor. She was more gorgeous in real life than she’d ever been in pictures, standing well over six feet tall in the generous heels and wrapped in a sheer dress the color of sunflowers. The neon and chiffon made her skin seem to glow .

“I’m guessing you came strapped?” Leta asked him, raising an eyebrow.

Dust nodded.

“Of course. Smart boy. Go ahead and unstrap, if you will?”

He knew he’d be asked to disarm and hadn’t bothered to suit up with anything but the normal handgun he carried. (A few knives tucked here and there certainly would have made him feel safer, but also would’ve sent the wrong message, he thought, in the case of a pat down.) He retrieved the weapon and set it on the folding table.

“Fabulous,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m Leta Wright. Which you already know. Please, take a seat.”

She set her own gun on the table, apologizing a second time for the way she had started their meeting.

“Do I get points taken off for not hearing you coming from a mile away?” Dust asked, forcing himself to match her informal tone, to muster up enough bravado to match the fearless (and wholly fabricated) reputation that preceded him.

“Not at all,” she said, laughing easily. “In fact, you’d have hurt my feelings.”

The meeting that followed was more thrilling than terrifying, with Leta continuing to size him up in between cracking disarming jokes. The sound of the bubbling air filters in the fish tanks surrounding them was like a wall of solid sound, a sensation that took up residence in Dust’s skull even as he tried not to miss a beat in responding to Leta’s questions.

Other than the fact that it started with a gun aimed at his kidneys and was conducted in the back room of a closed pet shop, the meeting with Leta had gone very much like a normal job interview.

Back at AIIB, Caroline Leiby had drilled him for countless hours, taking him through a huge variety of scenarios. He’d been deprived of sleep, half-starved, and confined to a cell for several days before being interrogated by Abe’s best — and he’d had the story of Dust Wrenshall down pat, reciting it backwards and forwards, never lapsing, never slipping up on a detail.

He’d been prepared for the worst.

And what he got was a friendly interview by one of America’s most wanted criminals. It felt remarkably low pressure.

She wanted to know how he’d gotten into demolitions, why he’d never joined a crew before, why he wanted to join up now. The answers came to him easily because he’d been living the truth of Dust Wrenshall for weeks now.

He got into demolitions because he loved the thrill of blowing things up, and had eventually learned that people would pay him to do so. He chose crime because — although it paid better — terrorism made him sick to his stomach.

He’d never joined a crew before because he’d never needed to, and he was making enough money on his own to last a lifetime.

He wanted to join up with The Company because they were The Company . No other gang was like it, and it was not likely that there ever would be.

She liked his answers. She never reached for her gun.

“That’s all I have for you for now, Mr. Wrenshall,” she said as they wound down the meeting.

“Just Dust, if you please.”

“I’m going to talk to Carrow next. He might want you to meet the rest of The Company, or he might want a meeting with you,” she said. “Or — who knows? Maybe I’ll get back to the penthouse and he’ll no longer be interested.”

Dust’s stomach fell at the possibility. To get so close…

“Either way, we’ll have an answer to you quickly. We don’t tend to let things marinate for very long.”

“I appreciate that very much,” Dust said, meaning it. She extended her hand again to seal the meeting with a handshake. Dust took it but didn’t shake — held her there gently and caught her dark brown eyes with his own.

“They teach you in high school leadership courses — you’re always supposed to ask for the job at the end of an interview,” he said, trying to project the lie that he was fearless even in this moment. “I don’t know if the same rules apply here, but for what it’s worth? I want this. Badly.”

The slowest smile spread across her face, playing like the sheen of an oil slick on water.

It was as if he’d just said the magic words.

She squeezed his hand once and dropped it.

“We’ll be in touch.”

Dust had word from Emerson less than an hour after he left the pink glare of the pet shop back room: Carrow would meet with him the next day.

Warning sirens blared in Carrow's head when he saw Dustin Wrenshall for the first time — but for none of the reasons they ought to.

The young man entered Kamarra 60 seconds before his meeting with Las Abras' most powerful crime boss was slated to begin. Carrow picked him out easily from his vantage point in the back booth. His partner Leta hadn't told him what the potential new member looked like, but there was something about the stranger that seemed to make it impossible that he'd be anyone else.

He knew just where to go, ignoring the hostess who approached him and striding back towards the booth. Dust had obviously gotten acquainted with the restaurant that the crew used as their outside base of operations well before that evening, and Carrow marked the first tally in his mental "yes" column.

As Dust approached, something distinctly unpleasant crept up Carrow's spine. The young man's square jaw was set at a determined angle, his hair close-cropped, clothes sophisticated and understated.

Everything about his appearance and his manner was perfectly groomed — the confidence in his approach balanced with deference to Carrow, eyes steady but not challenging as he walked up.

It had been years since A.R. Carrow had wanted someone without ever hearing the first word out of their mouth. As he watched Dust approach, the feeling that rose in his gut was almost unrecognizable at first.

A throb of want.

He had not wanted for anything in ages.

Billionaires very rarely desired something they could not immediately have. And those billionaires like Carrow — not bound by the law or any code but their own — were essentially limitless when it came to slaking their thirsts.

To want was a novel state of being. He’d almost forgotten what it felt like.

It was intoxicating.

This is bad, he thought to himself quickly. Want made him reckless. Want kneaded the edges of his judgment until they were dull and malleable. Fuck me, he thought.

"Have a seat, Mr. Wrenshall," Carrow said, once the young demolitions expert was within earshot. He trusted his poker face, even as his heart jackhammered. Dustin was trim, broad at the shoulders and narrow at the waist — and radiating something.

Ambition, maybe... Maybe curiosity. It came off of him like heat waves off of pavement, almost visible if you knew how to see it.

Carrow eyed him as he sat, doing his damnedest to read that invisible set of data being transmitted by the way Dust cut his eyes and smiled, by the curve of his spine under the worn-in leather jacket. He was young — younger than Leta had led him to believe.

Dust allowed himself to be examined, not challenging him, not moving to start a conversation. Just sitting.

Finally, he looked to Carrow with a question on his face. He raised an eyebrow slightly in a silent expression of, “ What now?” He looked almost… amused.

"You'll have a drink?" Carrow offered.

"Please," Dust said, smiling wider now. "Ca phe sua da,"

Carrow nodded. A good order. No alcohol — not during a meeting this important. One of the Kamarra bartenders had been watching them, and he made his way to the table the minute Carrow caught his eye.

"An iced coffee," Carrow said once the man was within earshot. "Two," he said, after a moment.

Until Dust was through the door and walking down the aisle of Kamarra, the importance of the next few minutes of his life had not entirely occurred to him.

He'd read about those turning points for people, good and bad: the moment they picked up a syringe for the first time, the moment they met their wife, the moment they decided to get behind the wheel of a car after the fourth cocktail of the night.

Not until he laid eyes on Ansel R. Carrow did Dust think about the fact that this could very well be his moment.

He felt none of the things that he had expected to feel.

For the first time since he had taken the assignment, he had no fear of discovery — he simply was Dustin Wrenshall, there was not and there had never been a Charlie Judge. It was a transformative moment and one he would never forget. Nothing he would say after that point felt like a lie. They were statements of fact, testaments to the man he had always been.

He had no fear of Carrow — that he would say the wrong thing and the man would mark him as a liability or cut him down right there in the dark.

He had no fear of even flopping this meeting, of being rejected from The Company and missing his one chance.

From the first moment, he was Dust. And Dust Wrenshall had no doubts.

Dust, he was learning, was fearless beyond belief.

They sat for a moment there in the plush, round booth, waiting for the restaurant's staff to brew their coffees. Carrow was assessing him, and Dust did not shrink under his steady gaze.

The man's presence was so unlike what Dust had expected.

Dust was reminded, in that moment, of a Russian brawler-turned-professional fighter he had learned about through a documentary years ago. The athlete had an exceptional record of knockouts and submissions, and had never suffered the type of injury that would keep him out of the ring, making millions off of his fists and abilities over a lifetime. The man was not physically exceptional — wasn't scarred, wasn't tall, didn't sport well-defined muscles. If someone passed him on the street, they might not give him a second look.

But when you knew what he was capable of, you saw his strength, his power, his intelligence in every movement he made. You saw it in the way he smiled knowingly at the man interviewing him, in the way he lifted his bag to his shoulder.

You knew just from watching him move and speak that this was a human being who lived in a different world than you did. His abilities were so beyond your imagination that his entire approach to living was also beyond your comprehension.

Dust had sat down with straightlaced CEOs and he'd spent time with hardened criminals. It was as if Carrow had plucked the best attributes from both types of man and then digested them to become something altogether better, more powerful.

Dust's heart hammered in his chest, then, not from fear or apprehension but from the thrill of finally — finally — finding himself in this man's presence.

Maybe that was why he could never bring himself to spend too long looking at A.R. Carrow’s section in the binder Caroline Leiby had handed him back at AIIB. Maybe it was a bit too much like looking into a crystal ball that told Dust his future.

Had he resisted learning about Carrow because he wanted to be surprised?

Was there some part of him that knew all along — even back when he was the imposter, Charlie Judge — that he would only spend 60 seconds in the criminal’s presence before he found himself wanting him?

Perhaps the only thing more frightening than A.R. Carrow himself was the sudden realization that Dust would do anything in that moment to please him, to earn his respect, and to make himself wanted in return.

After the server had come and gone, Dust poured the strong little cup of coffee over the ice and condensed milk with the precision that one would expect from someone accustomed to setting up sensitive, unpredictable explosives.

Carrow found himself arrested by the sight in spite of himself .

Something crackled in the air between the two men and all they’d managed to utter was a drink order. Could he be imagining this, he wondered as he watched the young man’s hands move delicately, purposefully.

Would that steadiness and slow confidence translate to everything those hands do? Carrow wondered, barely able to chide himself fast enough for the thought, for the visceral throb that rolled through his body as he imagined those hands trying to please him.

"So, do I give you a copy of my resume at this point or what?"

Dustin had caught him staring, and when Carrow looked up from his hands, the young man was smiling but not challenging. It was as if he enjoyed being under scrutiny, being watched.

He raised an eyebrow at the joke and Dust smiled wider.

"Don’t tell me I printed this thing out on 32 pound paper and you don't even wanna glance at it." Carrow puffed a soft laugh and Dust shook his head. "Things sure have changed since the last time I had a job interview."

"When was the last time you had a job interview?" Carrow asked. It was as good a place to start the interview as any. He hadn’t purposefully let them sit in silence, but silence had always been one of Carrow’s favorite tactics. It showed him how long it would take Dust to start the conversation himself, and where he'd start it. The kid’s impatience and his straightforwardness produced two more check marks in Carrow’s mental list of wins.

"Probably the last time I had a straight job," Dust said. "And that would've been... hell, Best Buy circa 2000."

"You're not telling me you were old enough to work in 2000?" Carrow asked, allowing himself to smile. The kid barely looked old enough to drink now.

Dust nodded .

"You don't look anywhere near old enough to be 30."

Dust hitched a shoulder, brushing off the comment.

"I use sunscreen."

Carrow couldn’t help but bark a laugh at that. Dust — practically glowing with pleasure at having made Carrow laugh — took the first draw of the sweet, icy coffee, shutting his eyes to savor the taste and sighing deeply with contentment.

"You familiar with their menu here or is Vietnamese iced coffee a regular thing for you?" Carrow asked, prepping his own glass of coffee.

"I did my research," Dust offered, his smile going crooked. He fixed Carrow with eyes the color of moss. "Does coffee preference figure into whether or not I get the job?"

"You do realize that what you're asking for is more than a job, yes?"

Dust's smile disappeared.

"You answer my question and I'll answer yours," he shot. Carrow hadn’t expected it to feel like such a loaded question, and he respected the negotiation going on before him.

"If I hire you and you want something other than the exquisite pour-over coffee I make every morning, you have the right to make whatever coffee you prefer and I have the right to judge your bad taste," Carrow said.

"Yes," Dust said quickly, smiling. "To answer your question, I wouldn't be here unless I was asking for much more than a job. I have jobs — I don't need a job. I need The Company. And for the record, if it's offered, I'll drink whatever it is that you're drinking."

Carrow pressed down a smile. Good answer.

"And why us?" Carrow asked. "Why my crew?"

Dust seemed to think about that for a moment, weighing things in his head and watching his own hands.

"There are other crews, sure. The way I see it, they've all got one weakness that makes them less valuable to me. There's something about The Company... you don't have that weakness. It's smart, the way you've done it."

Carrow shook his head.

"What weakness is that?"

"Bland homogeneity. Big groups of skinheads or punks or one racial group — there's no diversity. They're not better than the sum of their parts because everyone comes to the table with the same point of view. But The Company doesn't have that problem. You have diversity and somehow you're all getting along. You made that work."

Carrow nodded. It had been a conscious choice, building The Company that way.

"Why pledge yourself to a crew at all?" Carrow asked. "I've seen your list of scores. Seems like you're doing just fine on your own."

People had given various answers to the question in the past. People joined crews to get protection, to gain prestige, or to make more money through bigger scores.

"I've been on my own long enough to know what I can do on my own. There's something else when you work with a crew like yours," Dust said, carefully considering his words. "I don't know what it is — but it made you a billionaire and it gave you the most loyal crew I've ever seen. Whatever it is that the five of you share... I want it. "

Dust let the statement hang in the air.

There it was. This was what Carrow could feel radiating off of the kid: want.

Carrow knew he should be cautious. He knew Dust needed more vetting than the weeks of cursory digging that Wayles and Leta had done.

A dangerous part of him told him that it would be more important to see what Dust could do — to watch him work with the team .

Because Leta had been right: Carrow did like him instantly for reasons that went far beyond Carrow’s curiosity about the man's narrow frame, about the way his energy was captivating, all of the things that came together to give the impression that Dust was wound up tight as an industrial spring, almost shimmering with the desire to please Carrow.

There's something else, Carrow thought to himself, echoing the other man's words. And whatever it is, I want it.

"We have a score on Sunday in the a.m.," Carrow said, breaking the silence between them that seemed to be somehow shifting in a pleasant way. Dust's face went unguarded in that moment as the realization hit him that he was being hired. "Planning has started, so you'll just be taking orders."

"I can take orders," Dust said, a little breathless, not at all trying to hide his excitement.

"Play it right and we'll talk about a permanent spot for you in The Company."

"So, like a first date."

There was no taunting in his words — and if the man was flirting, Carrow couldn't detect it.

"Something like that. You'll want to pack a bag. You'll be staying with us until we're cleared on Monday."

"A first date that ends with me spending the night," Dust said, raising an eyebrow in a way that immediately cleared up any ambiguity about whether or not he was attempting to flirt. Carrow could feel his poker face flicker and wondered if the other man noticed. "Now that's more my speed."

This is the last distraction you need now, Ansel, he thought to himself.

Carrow let his eyes rest on a distant point as he found something in his breast pocket.

He placed a key card into Dust’s hand, letting their palms rest together a fraction of a second longer than they needed to.

They shared a moment of eye contact that took on a different feeling than anything before it. Not challenging but… A desire that extended past the boundaries of what it meant to be invited into The Company.

This will spell your disaster, Carrow thought to himself, watching Dust pocket the card.

Dust wanted Carrow .

He saw the man’s steady expression falter, and in that moment Dust had never wanted something as much as he wanted to see it falter again.

He’d caught the most powerful man in Las Abras off guard.

Just the way that he hadn't expected it at first — hadn't expected how much he would relish every part of becoming Dust Wrenshell — he hadn't predicted that the fear and uncertainty surrounding the myth of A.R. Carrow could and would dissolve and be replaced with desire in the span of several heartbeats, in the time that it took him to drink a sweet iced coffee.

But just as it had every step of the way, the pattern continued. He wanted the new clothes, the new identity, the new personality that allowed him to step outside everything he had ever been.

He wanted to see that countenance of Carrow's crack again.

Carrow left the booth before Dust had a chance to, wishing him a restful sleep and then disappearing through some door that Dust hadn’t plotted when he’d cased the place in the weeks before. It was an unceremonious end to such a charged meeting.

Dust had prepared for interrogation. He’d steeled himself to feel nothing, to be strong against fear.

And instead he felt elated, adrenaline coursing through him.

He mounted his bike and enjoyed the roar of air around him as he sped back towards his government-sponsored shithole of an apartment. Dust laughed hard into the night air, something in his chest cracking open.

All of the hard work. Everything he’d forced himself to be. The things he’d turned down and the goodness he’d shied away from for the first 30 goddamn years of his life — it was all already worth it.

He was in. He was hired. He would be a part of The Company — if only for just one job.

Some dark and muted part of himself wanted to remind Dust that his trajectory was meant to include bringing Carrow and his gang to justice. But as he squealed around corners and laughed hard and reckless into the dark, all that Dust could bring himself to think about was that fact that he had finally made it and he would be allowed to peer into the world of this strange, impossibly close family.