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June 2014 · AIIB Mission Month 1

T he high-rise building that housed The Company's base of operations was a glistening patchwork of floor-to-ceiling windows as Dust approached it for the first time. The skyscraper was tucked in Las Abras' financial district and the street was nearly deserted as Dust steered his bike into the underground garage.

Carrow said the key card should get him access to everything he needed, including the man's private garage. Sure enough, when he swiped the card through a reader mounted next to a closed garage bay marked "PENTHOUSE," the system ground to life and the door rose. Lights flickered to life, and behind the bay door was a huge array of vehicles organized in sprawling rows. There were sports cars, motorcycles, sedans, yes — but also decoy cars with mismatched panels, a box truck with the logo of a fishing company on the side, several unmarked vans, an armored truck, and some sort of massive vehicle parked in one corner covered in welded panels.

The door began to close automatically as he gawked. Dust hurried inside, guiding his bike down the rows. He found an empty spot next to a black sedan he recognized as Carrow's daily driver and parked his bike.

One more swipe of the key card had him standing in the elevator. There was only one button: 45. He tapped it and a flat-panel monitor that he didn't notice at first lit up. It showed his own face, and he leaned in to peer at it.

Dust barely recognized himself. He'd gotten a tan since arriving in Las Abras and gotten a haircut the morning before his meeting with Carrow. The broken-in leather jacket hung on his shoulders like it was made for him (and maybe, he thought, it had been before Abe had gifted it to him).

"Ah, Dustin, yeah?" asked a melodic voice with a British accent.

Wayles, Dust thought. The monitor still displayed his own face, and he flashed a smile, knowing he was being watched.

"That's me."

"Grand. One sec!"

The monitor turned itself off and the elevator began its ascent.

Dust was about to see something no AIIB agent had ever seen before — not in photographs and certainly not in person. But all he could think to himself on the long journey up was, I'm going to live here.

He arrived at the 45th floor and the doors glided open, revealing a foyer decked in creamy marble and a nondescript door. No card reader on this one — just a doorbell and a small pad that, Dust assumed, must read fingerprints. You either have the right prints or someone lets you in , Dust thought. As he stepped up, he heard a series of soft clicks. Wayles had anticipated him — was certainly watching him right now — and had unlocked the door for him.

Was it impolite to walk in without ringing the doorbell?

He did it anyway, hitching the duffel bag he'd brought with his things high on one shoulder and then pressing in slowly, appreciating the heft of the door that must be armored.

Walking in felt too easy — like a trap.

The fear fell away, though, when he stepped through and pulled the heavy door behind him.

The penthouse was massive and Dust didn't attempt to mask his awe. From the front door, he could see straight through the unit, spanning the whole floor, ending in a wall of curving floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out at the crowded Las Abras skyline. The open floorplan had him looking through a kitchen, a large dining area, and a sitting room — everything slick and clean and matching. Carrow obviously had a hard-on for Mid-Century modern furniture and styling.

"You get used to it eventually."

The voice startled him — he hadn't heard anyone approach, but Vashvi must have come up from a hallway to his left. She held out a hand.

"Vashvi Dhillon." It was odd to have this woman introduce herself, to shake hands with the 21st Century's most dangerous sniper. He knew volumes of information about her — could probably rattle off her social security number if necessary, knew the name of her first cat and her favorite picture book and the last ten men she had killed. And yet, she was exactly what he had expected, with an energy drink in one hand, barefoot and dressed in an old band T-shirt.

"I know," he said, smiling. There was no reason to hide his awe at the penthouse, and no reason not to treat the crew like the celebrities they were to him. "I mean, I know all of you. I’m a big fan."

"I guess that makes sense," she said. She turned and gestured to him to follow her into the kitchen. "Boss wouldn't hire someone who didn't do their homework. You want something to drink? "

"At least let him put his bag down, Vi." Wayles emerged from a doorway Dust hadn't noticed on the opposite side of the kitchen. It was going to take ages to get used to this layout. "Suppose you don't need an introduction from me, either?"

Wayles didn't smile at him. Dust had been worried about him. Emerson had warned him that Wayles had been the closest of them all to Nick Short and would likely be the last one to accept him as a replacement.

"No. Your reputation precedes you too, Mr. Wayles."

Something flickered in his light green eyes. He extended his hand after a moment of hesitation.

"Just Wayles," he said. "It's good to meet you, Wrenshall."

"Just Dust. If you don't mind."

Wayles nodded.

"Where is everyone?" Wayles asked, turning to Vashvi.

"Boss is already in his office. Leta should be up right behind Dust. Herron... is making their own schedule, as usual, I think."

"Lovely." Wayles crossed to the fridge and both of them seemed to forget Dust was standing there with his bag for the moment. "Did I miss dinner?"

"No dinner to speak of," Vashvi said. "I dunno — I think Carrow said something about everyone foraging tonight."

"But I'm starved, " Wayles whined.

"You could try and catch Leta before she gets here. Maybe she'll pick something up?"

"She's still chuffed that I didn't like her gumbo whatever it was on Tuesday. I'm not bringing up food to her right now."

"Then I guess you'll starve, " she said, taunting.

The surreality of the exchange was killing Dust. These two sounded like college roommates.

"What do you eat, Dust?" Wayles wanted to know.

"I ate before I came," he said quickly .

"No but — " and Wayles waved his hand as if suddenly struggling for the words to explain a difficult concept. "I mean, in general. Are you vegan? Kosher? What do you like stocked?"

"Stocked? I eat whatever's offered," he said. "I'm not picky."

"Oh, you'll live to regret that," Vashvi said, laughing.

"Don't rag on him," Wayles said. "We're good cooks."

Vashvi snorted.

"You'll have to have a think on what you want," Wayles continued. "We all make a list once a week and I send out the order. Calling out for delivery is a little tricky, with the security, and everybody gets sick of the food at Kamarra after a while."

"You're talking like I'm already moving in," Dust pointed out.

They both gave him an odd look.

"Do you not... want to?" Wayles asked, wary. Dust couldn’t understand what his misstep was, but Vashvi seemed on edge too, looking between Wayles’ face and Dust’s.

"Of course I want to," Dust said. "Sorry — I guess I don't know the protocol for, y'know. Bringing someone new in."

Wayles’ face fell and he worried a chapped lip between his teeth.

This dynamic wasn’t what Dust had been expecting. The wound of Short’s death was still fresh — just like Emerson had said — but he hadn’t understood all that would mean for his own inclusion. They would all be treating Wayles with kid gloves. Maybe Vashvi, too. Herron, Leta, and Carrow had all lost crews before, but there had never been crews before The Company for these two.

"You'd be the first," Vashvi said. "So neither do we. We all joined up at the same time."

Dust nodded .

"I just expected this to be more of a job interview than a tour of my new digs," Dust said. "Not that I'm complaining. This really beats the shoebox I left half an hour ago."

Carrow must have talked to them like Dust was already in, he thinks, if they were treating him like the trial job was a formality.

Wayles buzzed Carrow at his desk when Dust was on his way up from the street, but he hung back in his office. Better to let Wayles and Vi meet him on their own terms than have him swoop in and dominate Dust's attention.

They would be the two hard sells on the new member — if Carrow decided to bring him in, he reminded himself. He was already thinking of the kid as part of The Company without any real proof that he could do what they’d brought him in for. Dangerous.

Things were set for the meeting. He had no excuse to hang back in his office other than a sudden feeling of dread at seeing Dust Wrenshall again.

The Company knew him better than anyone else ever had. Would they watch Carrow watching Dust and simply know ? Was that what Leta had meant when she insisted with a knowing glance that the two of them would hit it off — had offered to bet money on it?

He hated the thought of being so transparent.

The quiet penthouse seemed 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 were pizza boxes .

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

They were pizza 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 how normal they 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 had all 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 the unbuttoned 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?”

“You wound me,” Vashvi said, smiling. “Of course I saved you half the pie. ”

He winked at her and turned away. Herron, Vashvi, and Wayles reacted immediately, standing to follow him, filing out of the living room after stopping in the kitchen to drop their dirty plates in the sink. Dust scrambled to keep up.

They led him down a hallway at the south wing of the penthouse that dead-ended into an open room that had to be Carrow’s office. Along one wall, there were floor-to-ceiling windows and a plush leather couch flanked by a simple desk with an array of computer monitors. The rest of the room was meeting and planning space: a long wooden slab table scattered with maps and notebooks, several panes of glass inset into the wall so that they could be slid this way and that, covered with writing from past meetings — or maybe preliminary work for this one, Dust realized. The meeting area of the room reminded him of the classrooms back at the AIIB training facilities where he’d spent so many days of his life so far — only the penthouse room was nicely appointed and had technology that wasn’t terribly outdated.

Everyone but Carrow and Dust took a spot around the meeting table. Wayles gestured for Dust to sit down beside him.

This is really it, he thought.

Without the slightest hint of ceremony, Carrow waited for him to be seated and began the meeting.

He paced along the wall with the panes of glass and began to explain their latest job.

Dust watched Carrow with the same fascination that he used to feel, squatting above those seining nets in the dying light on the opposite coast. Then, he had held back his excitement — but in the meeting room with its expansive table and expensive details, Dust let his feelings show plain on his face.

This was his destiny. This was his shot at becoming part of The Company, and they were already treating him like a partner, an insider, a member of the team he so desperately wanted to join.

The job, Carrow explained, was a small score: just half a dozen items from the California Museum of Anthropology, nestled in the tourist district of Las Abras’ midtown.

"You know our targets," he said, selecting several glossy photographs and sticking them to one of the panes of glass behind him. "They'll fit into a pocket. Leta, you're on retrieval for this one, since we won't need air support."

Leta nodded.

The objects were small and, Dust had to assume, priceless. They were just trinkets: a fat little woman carved out of turquoise, something that looked like a coyote plated in gold and encrusted with jewels, a serpentine bracelet made of what could be onyx. There were six targets in all.

None of them were taking notes, but Dust had produced a small pad and was jotting down the rough details. The rest of the crew, he assumed, had been through the details often enough that they would have committed it all to memory by now.

One by one, Carrow went through their duties.

Russell Wayles would remotely disarm the museum’s security systems before accompanying Leta, covering her from start to finish. (And, Dust thought, he would be responsible for securing their score if something were to happen to Leta. Carrow didn't have to say it aloud, but it was clear that redundancy was important when it came to the actual score.)

Herron Dent and Carrow himself would be covering them from outside of the museum, both arriving in the fastest vehicles The Company owned, since they would also be responsible for the crew's exit.

Vashvi Dhillon would be, as she always was, their eyes on the outside. She would arrive on her own motorcycle, enter the closest tall building, and keep watch through the scope of her rifle. They would all stay in constant communication throughout the job.

Then, once the items were secured, the team would split — driven by Herron and Carrow and Vashvi on her bike — and take different routes to join up at one of their safehouses half an hour south of Las Abras.

The client would meet them the following morning to accept the artifacts.

Tess McBride, The Company's physician, would be on standby in case of injuries.

As Carrow paced in front of the glass, it occurred to Dust that he was finally seeing the man in his element. His muscles moved under the dark suit with a potency that didn't seem to be there at any other moment — the way that a leopard's muscles looked different to a bystander when the cat is stretching than they did when the beast was preparing to ambush its prey.

He was smiling, too. Not at any of them in particular. But the white grin flashed after every point he made, understated and satisfied. This was a man with supreme confidence, someone eager to get going, someone closer to getting what he craved.

Dust began to understand the picture of A.R. Carrow that had eluded him before. He thrived on this — on breaking the law, on the thrill of making a score. Everything else he did was, in some way, related to making these moments happen for the man — and if something wasn’t getting him closer to this goal, then it must feel like it was getting in the way.

A shudder rolled through Dust. It was like looking in the mirror. Hadn't this been the way Dust had felt all this time? Hadn't this been just the same for Dust since the first moment he heard the name Ansel Carrow, since he'd gotten that fat binder in his hands? Everything he'd done had been leading up to this moment .

And though they were on opposite sides, Dust Wrenshall and A.R. Carrow met in the middle in that moment, in the meeting room, in the midst of hardened criminals who smiled and joked with each other. Carrow and Dust were the same: driven and wanting and so deeply satisfied by what was about to happen.

The realization was something like falling in love.

Yes, Dust thought. The two of them would be doing important things together from here on out. This was the meeting of destiny and destiny — and though Dust didn't pretend that his life was anything as monumental and important as Carrow's had been up until that moment, he could feel his own short trajectory swell with purpose as the two goals met and mingled.

He could barely keep the flush of manic joy from sweeping across his face.

This is it. This is it!

In that odd moment, he wanted to consume Carrow — or maybe to be consumed by him. The illogical thought bubbled to the surface of his churning emotions and Dust couldn't manage to punch it down. There was simply something about the man that made Dust want to give his whole self up — to his own mission, yes, but to this score, to The Company, to do anything to be the best at what he was about to do.

It was like being welcomed into a lion's den. You expected fear, but all you felt once you got there was a deep satisfaction, a profound honor at being chosen.

"And that brings us to you," Carrow said, jolting Dust out of his own swirling thoughts.

He couldn't help his smile. He felt like a kid on a rollercoaster. Carrow seemed to lose his train of thought, then, peering at his face and fighting his own smile.

Finally, he was looking at Dust and not through him. The air crackled again. The night before hadn’t been an anomaly — Carrow just hadn’t allowed his concentration to fall onto him until that moment.

What does he see when he looks at me? Dust wondered.

"You with us so far, Dust?" he asked, raising an eyebrow — an unnecessary question. Even as his mind wandered, Dust had been following every syllable of every sentence as it rolled off of the man's tongue.

"Absolutely, boss," he said.

The statement drew a laugh out of the rest of the crew around the table. Carrow wasn't his boss yet. He didn't know where the impulse came from.

"Christ, he even sounds like one of us already," Wayles said affectionately, slapping Dust on the shoulder. "This one's game for anything."

If he'd made a misstep, Carrow didn't let it show. The man looked pleased, if anything.

"Good," Carrow said after a moment. "Because this piece is new. We weren't planning on having an explosives man handy for the anthro job, but that's not because we didn't need one."

Of course, Dust thought. They would've planned this without Short.

“I’m curious,” Carrow said, his tone going softer. “Tell me: what do you use explosions for?”

It was a loaded question, and all of the eyes in the room had turned to him.

“There are a few major purposes,” Dust started. He held up a finger as he ticked off the list. “Cause mayhem, gain entry, deny entry, destroy assets…” Dust closed his fist. “Or to send a message.”

“Very nice,” Carrow said, his words rolling with a half-purring sound that seemed to connect directly with Dust’s spine. “Your role will be to help us send a message. I’ll leave it up to you in terms of how to do it. There are blueprints for the museum and several renderings that I’ll give you access to.”

“And what’s the message I’m sending?”

“I want you to tell the museum: ‘The things in these cases do not belong to you.’”

Dust wrote the sentence down in all caps.

“I can do that,” Dust said. “I take it you’ll want to approve my plan, when I have one?”

“No,” Carrow said, smiling and finally taking a seat at the head of the table. “I want you to surprise me.”

Done with his presentation , Carrow waited to walk The Company through any questions they may have.

“Everyone’s clear, then?” he said when no one moved to speak. “Dust, nothing?”

“What do you want me doing, other than demo?” he asked.

“Be redundant,” Carrow said.

“I don’t follow.”

“You’ve got two days with us before the night of the job. Shadow your team and learn what you need to learn to be a backup for each member of it. It’s what you’ll be doing as a full-time member of the crew. Why wait to start?”

Dust nodded, chewed the tip of his pen, and then started to scribble another note.

It felt right, having him here — walking out into his living room to see Dust with their little family. Short had always seemed to chafe under the familiarity, wouldn’t sit out with the rest of them unless there was a reason to be there. Dust seemed to bask in the shared spaces, immediately at home but not so comfortable as to be off-putting .

"Did you bring swim trunks, then?" Wayles interrupted Carrow’s train of thought with his question to Dust.

Dust gave him a dumb look.

"Nah, of course you didn’t. Ah, well, you can borrow some of mine,” Wayles said after a moment. “You'll love the pool."

Carrow rolled his eyes.

“I guess the meeting’s over, then,” he said, flat.

“There’s a pool ?” Dust asked.

“Damn, I thought you said you did research,” Vashvi shot.

“Yeah,” Leta said, catching Carrow’s eye and smiling. “I think the meeting’s over.”

Vashvi and Wayles started chattering immediately, practically dragging Dust away from the table. He gave Carrow and Leta an apologetic look before they made their exit. The three of them looked like they’d belonged together all along — as if Nick Short had been some accidental inclusion and now they were really hitting their stride.

Herron crossed their arms and watched the youngest members of The Company leave.

“Looks like you’ve got a trio on your hands, boss,” they said. “At least they don’t have any doubts about him.”

“And you?” Carrow asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I’ll reserve my judgment for after the job,” they said, pushing back from the table. “You joining us on the roof?”

“I don’t think so.”

He waited for Herron to slip from the room before turning to Leta.

“How about you? You on the fence, too?”

“Not at all,” she said quickly. “I like him. Russell likes him. You like him.”

“Do I?” Carrow asked, pressing his lips into a line.

“I can read you like a book, Ansel, and not even a complicated one at that,” she said, standing and letting a hand stray across his shoulders as she passed behind his chair. “You taking bets on how long it is until he finds his way into your bedroom?”

“Christ, Wright.”

She shrugged.

“No judgements from me, but I can see how you look at each other.”

“I don’t know how you see him look at me, but I can tell you that my interest in Wrenshall is only in determining his fit for The Company.”

Leta held up her hands, exposing two empty palms as if to say “got it,” before she made her way back towards the living room.