It looked nothing like the actual Amazon, but that didn’t make it any less surreal to step inside. It was fuller than Nita expected, and the noise assaulted her ears, voices chattering and echoing in the small space. She ran her eyes across the seating, searching for a familiar figure.
There.
Kovit lounged in a cushy chair, staring pensively at a picture on the wall of a group of grinning bleached-blond girls holding a giant snake. His eyes were dark and fathomless, and thick dark eyebrows were arced in a question. He was smiling slightly, and there was something undeniably wrong with the smile.
Nita’s heart did a familiar fear flip when she saw him, and she flexed her sweaty palms.
She swallowed, watching him for a moment. He looked so innocuous in a dark green sweater and jeans, so . . . normal. Like he belonged here. At the same time, there was an indefinable sense of danger from him. People who walked by gave his seat a wide berth. They didn’t seem to even be doing it consciously—they just walked all the way around another table to avoid him, and sat at the table next to him despite how crowded it was.
It was like their subconscious could sense the danger and avoided him, even though their conscious couldn’t identify why.
Nita had always heard that girls liked “bad boys,” but none of the girls were giving Kovit appreciative glances or approaching him, despite the fact that he was definitely attractive. He’d eaten pain recently, and his face glowed with health, his hair as shiny as a shampoo commercial. His eyes were dark and thickly lashed, and his skin was warm brown.
She wondered if the girls-like-bad-boys stereotype was a lie, or if Kovit was so far from bad boy and so deep into straight-up monster that he didn’t count anymore.
When she was in the jungle, it had been easy to justify allying with Kovit to herself. He was a monster, no question, but they had the same goals, and working together was the fastest way to get out. But out here, in the real world, it was different.
She knew that he hurt people. She knew he enjoyed it. He’d never made a secret of the fact that he could get his pain without torture, by sitting in emergency rooms or going to a war zone. But he chose not to.
He chose to make his own pain. He chose to be the monster people painted him as.
Her mind knew this, but her feet carried her over to him. Her heart rate spiked, and Nita’s ability let her sense every red blood cell rushing through each vein and capillary.
She stopped in front of him, and he turned his gaze on her. His mouth stretched into a warped grin, crooked and slightly off, though she was hard-pressed to say how.
She grinned back, and she wondered if her smile was as broken and twisted as his was.
He laughed and rose. “Nita.”
“Kovit.”
She waited for him to take the lead, because she had no idea what to do now. Shake hands? That felt weird and formal. Hug? Equally weird and too intimate.
Social situations were confusing.
Nita sat down quickly, before he could do anything or the distance between them could stretch.
“Hungry?” he asked, still standing.
Her stomach growled, and she remembered she hadn’t eaten anything with her mother. She’d left before the food came. It was already nearly dinnertime.
“Very,” she admitted. Then she hesitated. “I have no money.”
He waved it away. “This one’s on me.”
She sagged in relief, and he flashed her a grin and went to the counter. His walk was a little slow, and one hand hovered over his side before falling again. Over the bullet wound he’d gotten trying to save her from being cut up.
Nita shoved away the memory, but the sound of the gunshot and the feel of the knife against her skin lingered in her mind.
Kovit approached the cashier with a smile Nita guessed was meant to be friendly but wasn’t. The cashier, a pretty black girl with cornrows, flinched, glasses slipping down her nose and catching on her nose ring. She pushed them back up, and punched his order in with trembling hands.
He returned a moment later, leaving the girl at the till still shaking.
“Did you really need to terrify the cashier?” Nita sighed.
Kovit let out a breath and ran a hand through his hair. “It wasn’t intentional. I’m not used to people.”
Nita understood. He hadn’t had to interact with normal people much in his life. She didn’t know how restrictive the mafia family he’d worked for had been, but she’d repeatedly got the sense that the creepy smile and constant fear was something he’d worked to inspire as a survival mechanism. And she didn’t think he’d ever been in a situation where he needed to turn it off.
Nita never had to interact with people much either, but for her, it was more a lack of skills than using the wrong skills in a situation.
A moment later the girl came over, two plates of curry balanced on her hands. Her eyes kept nervously flicking to Kovit as she handed them over, and she walked quickly away once freed of her burden.
Nita attacked the food, shoveling food into her mouth like she hadn’t eaten in a week.
Kovit laughed and leaned back in his seat. “Did INHUP not feed you?”
Nita rolled her eyes and swallowed a bite of chickpeas. They were a bit salty. She’d forgotten how much North America liked salt. “Not since this morning.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I see you enjoyed your time there.”
Nita nearly choked. “Hardly.”
“I’m all ears.” He put down his curry and propped his chin in his hand.
Nita sighed. “It was just uncomfortable.”
He raised his other eyebrow. He wasn’t going to let it go.
She sighed, and leaned closer and lowered her voice so no one else would overhear. “I had to murder someone without getting caught, and it didn’t go right.”
“Well, you clearly did the not-getting-caught part right, or you wouldn’t be here.” He grinned, lowering his voice to match hers.
Nita couldn’t help but grin back. “For now.”
“So, who were you trying to murder?”
Nita gave him a quick rundown of what happened with Fabricio.
“Well,” Kovit said when she finished. “At least when you’re both out of INHUP’s clutches it’ll be easier to murder him.”
“Agreed. And I won’t have to use poison.” Nita clenched her jaw. “I want to make him scream for what he’s done.”
Kovit’s eyes darkened, and he licked his lips. “I can help with that.”
A small thrill sizzled through her body. “I might take you up on that offer.”
“Anytime.”
She shivered at his voice, full of dark promises.
Someone walked by, and both of them went silent. Kovit leaned back, the darkness in his face vanishing.
“How goes your search for your sister?” Nita asked to fill the sudden silence.
Kovit’s sister wasn’t a zannie, like him, just a regular human. She’d missed that little genetic gift. Kovit had told Nita that he hadn’t seen his sister since he was ten years old, when she’d hidden him from INHUP agents storming their house to murder their mother. INHUP agents Kovit himself had called after his mother tortured his classmate.
Shortly after, Kovit had been scooped up by an American criminal organization and taken away from Thailand. When he and Nita had parted in Brazil, he’d said now that he was free, he wanted to find his sister.