Kovit’s face was still as he examined her, and Nita had the disconcerting feeling he was wondering what he had gotten himself into. If he had traded working with one monster for another.
Both of them had always been surrounded by monsters. Perhaps there was no one else they could empathize with, no one else who would empathize with them. Like calls to like, and Nita was beginning to wonder day by day if she wasn’t just as much of a monster as Kovit, but in a different way.
He was silent a long time before turning away. He looked out the window, down at the entranceway below, and whispered softly, “They’re here.”
Seventeen
THEY TOOK THEIR POSITIONS in practiced movements. Kovit went to stand in the small closet by the door, shielded from view of those entering, and Nita crouched behind the kitchen counter.
The seconds ticked by. Nita’s breathing was fast and sharp, anticipation making her leg shake and her hands tremble.
Was Kovit right? Was this a bad idea?
Well, it was too late now.
The door didn’t crash open, but whispered, as though the people were hoping to surprise her. She slipped silently forward, knife ready.
She peered around the corner, and there they were. Three of them, two men and a woman, spreading out across the apartment. One was still by the door, one was approaching the kitchen, and the third had gone to the window.
Nita let her eyes wander over them. Her research had indicated that this group was actually pretty infamous. With the dead man on the subway, that made four people. Too few, she suspected, to wipe out the group entirely, though maybe enough to wipe out everyone who’d come to Toronto. But that wasn’t really the point of this, though it would have been convenient.
She watched them walk, trying to figure out who of the group was in charge.
Nita’s eyes narrowed as the tall man by the window gestured at the woman by the door, waving her toward the bedrooms.
A smile curved Nita’s lips. Found you.
In the closet, she could see movement in the shadows, and she nodded at it.
Now.
She was moving, lunging for the man on the other side of the kitchen counter, knife raised. He never had a chance. Nita’s blade took him in the back, right in his upper spine, instantly paralyzing him. Spinal fluid blended with blood and oozed from the wound as the man crashed to the floor, screaming.
Nita didn’t care if he made noise. It was more important that he didn’t feel the pain. The last thing she needed was to incapacitate her partner.
While Nita had been pouncing, Kovit had come from behind, and slit the throat of the woman near the door. Her body lay in a growing pool of blood, and by the time Nita looked up, Kovit already had the third man, the leader, kneeling on the ground, arm twisted behind his back and knife at his throat.
Nita pulled the kitchen knife from her victim with a squelch and stepped over his dying body to help Kovit.
The man on the ground turned his head, even as Kovit twisted his arm tighter. The man gasped, and his eyes fell on the two dead bodies of his comrades. For a moment, his face was transformed by grief—his mouth turning down, eyebrows falling, lip trembling—before it hardened as he gasped in air, as though steeling himself for what was to come.
The man shook, and he met her eyes with his own watery brown ones. “Look, I’m sure we can come to some kind of arrangement.”
Kovit snorted. “That’s how you know a black market businessman. Always trying to make a deal.”
The man’s eyes flicked up to Kovit. “I think anyone would try to make a deal in these circumstances.”
Nita couldn’t fault him for that.
“I have money—”
“Hush, now.” Nita put a bloody finger to her lips and smiled.
He blanched, and immediately went silent. Nita got a little thrill, enjoying how fast fear silenced him. Fear of her. He couldn’t see the nerves churning underneath, just the front she presented. And that front scared him enough to obey.
Energy buzzed through Nita. Kovit was wrong. This was exactly the right plan. She could already see it working. If she could just make the whole world see her like that . . .
There was a gun at his belt he’d never had time to draw, and Nita casually pulled it out and shoved it in the waistband of her pants, like she saw in the movies. It was a lot less comfortable than it looked, the metal digging into her skin.
She ignored it and patted the man down. He tried to move, but Kovit twisted his arm tighter and dug the blade into his throat hard enough that a fine trickle of blood dripped down and spattered the floor.
Nita found a wallet and cell phone, which she pocketed, and another gun, which she shoved in Kovit’s waistband. He gave her a look like, Why are you shoving guns down my pants? And she just shrugged like, Well, where else do I put it?
He looked meaningfully at the counter, and she rolled her eyes and took the gun back and put it on the counter.
Kovit never moved his knife from the man’s throat. Their captive’s brown eyes followed every movement Nita made, and his eyebrows pulled together. He licked his lips, and his eyes kept flicking to the dead bodies of his friends. Probably thinking of what he could bargain with.
But this wasn’t a negotiation.
Nita turned away and took her phone out. She padded over to the other two dead bodies. The one Kovit had killed lay by the door, her face resting beside a sign asking people to take their shoes off before entering the apartment. Her eyes were large and glassy, and she smelled awful already.
Nita snapped a photo.
She went to the next one, the one she had killed. She felt a strange hesitation to approach, but she wasn’t sure why. He was dead. It didn’t matter. She’d killed before.
She shook her head. She was being foolish. She knelt down, took a picture of his face, then turned away sharply, back to the kitchen.
Kovit had taken the time to bind the man with duct tape to one of the kitchen chairs.
Nita frowned. “What are you doing?”
Kovit blinked, and gave her an innocent look. “We’re going to kill him, right?”
She nodded, once.
He grinned, cruel and crooked and violent as he plucked the cheese grater from the shelf. “Then I want to have fun first.”
The man turned his eyes upward, saw the cheese grater, and began to scream. Clearly, a threat of impending torture was scarier than Nita and her bloody request to keep quiet.
“Please,” he begged, eyes flicking between Nita and Kovit. “Anything you want.”
Nita swallowed, trying to look anywhere but the cheese grater.
Kovit was still smiling, and he leaned over the man and whispered softly in his ear. “Sadly, you have nothing we want except your death. And I’m hungry.”
The man’s eyes got huger, and in horror he whispered, “Zannie.” His eyes flicked to Nita. “Please. Please don’t let it hurt me.”
Kovit’s smile didn’t waver, but his fingers clenched tighter on the grater.
The man was shaking, his eyes on the cheese grater, as though he was imagining exactly what kinds of things could be done with it. Nita was too, but she didn’t let that show.
“Well,” she said, taking the man’s wallet from the counter and pulling out his credit cards. “A PIN number for these would be a nice start.”
He gave it immediately, his breaths coming in soft sobs. Kovit pulled out his phone and typed them down.