“That’s . . . not a bad plan.” Nita considered.
“He’s sharp. And he knows that if people want to buy information from him, it’s in their best interest to keep him alive. He’s always trading in information. Sure, lots of people might want to kill him for his knowledge. But those same people use him to find things out. It’s not exactly a safe position, but it’s a powerful position if used right.”
Nita tapped a finger on the bed frame. “So it is. Information can be quite useful.” The idea of informational power swirled around in her head. “It’s a little like Fabricio’s father. He knows where everyone’s money is, so he has the evidence to destroy them. It’s the information that gives him power over people, and safety.”
“Yeah, it’s a similar concept.” Kovit tilted his head. “Hard life to live, though. Hard line to walk.”
“All lives are hard. But some leave you alive, and some leave you dead.” Nita’s voice was thoughtful.
Kovit rolled his eyes and plopped down on the bed. He pulled his phone out of his pocket. There was a suspicious smudge on it.
Nita raised her eyebrows. “Did you get ice cream?”
He laughed at her look. “It looked really good. And Adair had six cones. I wanted one.”
Nita shoved his arm. “You didn’t bring any back for me.”
“It would have melted.”
“Excuses, excuses.”
He grinned and unlocked his phone. Then his eyebrows pulled together as he stared at his screen. “What . . .”
Nita frowned and looked over his shoulder.
“What is it?”
“It’s an email.” Kovit swallowed and looked up at Nita. “From Henry.”
Twenty-Eight
NITA’S HEART RATE SPIKED. An email from Henry.
“Did Gold see you?” Nita asked.
Kovit shook his head. “No, look at the time stamp. This was sent before Gold got to the store.”
“Okay. That’s good news at least.” Nita tried to keep her tone optimistic. “Maybe it’s another phishing email. You said he sent one before.”
Kovit closed his eyes, as though drawing strength, then opened them and whispered, “I don’t think I’ll be that lucky this time.”
Nita’s heart sank, pulled down by oozing strands of dread. “What does it say?”
“He says . . .” Kovit swallowed, eyes flicking over the screen. His voice was small and cracked. “He says if I don’t come back to him, he’ll release my photo and evidence that I’m a zannie to the public.”
Nita stared, horror widening her eyes and her heart popping like an overfull balloon.
No.
When Nita was seven, a woman in Los Angeles had been accused of being a zannie. The Dangerous Unnaturals List was in its infancy, and this was the first test of it. It had been in the media enough, and everyone knew there were no consequences to killing a zannie. So they went zannie hunting.
Problem was: the woman wasn’t a zannie.
A jealous ex-boyfriend had posted the information online and Photoshopped the official INHUP notification on it. Then he’d spread it on every message board and forum he could find, and word spread, so fast no one remembered the source. The local news reported like it was fact, the city went into a furor, trying to find this zannie.
And when they found her, they slaughtered her.
Brutally.
Similar stories had cropped up of other people in other cities. After a while, people became more aware of the need to verify the facts with INHUP. But once things were verified, it was still an all-out massacre.
It was bad enough Nita needed to hide her face. Most people outside of the market wouldn’t murder her on sight.
They would murder Kovit.
She could imagine the mob, a swarming mass of people, gunning down Kovit. In her mind’s eye, Mirella led the crowd, followed by a sea of faceless victims she knew were littered through his past. Kovit’s body would jerk when the bullets hit him, like a puppet whose strings had been cut. He’d fall to his knees, then down to the ground, the side of his face pressed into the pavement, blood trickling down the corner of his mouth. His bright eyes would go dim, his twisted, creepy smile slacken into emptiness.
No.
“Henry can claim anything he wants.” Nita’s voice was hard. “But it takes pretty damn good evidence for INHUP to convict someone as a zannie and put them on the watch list. And people are hyperaware of hoaxes these days.”
Kovit’s voice was thick. “He says he’s attached a piece of the evidence he’d leak.”
Nita’s heart sank. Attached? If the evidence was electronic, it would be hard to destroy. And once it was online, there was no escape.
That was something Nita knew well.
Kovit clicked on the attached file, and Nita leaned over his shoulder.
A man, somewhere in his forties, was strapped to a table in the middle of a white room. The stainless steel table reminded Nita of her dissection room. There was even a tray of dissection tools on a cart nearby.
The difference was this man was very much alive.
He was gagged, and his terrified eyes swung toward the camera, then away, searching, begging. Nita’s heart sped up, suspecting where this was going, but needing to see, to know, to confirm.
Kovit walked in.
He was young. Nita would have put him at ten or eleven. Before his growth spurt, his face still rounded with baby fat, eyes large and shining.
He smiled, wide and creepy, eyes laughing silently and his mouth curled into something almost inhuman.
His smile said, “I’m going to have fun. But you’re not.”
The video stopped, frozen with younger Kovit midstride. Nita blinked, thinking that was the end, until she saw Kovit’s thumb on the Pause button at the bottom of the screen.
Kovit shook beside her, his eyes as wide and frightened as the man he’d tortured.
Nita reached over to press the Play button, but he caught her hand.
“Don’t,” he whispered.
She licked her lips. “We need to know if it—”
“It’ll show what it needs to.”
“You remember?”
“That one? Not really. But others. It will have evidence.”
Nita licked her lips. “Maybe that you hurt him, but that you’re a zannie?”
“Does it matter? I’m pretty sure they’d put a wanted ad out for a mafia torturer, even if I weren’t a zannie.”
True, that.
Kovit’s voice was small. “If he outs me, I’ll have to go back anyway. I’ll need his help to hide and stay under the radar. I’d be doomed on my own.”
It was smart. It was the kind of thing her mother would do.
Nita cleared her throat. “Why did you stop the video?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” He turned to her, thick eyebrows pulled together. “I didn’t want you to see.”
Nita returned his gaze, unblinking. “Are you ashamed?”
“Not at all.” A hint of a smile crept back into his face.
“I know what you are.”
“I know.” He looked away. “But there’s a difference between knowing and seeing.”
Nita swallowed, remembering Mirella’s shrieks of agony echoing down the hallway, and Kovit’s mad laughter as he did . . . things.