Beside him was Quispe.
She turned to say something to Fabricio with a gentle smile. Her immaculate black suit was a sharp contrast to his floppy sweatpants and T-shirt.
Nita swallowed and uncapped her syringe, suddenly extremely glad they hadn’t decided to take out the INHUP agents in a more permanent way, like Adair had suggested when Nita asked to buy his ketamine. She wouldn’t have been able to go through with killing Quispe.
For the first time, she actually felt she understood Kovit’s rules about not hurting people he knew. But it was still different. Nita liked Quispe. She knew Fabricio, and all she felt for him was a desperate desire to murder him.
Nita’s heart jackhammered in her chest as the pair came closer and closer. Her sweaty fingers clutched the syringe, and she struggled to keep her breathing even.
Quispe opened the car door, and motioned Fabricio inside. He crawled in, pleather squealing in protest as he slid by. Quispe followed, with far less noise and far more poise.
She froze when she saw Kovit in the front.
“What—”
Nita drove a syringe into her neck, and the agent slumped onto the seat of the car, before her body weight pulled her down onto the floor of the back seat.
Fabricio freaked and went for the open door, but Nita slammed it closed and yelled, “Drive!”
The doors all locked automatically when the car started moving. Kovit pulled them away from the curb and into traffic.
Fabricio yanked on the handles repeatedly, then started smashing the windows, but nothing worked. He spun to Kovit, but Nita vaulted over the back seat out of the trunk and into the seat beside Fabricio. She kicked him in the face as she was in the air, and he yelped, falling backwards and cracking his head on the window.
“I wouldn’t do anything to the driver if I were you.” Nita’s voice was calm as she settled into her seat beside Fabricio. She removed the swelling on her face and took off her hat. She slipped into Spanish without even thinking about it. “After all, we’re driving, and we’re about to get on the highway. People don’t survive highway accidents very often.”
Fabricio turned slowly to face her, his eyes huge. There was a small smudge of blood on the window where’d he hit his head. “Nita.”
Nita smiled, sharp and predatory. “Hello again, Fabricio.”
Thirty-Two
FABRICIO SWALLOWED and stared at her. Nita flicked out her scalpel—also courtesy of Adair, she’d never been happier to have a scalpel back in her possession—and gave Fabricio a smile. “I suggest you stay right where you are until we get where we’re going.”
He blinked watery eyes and gingerly touched the back of his head. “So you can kill me with less mess?”
Nita just smiled wider.
His eyes flicked to the front seat. “Who’s your friend?”
“This is Kovit.” Nita’s finger gently traced the line of her scalpel, drawing blood and healing it. “You remember, I said that the market you sold me to had a zannie in its employ?”
Fabricio’s face went gray, and his eyes flicked to Kovit. “You’re joking.”
Nita switched to English. “Kovit, he thinks I’m joking that you’re a zannie.”
“Well.” Kovit took off his sunglasses and met Fabricio’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “I’d be delighted to give him a demonstration, but I’m driving at the moment. When we stop”—a flash of teeth—“I’ll make sure he won’t doubt.”
Nita opened her mouth to translate for Fabricio, but to her shock, he responded in English, lightly accented. “I’m fine without a demonstration, thanks. I’ll take your word for it.”
Nita swallowed the bitter taste in her mouth as she remembered how he’d faked not understanding English at all when he was her mother’s captive. Just another of his many lies.
“It’s no trouble. I do so love proving doubters wrong.” Kovit gave Fabricio a warped smile, one of his patented grins that implied all the dark and cruel things Kovit wanted to do to his victims. Nita suppressed a shudder at the sight.
Fabricio swallowed and tore his eyes away from Kovit and back to Nita. “Nita, please, can we talk about this?”
“Talk about what? How you sent half the black market to kill me? How you hired a mafia family to gun me down in the streets?” Nita’s voice was cold. “I think we’re done talking.”
“You poisoned me!” he cried. “You told me you’d stop at nothing until I was dead! I was trying to protect myself!”
“Like you were trying to protect yourself when you sold me out to Reyes?”
“Yes!” he yelled, then froze, eyes flicking back and forth and mouth turning down. “I mean, no.”
Nita tsked. “It’s a little late to be claiming innocence, Fabricio. Can’t we dispose of this facade?”
He glared at her, then looked away. “Look, I made a mistake. I was scared and desperate and stupid, and I regret what I did.”
“You only regret it because I got away and you got caught.”
He winced. “That’s not true.”
“Save me your pity speech.”
The car slowed, and Kovit angled it off the highway, down onto a small rural road. They bumped along, no other cars in sight. Fields stretched in front of them, occasionally blocked by a stand of trees. A row of quaint country houses sat just off the road, looking as pretty as if they’d been copied from a postcard. Just past them, a dilapidated farmhouse destroyed the picture.
Fabricio’s eyes flicked over the scenery, then jerked back to Nita. “Where are you taking me?”
“Somewhere no one will find your body.”
Kovit pulled into a small dirt road, down a winding lane to a small farmhouse that looked like it had seen better days. Much better days.
This was also courtesy of Adair—apparently it was one of his many safe houses. She’d initially assumed he disposed of bodies here, but then she remembered kelpies ate people, so any evidence of bodies was probably at the bottom of the lake after he’d finished eating.
They pulled up, and the car stopped with a crunch of gravel. Kovit killed the engine, plunging them all into sudden silence.
Nita leaned forward to menace Fabricio, but he twisted suddenly, foot coming up and snapping against her face. She flew back, and this time it was her head that smacked into the window.
He ripped out of the car, the doors having unlocked when the car stopped, and pelted away, feet skidding on the gravel, breathing fast and panicked.
Kovit swore and scrambled for his seat belt.
Nita clutched her bruised face, cursing herself for not switching the child lock on. Her cheekbone ground unpleasantly and the back of her head hurt. She healed them as she opened the other door. She got out gingerly, stumbling as her vision wavered while she was healing one of the wounds, eyes peeled for Fabricio.
She didn’t see him.
Kovit came around from the other side of the car and nodded toward the farmhouse.
He closed his eyes and licked his lips. “He went that way.”
He shivered softly as Fabricio’s pain trickled through him, those small micro pains that all humans had—a hangnail, a scrape, a bruise. No human had no pain. And Kovit was very good at detecting pain.