NO SOONER HAD HENRY SPOKEN than Nita felt the cool press of a steel barrel on the back of her neck. She turned her head and caught a glimpse of short blond hair, white bandages, and an ear full of studs. Gold. Beside her, the other man who’d chased Nita also had his gun trained on her.
Henry sat on the bed, legs crossed, a faint smile on his face. A gun hung loosely in his hand.
Nita was sure if she resisted, the gun would be in motion faster than she could react. Three against one. Nita didn’t even have the gun in her hoodie pocket anymore.
The gun barrel pressed against her neck, forcing Nita forward. Gold closed the door behind her, trapping the four of them in the small room.
Henry shifted on the pastel sheets, his eyes cool and assessing, his smile creeping wider. “So nice of you to return.”
Nita opened her mouth but he spoke before she could respond. “Don’t bother screaming. When I met Adair earlier today, he told me he had this whole shop soundproofed years ago. He seems pleasant enough. Not too happy about the police swarming his shop looking for you.” Henry flashed her a smile. “Can’t say I blame him.”
Adair. That scheming, traitorous kelpie.
Nita ground her teeth. If she survived this, she was going to make him pay.
The gun vanished from the back of Nita’s head, but before she could move, hands grabbed her wrists with professional speed and zip-tied them. Tightly. Tight enough to cut off the blood circulation to her hands almost entirely.
Nita swallowed, wondering if it was cruelty or strategy. Nita would need to waste resources ensuring the cells didn’t decay without blood, and it would be more difficult to break out of them with restricted blood flow.
More difficult. But not impossible.
She shifted her hands, testing the zip ties, but before she could make a determination, Gold dragged her over to the chair by the table, gun back at her head.
Nita bit her lip. Even if she could break out of the zip ties, she’d just be shot in the head.
Henry smiled at Nita. “I don’t believe we’ve been formally introduced. I’m Henry.”
Nita wondered how far she could spit stomach acid. “Nita.”
Henry laughed. “Hello, Nita. As you may have heard, your friend Fabricio contracted me to kill you.”
“I know.”
“Of course you do. You’re dumb enough to make an enemy of the most powerful company in the world, but at least you know who they hired to kill you.” He leaned back, shaking his head. “I have to say, I don’t know what Kovit sees in you.”
Nita swallowed. Had Kovit betrayed her too?
Henry nodded to Gold and Nita felt hands roughly pulling at her pocket. Her cell phone came out, and Gold pressed it to Nita’s finger, unlocking it, before tossing it to Henry.
“Now, what shall I say to get him to come running?” Henry’s smile was cruel. “Ah, I know.”
He typed something into her phone, then tossed it on the bed. “Let’s see where his loyalties really lie, shall we?”
“Who’s Kovit?”
Henry rolled his eyes. “Please. Aside from the fact that I just messaged him on your phone, it was painfully obvious you two were working together.”
Nita shook her head, but didn’t say anything.
“Think about it. Kovit never asked me for a ticket to Toronto—which meant he was already here. Everyone from the black market coming to Toronto right now is here to hunt you.” Henry tapped his nose. “But I know Kovit. Kovit isn’t a hunter. He’s never been a hunter.
“To be a successful hunter, you need to get inside your prey’s head. You need to get to know them, their lives and routines. To catalog their friends and enemies. To understand them enough to predict where they’ll go and what they’ll do in a situation.” Henry smiled, slow and creepy, a poor echo of Kovit. “It’s very intimate.”
Nita understood immediately. Kovit wouldn’t harm people he saw as people. The minute he humanized them, he couldn’t hurt them. Hunting someone required learning about them, and learning about them would humanize them, thus defeating the purpose of the hunt. Anonymity was a key to everything about Kovit. He could never harm people. But the shapeless, nameless, voiceless things who went into his torture chamber weren’t people.
Just like the ones who ended up on her dissection table.
“I knew right away that Kovit wasn’t hunting,” Henry continued. “But he came all the way to Toronto from the jungle, so it had to be related to you. I don’t believe in coincidences.”
Nita didn’t either.
“Then I realized, Nita, that you knew Kovit. That Reyes had been your captor and Kovit had been working with her.”
Nita’s stomach roiled. She knew where this was going. It was all so logical. Anyone who knew Kovit could have sussed this out.
“There were only two possibilities. Friends or enemies. Kovit isn’t big on vengeance—it’s too personal, you see, killing someone you know. He can’t kill people he hates just like he can’t kill people he loves.”
Henry spread his arms and shrugged. “So, it was fairly easy to figure out.”
Nita clenched her teeth. She’d been a fool.
No. Wait.
Nita’s eyes narrowed. “And you figured that out all on your own? I doubt it. You’re not that smart.”
He raised an eyebrow, and a muscle twitched in his mouth.
Nita sneered. “You know what I think? I think you had no idea we were connected until Fabricio came running to tell you I was working with a zannie.”
Because he would have. Nita was a fool not to have thought of it earlier. She knew Fabricio was in contact with Henry. Obviously he’d warn Henry about Kovit. And Henry would put two and two together.
Henry’s lips curled, and Nita knew she was right.
She laughed. “Aww, did I spoil things? You wanted to look like a genius who was so great at profiling Kovit’s personality, hmm? You’re pathetic.”
He smiled, wide and vicious. “Call me as many names as you want. It won’t change what’s going to happen today.”
He nodded to Gold, and the pressure from the gun barrel disappeared from the back of Nita’s neck. Gold came around in front of Nita and took a series of pictures of Nita in the chair. Nita glared, and Gold looked to Henry.
“Good.” Henry took out his own phone. “Let’s see how much we can sell her for.”
How was she back in this situation? Sure, this time her captor didn’t want to eat her—just sell her to someone who did. This was going to be her life. Always captured, no matter how hard she tried to protect herself. Always sold for someone else’s desires. Always trapped like a rat in a cage.
Nita clenched her jaw and leaned forward, zip ties slicing her skin so deeply it bled. She was not some ignorant, weak child. She’d escaped before, she’d escape again.
She had to do it before Kovit came. Otherwise he was walking right into the lion’s den. She didn’t know why Henry was setting a trap for Kovit when he’d already won Kovit back, and she didn’t want to find out.
Nita’s eyes found Henry as she began to calculate trajectories. She might be able to get out of the zip ties—might—even if it meant dislocating her thumbs and shedding some skin and muscle to fit through. But in the time she took to do that, Henry would have shot her.
Nita didn’t want to be shot again.
Her eyes flicked to Gold and the other man, both with weapons. Could she use one of them as a shield and then shoot Henry?
“Ah, I’ve already got a response.” Henry grinned and leaned forward, the bed creaking with the movement. “You’re going to make me a lot of money.”
Nita’s eyes narrowed.
She lunged forward, hooking the chair with her foot as she did and toppling it sideways into the man beside Gold. He fell with a crash, and Nita sprang through the air.
Something smashed on the back of her head.
Her cheek pressed into the wooden floorboards. She didn’t even remember falling. She blinked, trying to focus, but the world tilted and swirled. Or maybe she did.
Concussion.
She blearily tried to repair the damage, but she couldn’t hold her thoughts together long enough to issue orders to her body.
“Well, now you’ve gone and killed her, Gold.”
“She’s not dead.”
Nita needed to focus. Needed to. Before her brain began swelling too much.
She closed her eyes, but that made her sleepy, so she opened them again.
Focus.
Words swirled around above her. Someone grabbed her arms and roughly yanked her up and into the chair. They zip-tied her already bound arms to the chair. And her ankles.
Nita lay limp, not resisting. Her mind was too fuzzy.
Head wounds. Bad.
Focus.
She clenched her teeth. Lower the swelling. Lower it. That will help clear the fuzziness.
She wasn’t sure how long she sat there, drifting in and out, before she managed to beat back the fuzziness enough that the world stopped spinning and she could actually start fixing herself.
It was dark outside, and the moon hung like a flashlight beam on top of the world.
For the first time, she hoped whatever text Henry sent, whatever plea he’d made as Nita, that Kovit ignored it. That he didn’t return to her. Nothing good would happen if he came.
As if summoned by her thoughts, there was a click as the door unlocked.
Kovit walked into the room.