When Villains Rise (Market of Monsters #3) - Rebecca Schaeffer Page 0,51

don’t know,” Nita whispered. “It was supposed to be a week. Your sister even said that was how long verification took.” Her mind scrambled. “New evidence? Confirming evidence somehow?”

Or maybe her mother had figured out who Kovit was and pulled strings with her contacts to make it go up early.

The idea made her nauseous. But if anyone could find a way around the rules and get Kovit onto the list early, it would be her mother. A sick feeling settled in her stomach.

She shoved this aside. If it was her mother, so be it. She would handle it later. Right now, it wasn’t important why or how Kovit had been added to the list. What was important was dealing with it.

Kovit trembled on the ground, his chest heaving as though he couldn’t quite get enough air. “I’m going to die.”

“No—”

“Yes, Nita. My face is up. No matter what you do, even if you destroy INHUP, it’s too late. My face is already up.”

He ran his hands through his hair, fingers curling into his scalp, and Nita knelt beside him and grabbed his hands before he could scratch his skin off with his finger-nails.

“It’s not over until it’s over.” Nita’s voice was hard and sharp and desperate.

He laughed brokenly, his voice high and a little hysterical. “Nita, no one has escaped the list once their name and face are on it. No one.”

“No one escaped Death Market either.”

“Nita, this is not something you can fix.” His voice broke, and he took a moment to collect himself, his chest heaving, his throat gulping for air. “My name is out there. It’s over. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“It does. It always matters.” She pressed her hands to his cheeks. “Kovit, you can’t give up. You can’t.”

“Why?” His smile was bitter. “All my misdeeds are coming back to get me.”

Nita snorted. “You, of all people, should know there is no karmic justice in the world. There’s no meaning. You can spend your whole life being a saint and still get murdered in a random shootout,” Nita snapped, thinking of the real estate agent who’d taken a bullet meant for Nita in Toronto, her eyes widening as she cried out and fell. An innocent casualty in a war she didn’t even realize was happening. “And you can be the most terrible person in the world, and as long as you have money and power, no one will touch you.

“The world isn’t fair, Kovit.” Nita pressed her forehead to his. “Maybe you do deserve to die. Maybe you’re irredeemably evil. But I don’t care, and neither does the world. And God damn it, I’m not going to let INHUP take you from me.”

His breathing was shaky. “How? How can you stop this?”

Nita pulled away and tugged her cell phone out, giving him a gentle, careful smile. “You think I didn’t plan for this eventuality?”

He blinked. “What?”

“You gave me the idea. Back in Toronto. When you said I should start cultivating relationships with newspapers by selling off those corrupt INHUP names. So we could more easily release any information we got from Tácunan Law.”

“Yeah . . .” He frowned. “What about it?”

“Well, I thought about it a bit. I’ve been building a good relationship with an editor from the Washington Post.” She hesitated. “And then I realized I could do something like this.”

She showed him the email she’d been preparing, just in case.

He looked at the email, and his eyes widened. “I wondered why you wanted Pat and me to go to that café. There were so many people and reporters. You’d been trying to keep a low profile . . .”

Nita smiled slightly. “There’s a reason for everything.”

Kovit was silent a long moment. “Why didn’t you tell me what you planned?”

“I didn’t want to mess up your big day with Pat.” She looked away. “And I kind of hoped I’d never have to use this backup plan. For obvious reasons.”

His mouth pressed into a thin line, and his eyes were not quite looking at her. “What happened to discussing plans beforehand?”

She bowed her head, guilt twisting in her chest. How quickly she slipped back into old patterns when she wasn’t thinking. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I should have told you. I’ll do better.”

“Do you have other plans I don’t know about?” he asked softly.

She shook her head. “No. Just this one.”

“Did you think I would veto it?”

“You still can.” Nita put her phone away. “I haven’t done anything yet. I won’t press Send until you tell me