Nita’s heart broke a little at the sound, at the fragile cracks in his voice.

“They’ll probably hate me forever. This will be . . . It will be the end.” He looked at her, lashes casting dark shadows on his cheeks. “And I don’t want it to end.”

Nita didn’t know what to say to that, because there wasn’t much she could say. She could tell him that he had other support now, that he wasn’t alone anymore, a scared child trapped in a cage with only the friends on the other side of the screen to keep him sane. But that wouldn’t change how much these people meant to him or lessen the blow of their loss.

So instead, she just squeezed his hand gently, letting him know she was there.

He looked back down at his phone and finally started typing, his fingers slow and heavy as they slid across the screen.

She turned to her own phone. She hadn’t actually read through Kovit’s listing, and she wondered what it said. What horrors his friends were imagining. She found her fingers flicking across her screen before she could stop herself.

It didn’t say much. Just that he was there, he’d committed multiple crimes against humanity.

And that he was currently in Buenos Aires.

Nita swore. Viciously.

Kovit raised his head from the screen, hair flopping across his face. “What is it?”

She sighed and leaned back. “Nothing. Just an annoying complication.”

He groaned softly. “How bad?”

“The listing puts you in Buenos Aires.”

He frowned. “But . . . how?”

Nita’s lips pressed into a thin line. “I don’t know. I only told one person where we were going.” She met his eyes. “Adair.”

Kovit shook his head. “He wouldn’t sell our location to INHUP. He hates the list.”

“I know.” She pulled out her phone and put it to her ear, voice grim. “But I have to ask. Especially since he’s still furious at me for melting his skin off.”

Kovit stared at her with a mixture of horror and fascination. “You melted his skin off?”

She nodded.

“Did it hurt?”

Of course that was what he was concerned with. She shrugged. “I imagine so.”

Kovit looked like he wanted to ask more, but the phone clicked and the ringing stopped.

“Hello?”

Adair’s voice was tinny over the phone, losing much of its smoothness. It was strange to hear him without seeing his teeth, knowing that beneath his mask, a monster lurked. Just hearing him over the phone, she could pretend he was as human as anyone else.

“So I saw that somehow Kovit’s location got on the dangerous unnaturals listing,” Nita began with no preamble.

“Nita?”

“Who else?”

“Indeed.” Adair sighed. “I didn’t expect to be hearing from you so soon.”