Patchaya let out a short breath. “Is he here? In Toronto?”

Nita nodded.

“Can I see him?”

Nita hesitated before agreeing. She hoped Patchaya wouldn’t ask him any hard questions.

“Of course. But first”—Nita met Patchaya’s eyes—“I have a favor to ask.”

Patchaya’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “A favor?”

“After his—your—mother died, Kovit was picked up by a criminal organization.” Nita was careful with what she said. She needed to tell the truth. Just not all of the truth. “He ran away after refusing to obey them. But they don’t want him spilling their secrets, so they found evidence he’s a zannie, and they sent it to INHUP.”

Patchaya’s expression flickered, first swelling with pride, her eyes watery, and then slowly sinking into fear and panic as the rest of the information set in. Nita had been careful to paint Kovit as sympathetically as possible while still keeping enough to the truth so that if Patchaya investigated, the information Nita gave would match up. Based on Patchaya’s expressions, she’d played it properly.

“He’s been outed to INHUP?” Patchaya whispered.

“Yes. We have one week before there’s an international manhunt for him.”

Her breath caught. “One week? That’s so fast. That’s the mandatory minimum time INHUP has to take to verify the information is accurate, but it almost always takes much longer. The evidence must be overwhelming.”

That was not what Nita wanted to hear.

“One week,” Nita confirmed softly.

Patchaya’s head bowed. “So little time.”

“We were hoping, since you’re an INHUP agent and working in the dangerous unnaturals section . . .”

She shook her head. “If you’re asking me to delete documents or something, I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Can’t.” Her voice was heavy. “Those kind of reports are handled by the central INHUP headquarters in France. To get rid of that information, I’d have to fly to France, wipe their servers, and then somehow stop the three to five people working on his case from talking.”

Nita frowned. “Why so many people?”

“When an individual is reported to the Dangerous Unnaturals List, it’s a multistep thing. First, someone has to verify the claims. That could mean DNA evidence is tested, or video files are reviewed by experts, or any number of other things.

“Part of the verification also involves sending that information to people working on cases involving zannies. For example, if there’s a report on a zannie in San Diego, and a murder by horrific torture was committed there recently, the information is sent to the people working on that case to see if the culprit is the zannie.”

The train doors whooshed open as they hit the next station, and Patchaya sighed. “There’s also an investigation crew that usually tries to independently verify the information.”

“That’s . . . a lot.”