“The internet doesn’t gather dust.”
“You know what I mean.”
Gold shrugged, then winced. She rubbed her shoulder. “You might be able to access some of it from his phone?”
Nita pulled out the phone. It had a four digit passcode lock, but it was obvious from repeated screen smudging which numbers went in. Nita tried several combinations until she found the one that unlocked the phone.
She changed the passcode to something easy for her to remember, in case she needed to open the phone again. She opened his cloud account and scrolled through the files until she found one labeled Kovit.
It was absolutely full of videos.
Nita shivered, too scared to click on any of them. She knew enough.
She looked up at the permissions, to see if she could delete the whole whack of them, and froze.
In the permissions was another person’s name.
Nita swore. Then calmed herself. So there was someone else with the files. Okay. Fine. One person wasn’t the end of the world. She could find a way to delete their files.
“Gold, who is Nathan Rand?”
“The Family lawyer.” Gold frowned. “Why?”
“The files on Kovit have been shared with him.”
Gold stilled. “Oh.”
“What?”
She hesitated. “Check Henry’s emails. You need to see if he put a failsafe in.”
“A failsafe?”
“Henry is—was—careful. Anytime he blackmailed someone or did something, you know, that would make someone want to kill him, he’d send the files to Nathan and get him to release all the blackmail if anything went wrong.”
Fuck.
Nita went to the inbox and scrolled through.
There. Yesterday. Henry emailed Nathan and told him to leak all the photos and videos of Kovit.
To INHUP.
After Kovit came back to him. After Kovit agreed to work for Henry in exchange for not having those files leaked.
Henry had lied.
She skimmed the message, eyes snagging on one line: This time, we’ll make sure he has nowhere else to go.
Nita stopped reading.
Kovit’s name, picture, and identity had been disclosed to INHUP. They knew he was a zannie. His face would be going up on all of the most wanted lists, news shows, everything they could think of until he was found and killed.
She checked it again, following the chain of mail. This Nathan person had emailed Henry INHUP’s response.
Thank you for making us aware of one Kovit Sangwaraporn (alias; real name unknown). We’re looking into the evidence you’ve given us. If the evidence proves that he is indeed a zannie, his name and photo will go up on the public listing of dangerous unnaturals in one week, and a global manhunt will begin.
Rest assured, INHUP will eliminate this monster.
Nita looked back toward the room where Kovit was making Fabricio scream. Her plans began to fall apart, crumbling in the absence of Kovit’s presence, and through it all, the image played over and over in her head of Kovit’s body, riddled with bullets, falling to the ground, lost forever. Of mobs celebrating his death, of his beautiful eyes darkening into silence.
Nita clenched her fist around the phone.
She wouldn’t let that happen.
No one had survived being put on the Dangerous Unnaturals List bulletin. But no one had ever escaped from Death Market, and Nita had destroyed it. She’d blown up her enemies, murdered those who sought to kill her. She’d kidnapped INHUP agents.
Nita would do whatever it took to get Kovit off that list before it became official.
She wouldn’t fail him.
Acknowledgments
This book was a nightmare to write.
It was my first book under contract, my editor changed right before I started writing it, my debut was coming out, and there was a major family tragedy. To say I wasn’t in a great place mentally while writing is the understatement of the year.
The first time I wrote the book, it was alllll wrong. The plot was wrong, the character arcs were wrong, everything was just . . . bad. And I didn’t know how to fix it. So I sent the book to my amazing friends J. S. Dewes and Kim Smejkal, and they were honest with me—there were some great things in the book, but it was really, really broken.
So I took a deep breath, moped, took long dramatic walks in the brisk winter air, and I rewrote the book. New plot. New characters. The only thing I kept was half of one character arc and the first few chapters. The rest went into the trash bin folder, and I rewrote the book, basically from scratch.
So, a million thanks to J. S. Dewes and Kim Smejkal, because without them, it would have been a much harder journey.
Thanks also to my other beta readers, who provided incredibly valuable feedback on that rewrite—Aurora Nibley, Stacey Trombley, Xiran Jay, Erin Luken, Yamile Méndez, Rania, Natasha, you’re all rock stars, and I’m super grateful for all your feedback.
I also need to express a million thanks to my agent, Suzie Townsend, and her assistant, Cassandra Baim. My debut year was a bumpy ride, and I’m so, so grateful to them both for helping fix problems, explain things, smooth things over, and just generally being amazing.
Thanks to my editor, Nicole Sclama, and the entire crew at HMH Teen, especially Leila for all my publicity stuff, Tara Sonin for being a bubble of wonderful energy and getting things done, Tara Shanahan, Veronica, Emma, and everyone else involved in the HMH Teen fall 2018 tour for making an author dream of mine come true. I love you all, and I’m so grateful to everyone. Also thanks to the team at Raincoast Books, especially Federica, for all my Canadian publicity. You guys are awesome.
I wanted to thank everyone who kept me sane on my roller-coaster debut year and while I wrote this book. The Electric Eighteen group, for being a font of knowledge and support. Elly Blake, Sara Holland, Rebecca Sky for your wonderful blurbs, your advice, and your kindness. Rachel Lynn Solomon and Lianne Oelke for doing events with me and making launch WAY less terrifying. All the Pacific Northwest writers who came to my book launches to support me! You’re all wonderful. And all my friends and family who came to the launch, you’re all the best.
I also need to thank Julia Ember and Laura Lam for the industry perspective and wisdom I so desperately needed in my debut year, and for putting up with all my anxious shit while I bumbled around Edinburgh. I also want to thank the lovely people I met in the Edinburgh writing meet ups and the operator for my tour of the Scottish Highlands for all his kelpie stories.
Thanks also to the book bloggers, bookstagrammers, librarians, bookstore employees, and other people who recommended and talked about Not Even Bones and Only Ashes Remain. All of you make this dream possible.
Finally, thanks to everyone who kept me sane in some way on this journey. In no particular order, special thanks to Julia Ember, Xiran Jay, Judy Lin, and Kim Smejkal.
Last, a million thanks as always to my family, who’s so supportive. To my grandparents and aunt and uncle and cousins who flew out for my debut launch, to my parents for buying and giving away copies of my book and for always being encouraging about a very unstable career choice.
And thank you to all of you, my readers, for supporting me. I hope you enjoy this book!
www.hmhteen.com
About the Author
Author photo by S. Schaeffer
REBECCA SCHAEFFER was born and raised in the Canadian prairies, but her itchy feet have taken her far from home. You can find her sitting in a café on the other side of the world, writing about villains, antiheroes, and morally ambiguous characters.
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