She laughed a little. “Sure, you’ll win the hospital beauty pageant crown.”

He took another sip of water, and his smile fell, his expression turning pensive. His eyes strayed to the policeman at the door and then back to Nita. “I get the feeling I missed a lot.”

She spent the next hour updating him, careful of what she said in case the policeman was listening. She managed to unobtrusively tell him the story she’d given the police about how they’d met and his relationship in INHUP, worried that the police would come any minute to take his statement and he’d accidentally contradict Nita and put them both in a bad situation.

Kovit listened as she explained, his eyes hooded, and she couldn’t tell what he thought of their cover story. Once she was finished, he was silent for a long time before he asked softly, “My sister?”

“Gone. I don’t know where.”

He nodded slowly, eyes sad, and didn’t say anything more about it.

The police arrived shortly after, and Nita was asked to leave the room while they took Kovit’s statement. Most of the officers shifted uncomfortably and avoided eye contact with Kovit, and Nita found it a marvel. Kovit was bedridden, near death, and these armed adult men were still terrified of him.

She waited for the police to be done in the small room down the hall. It had a row of black chairs and a small end table, but there were no magazines here to view. Just an old TV that didn’t seem to work anymore.

Nita closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall as she slid into a seat, just breathing, letting relief swamp her. Kovit was alive. It wasn’t going to be easy, and his recovery would take time, but he was alive. And as long as he was alive, she could fix things. As long as he was alive, her mother hadn’t won.

Something sharp and jagged and terrible that had been clinging like a poison leech to the inside of her chest the past few days finally released, and her shoulders slumped, all the tension suddenly going out of them. She let out a heavy breath, tension whispering out of her body and bone-deep exhaustion taking its place. She’d been powering through the last few days on caffeine and desperation, and now that he’d woken, she just wanted to curl up beside him and sleep for the next year.

Not that she could. There was still a lot to do, even more now. Plans to weave, people to bribe, decisions to make. Agent Quispe was going to make life difficult.

“I heard Kovit woke up.”