Nita sighed. “Do you ever shut up?”

“I try to annoy my captors as much as possible.” Gold’s eyes narrowed as she smiled at Nita. “Though I suppose you wouldn’t understand what it’s like to be a prisoner, would you?”

Nita stiffened, but didn’t rise to the bait.

They retied Gold together, and Nita tugged Kovit away before Gold could say anything else incendiary. Gold was far too good at hurting Kovit, and he had enough to deal with today.

They went and checked on Fabricio before they left.

Nita pushed open the pastel blue door to Fabricio’s room, and Fabricio raised his head. They’d left him tied to his chair all night, and there were circles under his eyes that told her that he hadn’t slept much. Small cracked flakes of scabs had fallen off and covered Fabricio’s pants like tiny bugs. Nita kept her eyes from straying to his hands. She didn’t want to see what they looked like.

“Good morning.” Nita’s voice was forced cheery. The pizza lay on the floor where she’d left it the night before, and she picked a piece up and shoved it in his mouth. “Breakfast time.”

Fabricio’s huge blue-gray eyes looked at Nita steadily. Judgingly. They stared right into her soul, and they found her wanting.

It made her want to poke them out.

Nita blinked at the sudden, violent urge. Hadn’t she once had nightmares about being forced to rip Fabricio’s eyes out? And now she fantasized about it. How times had changed.

She turned away before Fabricio could say anything, assured that he was still trapped and wouldn’t be making any escape attempts. She locked the door, just in case.

She nodded to Kovit when she returned to the lobby. “Ready?”

He gave her a tentative smile. “As I’ll ever be.”

They left the apartment and walked to the mall at Yonge and Eglinton—Nita had picked one of the few landmarks she knew, and part of her was a bit uneasy at the thought of meeting so close to home. Kovit stopped partway, so that if his sister was planning to turn him over, only Nita would get in trouble.

When Nita was small, her mother used to teach her tips and tricks for spotting INHUP agents, spies—people who didn’t belong. How to tell if you were walking into a setup. First, go early, or have someone else go early. See who’s there. Are they still there, doing the same things, half an hour later when the meetup is? How long does it really take to read the newspaper on a park bench, after all?