They’d given him the window seat, and Nita realized the drug had worn off when he sighed and said, “I really should have expected the drugs after our conversation. Like mother, like daughter.”

Nita flinched at that, remembering that was how her mother had kidnapped him and taken him on a plane too.

He didn’t say anything else after that. Part of her expected him to start screaming, “Kidnapping!” in the middle of the plane to get it to turn around, but he was eerily silent. Plotting, probably. If she were him, she’d be plotting—more than just trying to manipulate Kovit when Nita wasn’t there.

“He’s being too well behaved,” Nita whispered to Kovit after Fabricio plugged in his earphones and groggily watched an in-flight movie.

“Maybe we scared him enough?”

But Fabricio didn’t seem scared of them. He didn’t flinch when Kovit leaned over Nita to plug his charger in beside Fabricio. He just occasionally stared at both of them with these flat, angry eyes, his gaze boring into them with more judgment than Nita had thought a look could have.

“I don’t think so.” Nita looked over at Fabricio’s form and scowled. “He’s definitely biding his time and plotting something.”

Kovit shrugged, unconcerned. “Then we’ll deal with it when he makes his move.”

Nita sighed and settled back, accepting the truth of Kovit’s words. There was nothing she could do with just suspicions. Yet.

The plane ride was long, more than ten hours, and Nita slept for most of it. She woke up occasionally to check that Fabricio was still curled up in his seat, and then fell back asleep.

They cleared customs easily, no visa required. The airport, a glass-and-white-tile clone of every other airport in the world, was bustling with people. Nita flinched when people came too close, sticking as tightly to Kovit as she could. She was surprised to see Fabricio cringe every time people looked their way, shrinking in on himself, trying to make himself small and unnoticeable. The black circles under his eyes from his broken nose were stark in the harsh light, and his eyes flicked back and forth, trying to look at all the faces of the people around him at once, as though he might spot someone he knew.

He didn’t look like he thought that person would rescue him.

She wondered if it was his father he was so afraid of. If this was like her and her mother. Nita tried to imagine robbing her mother, and her whole body chilled at the very thought. She imagined how her mother would smile when she caught Nita, so wide, too wide, and she would whisper, “Someone’s been a bad girl.”

Nita didn’t want to think about what would come after.