Yukiko Kudo sat on the chair beside the bed, eyes trained on the face that so much resembled her own child, messy hair framing a face that could, very much, be mistaken for Shinichi's bedhead. Had it not been for Shinichi himself, laying asleep in the bed across the room, child-body exhausted after waiting hours for her to arrive from America, she could have mistaken him for her own.
Yuusaku was somewhere with the French authorities, sorting out why their son, Shinichi, and his cousin Conan had been dragged all the way from Japan to here. She particularly did not relish having to answer exactly why they had been kidnapped, and how a wounded, gun-shot wound still bleeding, seventeen year old boy managed to fly a helicopter long enough to crash it into a police compound. She herself had to admit, Shin-chan's cover story was good, giving Yuusaku and herself the rights to move them anywhere they wanted, even out of the country and back to Japan.
Kaito Kuroba...
Kuroba...
She remembered the magician she had studied under when she was just about their age, honing her disguise skills, skills that she kept just as sharp, if not sharper, now. Those skills had kept Yuusaku out of harm's way more than once, and she would not begrudge her mentor's child any favours.
Which would be hard to do if Shin-chan insists on keeping the reasons for the Black Organisation targeting the boy a secret from her. The Black Organisation had accepted that Edogawa Conan is Shinichi Kudo, Kaito Kurota had to have been targeted for a different reason. The boy would probably be as stubborn and independent as Shin-chan, too.
The boy shifted, and she held herself still until he fell back into a deeper sleep, after which she padded softly back to Shin-chan's bedside. Just like Kurota, scratches and bruises mar him, and she had to fight the urge to scoop him up into the private jet they had chartered and hide him in their American estate. It must have wounded his pride very much, having to call his parents for help. His need for secrecy is so strong, she worried that he would not survive long enough to wake up and realise that sometimes, it is best to accept outside help.
Even if it takes a doppelganger sort of friend.
She'll just chalk it up as another favour received from the Kuroba family.