“No, you son of a bitch. You’re nothing like Clayton. You look just like your father. For all your wanting to twist Clayton into what you imagined him to be, he’s nothing like that psychotic old bastard, but you? You’re the protégé he always wanted. You fought so hard to punish him and everyone else for a wrong he did you and your poor mother, and now look at you. You’re the one most like him. He’s the one you made proud, not Marion.”
Simon looked surprised at the mention of his mother’s name. Kate noticed and smiled. “Oh, your boy Jessup? He gave me a whole box of poor Marion’s journals. They belong to me now. I assume that’s what got you started on this vendetta in the first place, right?” She didn’t let up and kept going. “You’re a joke. I guess that’s the one difference between you and the man that sired you. People on that mountain respected your father, God knows why, but they did. They still talk about him. But you? No one will ever respect what you did. No one will talk about you. You’re no better than Halford or any of the people you claim did you an injustice. You’re exactly the same. And it looks like you’ll end up the same as they did without any help from me.”
She lowered the gun, but Simon stayed planted against the counter. They stood there in silence for a long time.
“You said there were two reasons you never talked to the feds,” Simon finally said.
Kate was tired, it was showing on her face, but she reached down with her free hand and smoothed the front of her baggy sweater over the small bump of her belly. She held the sweater tight for Simon to figure it out. It didn’t take him long.
“You’re pregnant,” he said. It was more a statement than a question. Kate put both hands back on the gun.
“I wanted to tell you myself,” she said. “I needed to see your face. For all your plans and years of preparation to end the Burroughs bloodline, it was all for nothing. You failed. Clayton would have found out about his son the day you set him up to die. You took that from him. From me. But you’re done taking things, Simon.” She raised the gun again. “So that brings me to the crossroads I mentioned. Do I kill you? Right here, right now, and be done with it? Do I infect myself with the same sickness you brought into my home, or can I be content letting you rot away in a federal prison, or watching you kill yourself in a hole like this one, one pill at a time?”
Simon didn’t say anything. The oxy was doing its job and he felt his strength returning to his sore muscles. He’d let her talk just a few more minutes.
“I needed to see your face,” she said. “I needed to know if you would come after my son. I needed to know if you are that twisted and dead inside that you would come after an innocent child. Or . . . if you could let it end.”
Simon glared at her.
“So tell me, Simon. Can you let it end?”
He took his time answering. He looked down at the bottle of pills he was still holding and rolled it around in his palms. He set them on the counter and met Kate’s eyes.
“Yes, ma’am,” he said.
Maybe it was the glint of sunlight on his teeth, or the slight upturn of the corner of his mouth. Maybe it was the way his left eye blinked just as he spoke. Or maybe it was nothing at all.
“I don’t believe you,” she said, and shot him in the chest.
2.
Kate was still holding the gun, standing over Simon’s body, when Val and Scabby Mike came in the front door. Mike slid his hands over hers and after a time she let go of the gun, and Mike tucked it into his pants at the small of his back. “Mrs. Burroughs,” he said in a kind voice. “Are you okay?”
Kate nodded. “I’m fine.”
“I think you best be going, Katie,” Val said as he dropped a rolled canvas tarp on the kitchen floor next to Simon’s body.
“What happens now?” she said.
Mike gently moved her back toward the door. “We clean this up and you go home.”
“What are you going to do with him?”
“Doesn’t matter, Mrs. Burroughs. We’ll take care of this. You need to get going now.”
Val put a hand on Mike’s shoulder and moved him to the side. It was easy to do; Val was nearly twice Mike’s size. “We’re going to take him back to the mountain, Katie. Where he belongs.”