“I don’t have time to talk, please come,” he snapped.
“Be there in five,” she snapped back.
Simon told Yale, “The cops are on the way.”
Yale started to cry. Deep sobs.
“What the hell?” Simon said, sitting atop Yale’s back to keep him here. “What did you know about my biological father?”
“Not a whole lot other than your mother said he was a useless drunk,” he said. “I do know that you were born to a tavern girl, and she was a nightmare. She ended up selling you to my father for barely any money. You were a toddler at the time.”
Simon just stared at him.
“You better take your money back, or the cops will wonder where I got it from.”
Simon looked down at his ex-friend and lifted the money from his pocket, realizing that part was true. He shoved it inside his own jacket pocket, glaring. “Goddammit, Yale.”
“What do you want me to say, Simon? I stayed friends with you because I was part of that whole mess,” he said, “caught between guilt and hatred. I don’t know which was worse.”
“You could have asked for help to get away anytime,” he snapped.
“Maybe I didn’t want to get away,” he said. “Maybe I just want to die.”
“And how the hell will you manage that?” he said. “It’s not that easy to commit suicide while you’re in prison.”
“I figured that, if I told you the truth,” he said, “you’d kill me.”
“Well, I’m not,” he said. “And the cops aren’t either.”
“It would be easier if you did.”
“Not happening.”
“Damn it,” Yale said, starting to get angry.
“Whatever,” Simon said. “You have to pay the penalty, just like everybody else.” It wasn’t long before he heard sirens, and, as he turned, Kate raced toward him. At least one other and possibly a second vehicle were coming in too. He couldn’t see them yet. He nodded at the gun by his side. “The gun is his. He was trying to figure out what to do with me, when I took him out.”
“And you’re bleeding,” she snapped.
“It’s just a scratch,” he lied, refusing to give in to the pain. “If you take this asshole from me, I can clean it up.”
“Well, what the hell?” she said, looking down at the man on the ground. “We’ve got cops out looking to pick up your brother, by the way.”
Stunned, Yale looked up at her. “What?”
“We’ve got you. We’ll have your brother soon. Now the question is, what we can do about your sister. We’re picking her up right now too.”
At that, Yale started to laugh, but there was a bitterness to it. “You can’t do anything,” he said. “She’s a doctor. It’s client confidentiality. She’s known what we’ve done and what we are all along,” he said. “She’s the same, just that she lives it through us and not through deeds of her own.”
“Which makes a lot of difference but not enough,” Kate said, staring at him in disgust.
“Maybe,” he said, “but you won’t pin anything on her. She’s too smart.”
“That’s not my problem right now.” Kate stood him up, putting handcuffs on him. “What I want to be sure of is that we’ve got you too.”
“It won’t matter,” Yale said. “He’s dead already.”
She stopped, staring at him in shock. “Who’s dead?”