There was even a smile on her lips when she said, "You won't have a chance to make Kevin into anything except anew orphan. Because after you kill us, they'll find you, Gibb. An FBI agent named Jim Pepperdyne will hunt you down until he catches you.
"If you survive the capture, Kevin will be taken away from you, and you'll never see him again. I grieve that my son won't know me. But I thank God that he won't know you.
You won't have an opportunity to indoctrinate him to your bigotry. You won't be around to twist his mind, steep him in hatred, and turn him into a cold-blooded monster like you.
"You failed with Matt, you know. Because in the end, he wasn't the heartless, mindless, obedient automaton you wanted him to be. He was a human being with all the frailties and emotions as the rest of us. He loved Lottie. Perhaps even more than he loved you. That's what you couldn't tolerate.
"And you'd fail with Kevin, too. Except you won't even have a chance with him. Kevin won't bear your name. Thank God he won't even know it."
"You sound exactly like my late wife," Gibb said. "Like you, Laurelann got curious about our expeditions into the woods at night and discovered the Brotherhood. Unfortunately, she wasn't blessed with the gift of understanding. She warned me about capture. She swore she would take Matthew away and that I'd never see him again, but her threats were as empty as yours." He nodded toward one of the chairs. "Sit down. My grandson needs his mother."
Torn between wanting desperately to take her son away from him, and wondering what sort of trap he was laying, Kendall hesitated. She was disinclined to move too far away from John, not knowing what Gibb's next move might be.
But maternal instinct won out. She came to her feet and took Kevin from Gibb. She clutched the baby to her chest and moved her hands over him, trying to touch as much of him as she could in the short time she had left. Kevin immediately stopped crying.
The change in the infant wasn't lost on Gibb. "I'm going to give you a choice, Kendall," he said. "Under the circum stances, I think I'm being much more generous than you deserve.
"It would only take a few days to wean the boy. At which time, you would be erased from his memory forever. He would become accustomed to me and would rely on me for everything.
I could, and will, make him entirely mine.
"But unfortunately, at this stage in his development, he needs a mother. So you have a choice. You can either die now alongside your illicit lover, or you can come with me and tend to your child for a while longer.
"Either way, you'll pay with your life for your sins of treachery and fornication, but you'll have a little more time with the boy. I'm not making this offer because you deserve it, but because I want what's best for my grandson."
"Those are my choices?"
"I need your decision quickly. As clumsy as they are, it's possible that the FBI will also track you here."
"I'll go with you, Gibb, and I'll cooperate with you," she pledged. "I might even be an asset to you. As you know, I'm very good at disappearing. But let John live."
Gibb frowned. "I'm afraid his life isn't negotiable. He committed adultery with my son's wife. For that, he must die."
"I was no longer married to Matt. He had divorced me."
"Nevertheless. As Matt said, in the eyes of God"
He aimed the rifle down at John.
"No, wait!" Kendall cried.
"Don't plead for my life with this son of a bitch," John said angrily. "I'd rather the bastard shoot me than have to wait.
"John didn't know I was married, or had been married.
Remember, Gibb?" Kendall said urgently. "He had amnesia.
I lied to him and told him he was my husband. It's my fault."
"But he recovered his memory," Gibb argued. "You said so yourself."
"I lied about that to defend myself against Matt. John didn't recover his memory until this morning."
"That's not true, Burnwood," John said. "I've known for more than a week who I was and who she was. I continued sleeping with her because I enjoyed it."
"He's lying, Gibb."
"Why would he lie?" Gibb asked her.
"To distract you in the hope of protecting Kevin and me.
His sworn duty is to protect us. He'll do it, no matter what he has to say."
"You know what a liar she is, Burnwood, " John said. "You'd be a fool to believe her."
"I'm not lying, Gibb. He woke up this morning with his memory restored. When he realized how I'd tricked him, he was furious. He intended to turn me over to the authorities for kidnapping him. I was running away when you arrived."
Her voice took on a pleading tone. "If you kill him, you'll be murdering an innocent man who was only carrying out his duty. You can relate to that, can't you? John abides by a code of honor similar to yours. He believes in what he does, and he doesn't let anything stop him from doing what he feels is right. Gibb, please. I swear I'm telling you the truth. He didn't know that in God's eyes I was still Matt's wife."
He pondered it, looking long and hard at John.
Finally he let out a heavy sigh. "Kendall, you're just no good at lying anymore. I don't believe a word of what you said. The man who made my son a cuckold must die."
He crooked his finger around the trigger, but a sudden and unexpected sound kept him from pulling it. If there was one sound Gibb recognized instantly, it was the click of a gun being cocked. He froze and cut his eyes toward Kendall.
"If you kill him, I'll pull this trigger." Kendall's voice was no longer thin and high with hysteria. It was low, level, and steely with resolve.
"My God," Gibb whispered. Some of the color drained from his ruddy face.
"That's right, Gibb. I'll protect Kevin from you, even if this is the only way I can do it. I'd rather see him dead than have him spend one minute in your company."
Kevin, exhausted from crying, had fallen asleep on the swell of her breast. His virtually translucent eyelids were closed, although a glistening tear still clung to his eyelashes. His lips were bowed and slightly parted.
The barrel of John's pistol rested against his temple.
When she had charged through the kitchen door, almost colliding with the Burnwoods, they had been as surprised as she. When they hustled her back inside, she had managed to slip the pistol into the pocket of her skirt, uncertain until this moment how she was going to use it.
Gibb had regained his composure. He was actually smiling over her theatrics. "You would never do it."
"Yes. I would."
"You love him too much, Kendall. Everything you've done so far running to Denver, escaping the marshals, hiding here has been to protect this baby."
"That's right. To protect him from you. If you shoot John"
The blast startled her. She jumped out of her chair so quickly that it fell over backward and crashed to the floor.
"If I shoot John . . . what?" Gibb taunted.
Horrified, Kendall stumbled backward until she came up against the counter. She stared in disbelief at John's crumpled form. He had fallen on his side, his cheek against the floor.
Blood was pooling beneath him.
"Well?" Gibb was standing and facing her now. He took a step forward. "Give me my grandson."
When she'd bolted from the chair, she had somehow managed to keep her hold on Kevin. Rudely awakened again, he was wailing. The pistol was now dead weight in her hand. It dangled lifelessly at the end of her arm at her side.
John hasn't moved. John's blood is all over the floor. John is dead.
He killed John.
Gibb, with his keen hunter's instinct, smelled the imminent surrender of his prey. He closed in.
She raised her hand. It was trembling so violently, it ap peered as though the pistol had a grip on her and she was trying to shake it off. "Don't make me do it, Gibb. Please."
"You would never kill your baby, Kendall."
"That's right. I would never kill my baby."
She turned the weapon on Gibb, and the small house echoed with a third gun blast.
Chapter 40
Kendall leaped over Gibb's body and knelt beside John.
"John? John?" She eased him onto his back.
"Is the son of a bitch dead?"
"Thank God you're alive." She bent down and hugged him close, squashing Kevin between them. "Thank God! I thought he had killed you."
"Is he dead?"
She glanced at the body. Gibbons Burnwood was unquestionably dead.
"Yes."
"Good."
She could have laughed with relief that he was able to talk, except that she was crying too hard. "Oh, John, look at you.
You're badly injured."
"I'm okay." But he wasn't. Each word was spoken on a feeble hiss. "How's the baby? Is he okay? Was he hurt?"
Kevin was squalling louder than ever. "He's had a rough morning.
John smiled through his pain. "Haven't we all?"
By now the house was swarming with FBI agents. Pepper dyne, in full assault gear like the rest of them, stomped in.
He took one look at John, swore lavishly, then poked his fingers in his mouth and whistled shrilly. "Get those paramedics in here. On the double."
"What took you so goddamn long?" John asked querulously as his friend crouched beside him. "I thought I would bleed to death before you struck. First, your approach was about as stealthy as a buffalo stampede, then you sat on your asses out there, scratching your balls, and let that bastard shoot me."
Pepperdyne pushed back his helmet and laughed. "No need to thank us, John. We know you're grateful."
Kendall was confused. "You knew they were out there, John?"
He nodded. "I saw motion through the screen and knew hoped what it meant. That's why I was doing everything I could to keep the Burnwoods occupied."
"You shouldn't have attacked Matt. They could have killed you right then."
"I didn't think about it. When he hit you . . . For a lot of reasons, I wish I'd killed him myself."
They exchanged a long, meaningful look that lasted until a paramedic slid an IV needle into his arm. "Ouch! Shit! That hurts."
"Which one of you is going to fill in the gaps for me?"
Pepperdyne asked. "I want to know exactly what went down."
Kendall watched medical personnel futilely check Matt's body for vital signs. She couldn't feel grief over the death of her former husband, but she did feel sorrow for his misguided life. "Gibb shot Matt."
"We saw that," Pepperdyne said. "Was it because of Mrs. Lynam?"
"Yes. Matt said Gibb had killed her."
"She was found in a motel room with her throat cut," Pepperdyne told them.
"Matt really loved her," Kendall said sadly. "He never had a chance for a happy life. Not with Gibb as his father."
"One of our sharpshooters would have taken out the old man when he shot Matt," Pepperdyne explained, except that he was holding the baby. It was too risky."
"You had him in your si ghts all that time?" Kendall asked.
"Yeah. Then when you sat down in that chair with the baby," he said, pointing, "you were in the line of sight. After he shot John"
"No big deal," John grunted as the paramedics lifted him onto a stretcher.
Pepperdyne told him to stop his whining, but it was apparent to Kendall that the two old friends were glad to be exchanging insults and jibes.
Pepperdyne picked up his explanation. "After Burnwood shot John, you moved to the counter," he said to Kendall.
"We hoped that holding that pistol to your baby's head was a bluff."
"Of course it was, and Gibb knew it. But I suddenly realized that after he shot John, he had laid the rifle on the table. He was no longer armed. I turned John's gun on him and would have shot him."
"Except that our guy got off a clean shot first. Straight through the head."
The sight of Gibb's head exploding was a horrible memory that would remain with Kendall for a long time. She shivered and held Kevin closer against her.
"How'd you get John's weapon?" Pepperdyne asked.
She glanced at John.
"I gave it to her," he lied.
"Yes," she agreed quickly. "He gave it to me for safekeeping.
"Why'd you place your weapon into her safekeeping?" the agent wanted to know. "Come to think of it, you're supposed to have amnesia! In all the excitement, I forgot about that.
No pun intended. When did you recover your memory?"
"Give us a break, Jim," John said, groaning. "Kendall can give you her statement later. Right now she needs to see to the baby, and I guess I'm due a few stitches."
Pepperdyne cleared a path for them and stood by while John was moved to one of the waiting ambulances. "Will you be all right?" Kendall asked anxiously.
"I'll be fine," he assured her. He patted Kevin on the bottom. "Will he be all right?"
"He won't remember it."
"I'll never forget it," he said softly. "None of it."
The paramedics folded up the legs of the gurney and placed it in the ambulance. She and John maintained eye contact even as the doors were closing, then she watched the ambulance until it turned off the lane onto the road.
"Mrs. Burnwood." Pepperdyne touched her arm. "My car's over here, waiting to take you back to town."
"Thank you."
He sat with her in the backseat while another agent drove.
"John's tough. He'll make it."
She gave a little smile. "I know."
"You know that he's tough, or that he'll make it?"
"Both."