“No,” she said.“But it makes him human.Not a monster.”
“My mother was human,” he shot back.“She worked herself into the ground for us.She cared for her father-in-law like he was her own.Do you know what happened to him after she died?”
Kate shook her head.
“Nothing,” Quinn said flatly.“Nothing good.I tried.Christ, I tried.But I was twelve.I couldn’t keep school, work, and an incontinent old man on three different medications going at once.So he went into a state home.Within months he was dead.Pneumonia.Or heartbreak.Take your pick.”
The silence that followed was heavy.
He filled it before she could.“Meanwhile, the woman your father spared lived another thirty years.I tracked her down.”His mouth twisted.“She was… not good.Cruel to her kids, cruel to her own parents.A drunk.A bully.Her mother, her own mother ended up in the ER with a cracked rib and a story about falling downstairs.”
A bitter laugh escaped him.“Your father choked a saint and let a monster flourish.”
Kate’s fingers curled into the sheet.“You’re saying he knew all that back then?That he picked someone he thought was a monster?”
“I’m saying,” Marsh replied, “that man in the white coat decided one life was worth more than another, and he got it wrong.Catastrophically wrong.That’s what happens when people forget they’re not God.”
A thought nudged at her, unwelcome but insistent.“Is this… are you telling me you killed my father?”
It came out smaller than she would have liked, but there it was.She knew a man was living out his days in a psychiatric facility, a man who could have done it, a man supremely eager to confess to it, too.She also knew that the whole case was riven with flaws and question marks.
Marsh stared at her, then snorted, a sound edged with contempt.For a moment—blessed, terrifying—he lowered the gun to his lap so he could gesture.
“No,” he said.“That wasn’t me.I’m not interested in vengeance.”His eyes flashed.“ ‘Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.’You know your Bible, Agent Valentine?”
“Enough to recognize you’re quoting it at gunpoint,” she said.
“God took care of your father,” Quinn went on, ignoring the jab.“Sent some angry man with a handgun to meet him outside a church.Neat, don’t you think?House of God to house of God.Same with the woman who was spared.Did you know she died in a fire?”
Kate swallowed.“No.”
“Electrical fault, they said.I prefer to think of it as a recalibration.”He smiled faintly.“I didn’t have to touch either of them.That wasn’t my role.I am not an instrument of vengeance.”His voice cooled.“I am an instrument of correction.”
He’d set the gun down as he spoke, resting it on his knee, one big hand lightly over the grip.It wasn’t much, but it was something.She catalogued the angle, the distance from her, the fact that if he turned his head further away—
“Correction,” she repeated, keeping him talking.“Balancing the books.”
"Exactly."Satisfaction warmed his tone."The Lawgiver showed us the way.When the fifth commandment is broken, when parents are abandoned, betrayed, or discarded, the balance must be restored."
Honor thy father and thy mother.
"Then why me?"Kate asked."I loved my father.I still love him.I don't dishonor my mother.If anything, I over-honor her if you ask her opinion.So why am I here?Why am I the target?"
His eyes sharpened.“Because you stand in my way.”
“Of what?”Her throat was dry.
“Of the Lawgiver’s plan for humanity.”He said it simply, like naming the weather.“You and your friends, running around with your badges and your degrees, putting bars and diagnoses and labels between people and the justice they deserve.You caught him”—a small nod, acknowledging her capture of Cox—“but you didn’t stop the commandment.You just drove it underground.It’s my job to bring it back into the light.”
“You think the Lawgiver wants you to kill his enemies?”she asked.“Because I talked to him recently, and funnily enough, he didn’t mention hiring a fan club.”
Something flickered in Marsh’s gaze—annoyance, maybe, at the implication he was just a follower.“He doesn’t have to speak to me like he does to you,” he said tightly.“He speaks in signs.In opportunities.Like the fact that you came here, alone.”His lip curled.“Honor, Agent Valentine, starts at home.If you honor your father, why has it been three years since you last visited his grave?”
She felt the sting and flushed.“Because he isn’tthere,” she answered, hotly.“He isn’t some patch of earth with a headstone.Only a… a fanatic would think that grief, or longing, or respect, had anything to do with putting down flowers or lighting a candle.”
“You don’t like me pointing out your failings.”
“I’m not going to let a serial killer lecture me on morality.Much less one who clearly pisses on his own mother’s memory with every breath he takes.”
