Katharine Smith

Katharine Rachel Smith (maiden name Bryans), also referred to Katharine or simply Kathy, was the wife of Scott Smith and foster mother of Simon Lynch. Katharine and Scott took in Simon from the foster-care system on June 26, 1998, two weeks after the death of NSA Division's Lt. Colonel Nicholas Kudrow at the IBM Building in downtown Chicago. They were returning home from a business meeting of Scott's in Grand Rapids the morning of February 1, 1999 when Simon suffered his first chaos seizure, necessitating a visit to Chas Ohlmeyer's office at the Miglin-Beitler Skyneedle, since they wanted a specialist to diagnose and treat Simon instead of a regular doctor. Six days later, on February 7, their home at 2552 'J' Street was converged on by an assault team from Robert Donaldson's Zero Section that was attempting to capture and kill Simon. They were quickly repulsed, however, by an opposing FBI SWAT team who stormed the house on the reluctant orders of local FBI A-SAC Tommy Jordan. Katharine relented to allowing Special Agent Art Jeffries to take Simon into protective custody of sorts for two weeks, not knowing why exactly, with Jeffries having told her and Scott that Simon had witnessed a mob-related crime. She was killed on March 5 along with Scott in the bombing of the Chicago Span of the Lake Michigan Overpass by Zero Section agents Andrew Ridd and Will Patterson.