Hopper House (The Jenkins Cycle Book 3) Read Online Free

been a class act until now. You know what? Forget about it. Everyone has a bad day. So why don’t you go back and pick up Ricky and we’ll talk about it later. Smooth it all out.”
    Even though Lenny was some sort of pizza mobster who hired killers to run around killing, the way he was being nice to me like this … it had this weird effect, making me feel somehow guilty.
    “Here’s the thing,” I said. “I work alone. I’m like a gentle wildebeest, possibly a caribou. Bringing Ricky along messes with my whole wildebeest-caribou thing. Ever heard of a caribou wandering around with a jackass? Me either. So let me do what I have to do, and I’ll come back and we’ll make up.”
    “Caribou?” Lenny said. “Wildebeest? You feeling okay?”
    “Feeling good, boss. But traffic’s kind of heavy and I need to pay attention. I’ll bring you back a finger or an ear, I promise. Maybe both. Great big ones, too, you’ll see.”
    I hung up and held the power button until it turned off.
    To pass the time, I flipped through various radio stations looking for something in range and wished Andre had satellite radio. Increasingly, I wondered what I’d do when I got to Savannah. Obviously I wouldn’t shoot this woman. I’d let her know there were mobsters after her and see how she reacted. Maybe she’d be grateful. Maybe we’d go to dinner and talk about it. Maybe she’d tell me how noble I was for not murdering her. I’d tell her it was nothing at all, just doing my duty. She’d look deeply into my eyes and I’d stare back, and the world would disappear around us.
    There were other possibilities. She could run away screaming and call the cops. The cops wouldn’t think I was noble for not murdering her. They wouldn’t look deeply into my eyes while the world disappeared around us. They’d throw me in jail and serve me prison food and watch me slowly die of boredom in a noisy cell populated by rejects.
    Jersey concluded without a hitch. Then Delaware, then Maryland, and when I finally stopped for gas, I stocked up on little apple pies and a carton of milk to complement the tasty goodness. Tank full and stomach happy, I considered my location and what that meant: Virginia was next, and that’s where she lived.
    Sandra was doing fine without me and had been for a long time. And for the first time since discovering precisely where she lived, I skipped the turnoff from the Beltway and continued down 95 South. Using my head for once. The minister would have been proud of me.
    Two months had passed since talking to him in that church in Toledo. He’d shown up in the middle of my ride as Scott Schaefer, the sex fiend psychologist, and hadn’t batted an eye at the coincidence of taking a job as a priest in the same city as my latest ride. Among other things, he’d said he had a theory about who the Great Whomever was. I’d been curious about that theory ever since.
    He’d told me his phone number and asked me to call him. Since then, I’d justified not calling by staying busy on other rides. In truth, I was happy in my ignorance. So long as I didn’t know why I kept coming back to life, I could putter along according to my conscience.
    I turned the phone back on and called the minister. It rang eight times and dumped to voicemail. I tried again and he answered on the fourth ring.
    “Hello?” he said in a weak voice.
    “That you, Anthony?”
    “Who is this?”
    For some reason, I’d expected him to know through divine such-and-such.
    “It’s me, Dan Jenkins, immortal servant of justice.”
    “Oh,” he said. “You.”
    “Don’t get all mushy. You okay? You sound tired.”
    The minister responded with a fit of coughing. Then came a clattering sound, followed by a couple of beeps as his fingers pressed various buttons on his phone.
    “You still there?” he said at last.
    “In the flesh. Get it?”
    A sigh from the other end.
    “Despite being confined to this bed for three days with the flu,” he said,