Hopper House (The Jenkins Cycle Book 3) (21 page)

F
our hours
later found me outside the fabled Hopper House headquarters—a gated property in a rural area southwest of Dover. A road snaked around a hill down to a guard booth just outside the gate. The map showed a large building on the other side, but I couldn’t see it.

I’d been watching the property for several hours now, noting the golf cart that circled the hill every thirty minutes. The guard on duty stared at me across the two lane road. So far, no one had approached to ask what I was doing here. If that happened, I’d drive off and come back later.

At precisely 11 p.m., I pulled up to the gatehouse and rolled down my window. The guard slid back his.

“Yeah?” he said. He had a wary look on his face, and I couldn’t see his hands.

“Dan Jenkins,” I said. “They’re expecting me.”

“Got an ID?”

I nodded and handed him my Vinnie ID. The man looked at it, grunted, and handed it back.

“Gimme a moment while I call up.”

“Indubitably.”

The man closed the window.

Bolted to the corner of a narrow awning, a security camera turned slowly away from the entrance and angled down at me. Trying not to seem threatening, I summoned half my Jenkins charm and smiled. Too much charm and I’d blow out the monitor on the other side.

A minute later, the man opened the window again. “Drive slowly around the hill and park under the light. Someone will be out to escort you. Don’t leave your car unless you’re told to.”

He threw a switch and the gate swung slowly open.

Before I went through, I leaned over and said, “Can I ask you a question?”

“What?”

“Do you have any kids? A wife? Sick parents you’re taking care of?”

“Huh…?”

I didn’t know where to go with that and had already said too much. “Never mind.”

I followed the single road around the hill through a barrier of trees I remembered from the map. It took me to a building with a circular parking area.

Two men appeared out of nowhere with automatic weapons drawn. One of them had a goatee. Definitely a bad guy.

I rolled down my window and said, “Hey fellas, what’s shaking?”

Goatee jerked the door open, pulled me roughly out, and forced me up against the car. He patted me down.

“Boss wants you alive,” he said. “He didn’t say in what shape. So shut up and move.”

“Where to?”

“Front door, stupid,” the other one said, probably to make up for his less evil grooming.

He shoved me forward and I staggered to avoid falling.

The building in question was quite large and modern looking, with jutting elevations and an odd dome in the middle. Plate glass windows rose to a pointy peak on one side, giving the place a Gumby-esque appearance. I couldn’t tell if it was an office building or just an extravagant house.

Clean Cut stepped forward and opened one of a pair of double doors.

Goatee said, “Keep your mouth shut unless spoken to, and don’t touch anything.”

“This place sure looks expensive,” I said in admiration. “What if I stumble and break a priceless vase? I remember an episode of
Cheers
where Rebecca broke a vase and Woody took the blame. The guy who owned it thought Woody was brave for confessing, and—”

“Get moving, asshole,” Goatee said, shoving me forward, heedless of any damage I might cause.

The entryway was grand and tall, with hex-shaped plate glass way up top. A complicated staircase of concrete slabs rose from a massive central pillar, spiraling up and down to different elevations like an enormous tinker toy.

From a speaker, the landlord said, “Bring him to the command center. If he tries anything stupid, you have my permission to shoot him in the foot.”

Goatee leaned in close. “Please, try something stupid. I’m begging you.”

“Got any good vases?”

He aimed his gun at my foot, but Clean-cut grabbed his hand and indicated the camera in the ceiling, which was pointed right at us. The landlord sure loved his cameras.

Goatee said, “Move it, ass hat,” and shoved me toward an opening on the left.

We followed a long hallway and then stopped at a set of closed doors. Clean-cut sprang forward and pushed them open.

But for a desk and a few chairs on wheels like you’d find in an office, the room was empty of furniture. The four walls had enormous televisions mounted on them. Each display was subdivided into multiple smaller squares. Most of the feeds were dark. Some, however, were lit, and two showed overhead shots of people having sex. A few of the displays were of outside scenes. Vinnie’s car was in one of them.

Seated at the desk was a man of about seventy years old, tapping away on a laptop.

Without looking up, he said, “Sit him down and watch him.” The voice of the landlord.

Clean-cut jumped to get me a chair, then forced me into it.

Eyeing the dutiful guard, I whispered to Goatee, “This guy’s bucking for a promotion. He must be stopped.”

Goatee jabbed me painfully with the butt of his gun and said, “Shut up.”

The landlord got up and came over.

“Hello, Mr. Jenkins. I’m Ray. We talked on the phone. I own Hopper House, LLC. I must say I’m surprised you’re here in the flesh, considering all the damage you’ve been doing. To be honest, I’m glad. Maybe we can get to know each other. Resolve our differences.”

“Clear the fat,” I said. “Chew the air.”

Ray smiled. “You hoppers are so invincible. Can’t push you around unless you give me a hook.” He took a little remote from his pocket and pointed it at one of the nearby screens. “Which, of course, you did.”

He clicked the remote and the little boxes in the nearest screen vanished. In their place was a shot of a room filling the entire screen. Sitting on a cot in the room was my mother, looking sad and dejected and bored out of her mind. The landlord moved the camera so it focused more on her face, then zoomed in closer. In response, Mom frowned angrily and flipped us the bird.

I smiled.

“Like mother, like son,” Ray-the-landlord said, frowning. “You unleashed that damned priest on me. He’s hit ten of my houses since you killed my men. I don’t get you. Most hoppers mope around and take drugs, but you learned to shoot.”

“Tell me more about my eyes.”

“Pardon?”

“So what’s the evil plan?”

Ray shook his head in confusion. “You’ve lost me.”

“You’re the bad guy with the evil henchmen.” I glanced at Goatee, whose glower had deepened at the mention of the two baddies I’d killed. “I’m the handsome hero. This is where you offer me riches and fame if I join your evil cause.”

Ray grinned in amusement. “Rest assured, I have no interest in you
joining
me. No, I do quite well with my properties and my research. By now you must realize I’m not a hopper. That’s why I built this facility, to give me the best possible chance at eternal life. To that end, I need a very special hook. I want
you
to give me that hook.”

If I looked at Vinnie’s shiny watch, they might notice and get suspicious. I glanced around and saw several clocks on the wall for different timezones. The one for Eastern time showed ten minutes after eleven.

“What’s the hook?”

“Nathan Cantrell,” he said and smiled at my discomfort. “Don’t act surprised. I look into everyone who pays me. This time it was in cash, sent from an unemployed woman dating a lottery winner. It was almost as if I’d hit the jackpot myself. I’m curious how you know him. Was he one of your skins? Is he as moral as the news makes him seem, or is he darker? I’m aware of just how rare it is for your kind to possess the body of a relatively normal person.”

“You can’t control Nate,” I said. “He’s got more than money on his side.”

Muscles, raging metabolism, the world’s biggest rabbit’s foot. And me.

Ray nodded. “We’ll see about that. A little harder to control mortals—they can call the FBI, get restraining orders, file harassment charges. But people with shady pasts, or those up to no good—they never call the police. I want to know why he’s giving you that money and what it takes to get more.”

I looked around at all the TVs. “Looks like you’re doing pretty good on money. Why not leave him alone?”

“With more money,” he said, “I can buy more equipment. I’m building a very large electromagnet. I won’t bore you with the details.”

“Thank you.”

Ray smirked. “Really, you have yourself to blame for your predicament. I never would have followed through on my threat to hurt Cheryl if you hadn’t paid me the full amount. Too much trouble for too little gain.”

I clenched my teeth in frustration, feeling like a fool. By doing exactly what he wanted, I’d turned his empty threats against my family into a reality. And now Nate and Tara were involved.

“And what if I told you Nate’s a good guy? Not a bad bone in his body?”

“Trickier,” Ray said, “but still doable, with your help. What pushes his buttons? This woman he lives with? His brother? Those children at his school?”

I chose not to say anything. He smiled as if I had.

“As you’ve already seen, I have the means to send untraceable assassins anywhere I wish. Assassins like Stephen. You should see the hooks I have in that one.” He chuckled. “Unlike you, he’s defenseless. He has no priest to scare off my hoppers through the power of suggestion. Interesting trick, that. I’d like to meet this so-called priest.
Him
I could use. Now that’s a hook: do what I say or my psychic bulldog kicks you out. First things first, though: what else can you tell me about Nathan?”

Feeling weirdly offended that he wanted the minister to join his evil cause and not me, I sighed and slumped forward as if beaten.

“Before I agree to help you,” I said, “I need your word you’ll never harass my mother again, or anyone else I care about.”

He made an impatient sound. “I don’t enjoy such tactics, Mr. Jenkins. That’s why I haven’t ordered Cheryl hauled in here and whipped in front of you.”

I bit back a powerful urge to leap at him. Then his words sank in:
hauled in here
. It sounded like she was nearby.

Doing my best to hide my relief, I said, “I need something else.”

Behind me, Clean-cut growled.

Ray said, “Isn’t the love you feel for your mother enough?”

“Sure it is. Love her to bits. But you’re feeling magnanimous.” I wagged a finger at him. “Evil bosses with evil henchmen always feel magnanimous toward their captives. It’s like a thing or something.”

Ray laughed. “I’m not evil, Mr. Jenkins. That word has no objective meaning. What is it that you want?”

C
ome on
, Dan, what is it that you want?

I needed more time. My whole purpose for being here was to locate my mother.

“You two,” Ray said, interrupting my thoughts. “Lower your guns. Mr. Jenkins and I have an understanding.”

“We do?” I said.

“Naturally. I have your mother, and as you saw she’s safe and unharmed. I’m going to let you go, but if you try any funny business, her body pays the price. Agreed?”

I nodded and glanced at the clock again. “Sure.”

“Doug,” he said to Clean-cut, “stay here and watch the monitors for me. Keep an eye out for that damned priest. I think he’ll hit West Virginia next. When he does, we need to have our people ready. I want him alive.” He looked at me and smiled. “We’ll talk in my study.”

As we left the room together, Ray said, “I didn’t think anything could kick out a hopper except death or time. But here’s this religious nutcase running around doing it. Total nonsense, of course. He must be psychic. I’m a little bit psychic myself. I’m relying on it to channel the right cosmic particles to this building. We have special collectors installed in the roof, and—” He stopped suddenly and turned to Goatee. “Don’t you have patrols?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well?”

Goatee threw me a final glare.

“Right away, sir,” he said, then marched off.

When he was out of earshot, the landlord said, “Doesn’t like you much, does he? You killed his friend. Nothing he can do about it. Even if he kills you, you’ll come back for revenge. He doesn’t believe this is real—you hoppers, my radiation treatments. He’s also lazy. If I don’t keep after him, all he does is play cards.”

We climbed the tinker toy stairs and arrived at a weird atrium under that domed ceiling I’d seen from the main floor. Formed from hexagonal plate glass windows, each plate locked into its neighbors, giving the room a sciency sort of vibe. The only furniture was a reclining chair in the exact center. A cheap lamp stood next to it, comprised of bendy tentacles with colored lights on the ends pointing at the chair from various directions—effectively killing the sciency vibe.

“What’s with the freaky-deaky lamp?” I said.

Ray smiled. “Bio-chromatic spectro-therapy. Vitally essential to restoring youth and banishing toxins. I need to extend my natural span long enough for my life-force to become empowered. One of the lights is infrared—and this creates a harmonic balance unavailable in common sunlight. Nasty stuff, sunlight.” He pointed at the dome with the strange glass plates. “Very dangerous to my collectors, so I have to cover them during the day.”

“They sure look weird.”

“You wonder why I need money—each of those panels cost upwards of two hundred thousand dollars.”

I whistled. “That much?”

He nodded proudly. “I had them made by a special company in Switzerland involved with the Hadron supercollider. They cost a small fortune to ship and install. Each plate is specially irradiated. At night, they polarize incoming cosmic radiation and aim it down at me, increasing my chance of eternal life beyond that of most mortals.” He cast me an irritated glance. “I’m supposed to be sitting there now, but I have to deal with you. You should have called first.”

“Oprah says living in the moment brings a sense of reverence for all of life’s blessings.”

Ray blinked at me. “Right. Follow me.”

We crossed the room and entered a small office with shelves full of books and a desk covered in curious knickknacks. I gazed at them in wonder. Evil knickknacks.

The office was spacious, with no super-expensive windows in sight, or any windows at all, for that matter. Probably to keep out all that nasty sunlight. There was another of those strange light contraptions on a pole just behind his desk. He turned it on and sat down.

“Have a seat,” Ray said, indicating the chair across from him.

“How come I don’t get a happy fun light?”

“Because you don’t need one,” he said. “Your skin is only yours for a few weeks. What need have you for long natural life?” He gestured around him. “
Life
, Mr. Jenkins—that’s what all this is about. Having worked with you hoppers for so long, I’ve become intimately aware of the threat of death, and I intend to beat it. Not like those fools hiding in church. As if
that
will save them.” He gazed at me with a considering eye. “For the past forty years, I’ve been on a controlled regimen of vitamins, organically produced vegetables, and protein slurries, all calibrated by top-of-the-line nutritionists who understand holistic health. Cancer, heart attacks, osteoporosis, diabetes, strokes—these were all but unheard of a hundred years ago. Thanks to my proactive approach to health, I’ve never had any of them.”

He didn’t say anything, and then I realized he was waiting for a reply again.

“Yeah, um, I agree.”

Ray smiled. “I see a team of doctors daily. Each one a specialist in their field. As you can imagine, this is all hideously expensive. That’s why I need you to tell me more about Nathan. Can he be reasoned with? Maybe I can bring him on board, offer him treatments. Imagine that—young fellow like him, with all that money. If he starts now, he could live to be a hundred and fifty. And when he has to die, as all mortals must, he can join me in freezing his body until a more advanced society has discovered the cure.”

This guy was unbelievable. First the minister, now Nate. He wanted everyone to join his evil cause but me.

Ray watched me expectantly.

Sighing inwardly, I said, “The cure to what?”

“The cure,” he said theatrically, “
to
death
. It’s all well and good trying to become a hopper, but I have to do everything in my power to preserve my life until that happens.”

I laughed openly. “You’re afraid of death? That’s surprising, considering you have to commit suicide to become a hopper.”

Ray’s eyes flashed dangerously.

“That’s a lie!” he shouted, slamming both fists down on the desk. He scowled as if swallowing something unpleasant. “My grandfather was a hopper, and he did
not
commit suicide. He died in a crash before seatbelts came standard in cars. Yes, I’ll concede there’s truth to the fact most of you are suicides, but clearly there’s a psychic element at work.”

“Naturally,” I said.

“Suicides are so tightly connected to the world they feel their only escape is death. Ironically, it increases their chance of coming back as a hopper. But not all of them. My grandfather is proof it doesn’t have to be that way. He came back for
me
. I was his anchor.”

“And what’s your anchor?”

Ray spread his hands wide at the windowless room, his tacky lamp, and his knickknacks, as if it were obvious. “My tremendous thirst for life, of course. So long as I bend every ounce of my energy towards beating death, I tie myself to the Earth in the same way you self-destructive hoppers do.”

Ray was a piece of work. I’d seen his type before. For him, the world and its people were obstacles to push around or get around. And where his perception differed from objective reality, he invented new realities to compensate for it, buttressing his delusions with more delusions.

“So this grandfather of yours,” I said, rubbing my nose so I could glance at my watch—it was nearly time. “When did you learn he was a hopper?”

Ray smiled. “He came to me when I was a child, shortly after the accident.”

I was willing to bet Ray’s grandfather had killed himself just like me and Rose, but lied and called it an accident.

“When he visited that first time,” Ray said, “he parroted back every conversation we’d had together. Children remember so much more than adults, and I was no exception. I believed him immediately, never doubted his story. He visited multiple times over the years, always in different bodies, catching me on the way home from school or the library or whatever I was up to. I never spoke to my parents about it, and wouldn’t have even if he hadn’t insisted on secrecy. Then, one day, when I was old enough to leave home, he took me under his wing. He’d run into another hopper during his travels and learned he wasn’t alone.”

I nodded in real appreciation, knowing how good that must have felt.

Ray said, “Hoppers back then communicated through newspaper personals, bulletin boards—even messages left in bathrooms. Crude and unsophisticated. My grandfather changed all that.”

“You started Hopper House, LLC.”

He smiled merrily. “The LLC bit came later. At first, all we did was buy houses and spread the word. Funded with money acquired from previous skins.”

“Stolen money.”

Ray gave me a flat look. “Whose BMW is that parked outside? Whose money paid for the gas? For your dinner? We’re all thieves, Mr. Jenkins, down to the tiniest bacteria chewing on the most infinitesimal piece of organic matter.”

At the word
infinitesimal,
he held his fingers an
infinitesimal
distance apart.

I nodded. “Yeah, I take from my rides … sorry, I can’t call them
skins
. Too much giggle factor. Most of them are bad guys. And when I leave the world, I usually take them with me.”

Laughing openly, pointing at me, Ray said, “Bad guys? What are we, children? There is no evil. Nor is there good. Stephen killed those people and he’s already back, getting high and fucking his brains out in a house in Dallas. We can watch him on the monitors if you want. Now where’s your moral God?”

I’d just thought of something interesting.

“Hey, about those hoppers the priest kicked out,” I said. “Have any of them come back? After he did it?”

The landlord frowned in thought. Then his eyes widened.

“Why, no!” he said. “Or, rather, they haven’t used their codes. It’s still too soon to be sure, but…” He shook his head. “Imagine if the effect is permanent. Now
that’s
a hook. You’ve got a good head for this, Mr. Jenkins. Maybe you should join me after all.” He stood up. “Stay here and don’t touch anything. I’ll be right back.”

I smiled happily—he’d just tried to co-opt me into his evil organization. I was officially in the cool kid club.

The landlord hurried out, leaving me there with the funny lights and shelves filled with all manner of new age health books and kooky stuff about magnetism, antimatter, and even power crystals.

Speaking of crystals: there were a number of large crystals and beautiful minerals displayed on each shelf in use as bookends. I picked up a huge piece of malachite the size of a bowling pin, then hid behind the door. A minute later, the sound of gunfire carried from outside. Another minute passed and Ray stormed into the room carrying a pistol.

“Where are you, you bastard?” he shouted, pointing his gun everywhere.

He saw me at the last second and fired right as I slammed him in the head with the lovely green stone, dropping him easily. My arm felt numb from where the bullet hit me. Not bright arterial, and not gushing. I’d live if I could stop getting shot.

“What you get for bringing a gun to a malachite fight,” I said to him.

I grabbed his gun—a small caliber pistol—and stepped into the atrium, aiming at the stairs. When Clean-cut flew up a second later with his MP9, I shot him in the chest and again when he was down.

I have no patience for bullies, and no time of my own that isn’t borrowed. And that’s why I returned to the office, ready to pistol whip the landlord if needed.

“Where’s my mom?” I shouted at him. “Where did you … aw, for crying out loud.”

Ray’s eyes stared dully ahead, taking what he knew with him to the grave. Clearly I’d hit him too hard with that enormous green rock.

Descending the tinker toy staircase, aiming the gun ahead of me, I looked for guards the whole way. As I made the final turn, Goatee and I saw each other at the same time. I jerked back from a shatter of automatic gunfire and watched smoke puff up from the concrete in front of me. Then came several more blasts—though not from the guard. These sounded more like shotguns.

I peeked around the bend and waved at the three new people standing over Goatee’s corpse.

Paulie’s face was bruised and puffy from his rough treatment in the boat the night before. He smiled when he saw me.

“I did my part, Vinnie,” he said. “What about you?”