Final Crossing: A Novel of Suspense Read Online Free Page B

on a bill to expand coal-mining rights in western Pennsylvania. It’ll never pass, he thought. Though if it did, it would mean huge political capital for the Senator.
    “Heard you broke up with Juliette. Want to talk about it?” Jonas finally looked up and sighed. “Yeah, do you have a few hours so maybe we can braid each other’s hair and swap stories of heartache?”
    “Don’t be an ass.”
    “It’s my default position.”
    “Well, I’m here to talk if you need me.”
    “Thanks. I do appreciate it. We just...I guess she didn’t see what was worth hanging around for.”
    “Then she’s a fool.”
    He smiled. “More like an idiot savant.”
    She offered her own crooked smile and tilted one leg forward. “More fish in the sea?”
    “I’m sure there are.”
    “Good.” V crossed her arms. “You get back to work, then. I won’t bug you for at least fifteen minutes.”
    “Thanks,” Jonas muttered, finally sitting down. “Actually, V, can you do me a favor?”
    She turned. “Of course.”
    “Grab me a couple Advil, will ya?” He massaged his temples. “Actually, make it three.”
    • • •
    Jonas’s visits to his dad were usually reserved for the weekend when he wasn’t in the office (at least not all day) and when traffic was more an annoyance than an unyielding force of nature. Jonas didn’t know how his trip to Philly would play out and he wanted to see his father before he left. Sooner was always better than later. Later could be too late.
    As expected, the rush-hour roads were a snarled mess and the seventeen-mile trip was a combination of misery and boredom, assuaged only slightly by an NPR Podcast Jonas had downloaded and hadn’t yet had time to hear.
    He walked into the Jefferson Memory Care Residence as he always did, with a mixture of trepidation and sadness. Signed in at reception, gave and received familiar greetings with the staff, and headed back into the north wing of the building. He entered the code into the electronic keypad at the first set of doors and read the sign he’d read countless times before: WARNING! Elopement risk. Please close door firmly behind you.
    Through the doors and into the hallway. The smell was immediate and familiar. It wasn’t decay and it wasn’t industrial cleaner, but some mix of the two. Nurses and staff smiled at him as he passed. Residents offered blank stares or looked through him, as if his was just another ghostly presence mixed in with their twisted view of reality. Those with stronger minds sometimes looked at him with pleading eyes. Those people were few. Jefferson wasn’t the place you sent Aunt Betty when she could no longer remember how to use the microwave.
    Jonas’s mother been the caregiver for Cpt. William Osbourne (Ret.) for the first few years. The disease had come suddenly and without mercy, as such things do. The symptoms were mild at first. At first. The worst was the fourth year. Before Jefferson. His dad still understood what was happening. Barely. The man who flew over twenty combat missions over Cambodia and Vietnam slowly decayed into a ghost who shat his pants and couldn’t remember who he was.
    Then Jonas’s mother died of a brain aneurysm. No warning. She simply collapsed one day while giving her husband lunch. A neighbor coming to visit found the Captain (as he’d always been called) sitting on the kitchen floor, stroking his wife’s hair, as water boiled over onto the stove.
    Jonas hadn’t wanted to put his father in a home, but with no siblings for help and not enough money to support a live-in nurse for more than a couple of months, he had no choice. The first facility was simple, caring, and covered by the Captain’s pension. But it took just two months for the Captain to show enough violent tendencies to be “disqualified” for treatment in a private facility. That’s when things went downhill fast.
    Jefferson took in the violent cases. It was the bastion of last hope for those with advanced