The Vines by Shelley Nolden (ebook and pdf reader .TXT) 📕

could better see her face. Even with her brow furrowed, her cerulean eyes and dark, long lashes overwhelmed the rest of her features. Spots of shade from the leaves above dappled her skin.

She swallowed hard, the noose-like scar around her neck tightening. “Do you really think you can forget me?”

Recalling her marred torso, he felt a tenderness toward her—irrational given the weapon in her grip. “How many of those have you got?”

“Enough to kill you.”

“No wonder you’re flying solo,” he muttered.

She shifted, and a branch hid her face.

Apparently, she’d heard him. Finn groaned.

Her penetrating eyes reappeared, and he met her gaze.

“So, Peeping Tom,” she said and coughed into her shoulder, “what’s your actual name?”

Once she had his personal information, he’d have to worry about her showing up at his Brooklyn Heights apartment. But if he didn’t answer, she might not let him leave.

“Cook,” Finn said quickly, picturing the explorer who’d claimed to have reached the North Pole a year before Robert Peary. “Frederick Cook.”

The woman huffed, and Finn wondered if she’d recognized the name.

She extended her free hand. “Toss up your papers.”

“My what?”

“You must have a driver’s license or draft card.”

Surreal. He held back a quip about the draft ending around thirty-five years earlier, or that his wallet was buried at the bottom of his pack, where it would stay. He scanned the forest for signs of a second aggressor, though he sensed she’d been telling the truth.

A breeze, laced with traffic fumes, rustled the green-white flowers of the vines.

She tossed the scalpel toward the sky.

Finn jumped back, cowering as it plunged toward him.

It didn’t puncture his skull, nor did it land nearby.

He looked up.

Metal winked in her hand.

Again, she flipped the steel upward and caught it by the handle—clearly a signal that she could wait all day for him to comply.

His best defense would be a version of the truth. “I was curious, okay? This place is wild, and I don’t mean wild as in wilderness. What makes this island amazing is that nature fought back against greed and exploitation and actually won. Sure, the place has a dark past, but pretty soon these invasive species will have destroyed all evidence of that. To think, from the Bronx, basically, all you can see is a dome of green. People have no idea.”

She leaned toward him. The set of her jaw had softened, and her eyes had widened.

He rubbed the beaded bracelet he always wore, a gift from a family in Séguéla. Her trust would be much harder to earn. “When you look at the island from the west, the morgue and physical plant behind it jut out like soldiers trying to keep their heads above quicksand. It’s only a matter of time before nature claims them, too.”

Sunlight, seeping through a break in the canopy, illuminated copper streaks in her brown hair. Her entire being seemed to glow. He reminded himself that it was only a trick of the light; she was no angel.

“This place seemed untouchable,” he said, “yet at the same time inviting.” He didn’t regret his decision to come, but he certainly wished he could undo the way he’d come upon her. “I didn’t mean to invade your privacy. I should have backtracked as soon as I saw you.”

She withdrew into the canopy.

“Should have, would have, could have,” she said, now unseen. “Here’s another conditional verb to conjugate: would have lived. That’s the future perfect, correct?”

He shrugged. It wasn’t a verb he cared to analyze.

Her face reappeared. “I’ll have to check.” She glanced behind her and then back at him. “Later.”

He raised his index finger. “Will live avoids the issue altogether.”

Still no smile.

At the top of her reach, she jabbed the scalpel into the tree trunk.

Finn exhaled with relief. Maybe she had appreciated his wit.

She reached into a pouch at her hip and retrieved a handful of silver. Below the first, she wedged three more blades into the bark. “I doubt it’s become socially acceptable to spy on a woman while she’s indecent. Not that societal norms matter here. Only my rules.”

The taste of blood in his mouth; he pictured quarts of it soaking into the dirt beneath him. “I’m sorry, I really am. It’s just . . .” If he admitted that he’d been captivated by her beauty, she’d blind him with two of those blades.

“It’s not worth the effort,” she muttered as she ran her index finger downward, touching the handle of each scalpel, their pinging reverberating through the air. “You’ve been here for, what”—she glanced in the direction of the sun—“three hours? That long, you’re as good as dead.”

Finn squeezed his shoulder blades together. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

She scowled. “Explaining anything to you would be a waste of . . .” Her eyes narrowed. “You’re a Gettler, aren’t you? His focus snapped to her face. “How’d you know?” She couldn’t, unless Rollie was still coming here.

“The Aryan nose and exceptionally white teeth give you away.”

Finn did have Rollie’s straight nose and narrow chin, though his dad’s sharp features had softened with age. But fifty years of four cups of coffee a day and the belief that the new whitening treatments were a vain waste of time had left Rollie’s teeth far from pearly. The woman couldn’t be thinking of the same man, Finn decided and squinted up at her.

“Cat got your tongue?”

He couldn’t let her conclude that she’d rattled him. “I’m Finn. Nice to meet you.”

“But that’s Irish . . . and your eyes: they’re green. Not that it matters; you’re a Gettler.” She climbed to the next branch, in line with the column of knives. “Get off my island.”

Her island?

That claim would be better pondered from afar. “How do I know you won’t plant one of those in my back as soon as I start running?”

“You don’t.”

Without deliberation, he slung his pack over his shoulder and sprinted toward the field, where he would be completely exposed.

Over his heavy breathing, he listened for the breaking of branches behind him and detected nothing.

Reaching the