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

Through an open doorway, he spotted what might have been a laboratory. Another led to a room with rusting metal drawers: the morgue.

In the stairwell, he climbed without touching the handrail.

As he neared the top, her footsteps below echoed upward through the chamber and clashed with the wind, howling through the open door to the roof.

Switching off his light, he stepped outside and wrenched off the mask. A gust battered his face, and he breathed in its refreshingly cold fury.

Holding back his hair, he stared at the Manhattan skyline, glittering like a gemstone collection behind glass. Down that river, near the Brooklyn Bridge’s eastern tower, Lily had to be a complete wreck.

Whenever her anxiety spiked, Finn would remind her of the statistical improbability of something terrible happening to one of them. The approach had never worked. Tonight she might be proven right.

“Do you see the chain and open cuff?” Cora asked from within the stairwell. “Fasten it to your ankle.”

Tethered to a stake, he’d be no better off than a stray dog about to be put down.

He turned on his flashlight to quickly survey the rooftop. To his left, a scattering of bricks and wild grass surrounded a hole. With one of those blocks, he could knock her out.

“Throw the flashlight over. Now.”

Since it should withstand the fall, he dropped it over the side of the building where he’d entered and planned to exit.

She cleared her throat menacingly, so he picked his way over to the manacles and pretended to snap the open ring around his ankle.

Lightning sliced the sky, illuminating the two smokestacks across the road from the morgue. The top of the taller flue resembled a crown of thorns. It must have been struck, with the energy surge having thrown the topmost bricks here. His stomach churned. This was a stupid place to be during a storm.

The hinges of the door squeaked, and he wheeled toward the noise.

Cora stood with her gloved hands on her hips. “I didn’t hear a . . .” She inhaled sharply and adjusted her respirator. “Idiot. Put your mask back on.”

His skin crawling with imagined microbes, Finn shoved the shield onto his face.

“Your father had better listening skills when he was four.” She locked the door and stuffed the key ring into her shoulder bag. “I bet Sylvia used some sort of new-age parenting philosophy on you.” The corners of her eyes crinkled. “Ulrich absolutely detested her.”

The way she spoke about him was eerie, considering he’d died when she’d been just a child.

Her eyes narrowed. “The click.” She pointed at his ankle. “I need to hear it.”

He groaned but fastened the cuff. The chain was tethered to a metal eyehook embedded in the asphalt roof. To test its strength, he took a subtle step back. The bolt didn’t budge.

She huffed. “I got those cuffs from an escaped Rikers convict; you think I couldn’t handle securing that pin?”

Finn appraised her bare biceps. “I wasn’t underestimating you; I was overestimating myself.”

She sniffed—a weak attempt to conceal a chuckle—and sat with her back to the wall, the gaping hole between them.

The sky sizzled and a bolt snaked down the lightning rod atop the Empire State Building. Almost instantaneously, a sharp crack followed the billion-volt electrical surge.

Nonchalantly, he kicked a rock into the crevice. “Did you know it’s a myth that lightning always strikes the highest point? We’re—you’re—not safe here.”

“Really? Then how do you explain that?” She pointed at the smokestack.

“If there’s a tall object within the small area at the end of a stepped leader’s trajectory, that’s where it’ll hit. But when the discharge is initiated, miles above, it’s ‘blind’ to whatever’s on the ground.”

“Interesting. I haven’t—hadn’t—learned anything new in years.”

His pulse quickened. Maybe he could talk his way free.

“You said you’re an architect?” she asked. “Not a doctor?”

He shifted his feet, and the cuff jerked his ankle. “That’s right.”

“Ulrich didn’t give your dad a choice, but I know Rollie would have picked medicine anyway. He loves to heal. I have to give him credit for that. The fact that you didn’t follow family tradition is surprising though. Unsettling, actually.”

“How so?”

“Every Gettler has a role to fill.”

One of his father’s pet phrases, from her tongue, made him shiver. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Never mind.”

By her clamped shut lips, he knew not to press her. To regain the casual tone their conversation had lost, he sat down. “I’ve always been fascinated by light waves and electrical currents.”

Cora straightened. “Right,” she said to herself. “Ulrich would have approved of that.”

“Hardly: I’m an exterior lighting designer.”

“A what?” she asked, her brow furrowed.

“Essentially, billionaires hire me to light their estates.”

“Rollie’s okay with that?”

“He thinks it’s a waste of my talent, but I fell into the opportunity through a friend. It pays better than civil work.”

By the arching of her eyebrows, he knew she was intrigued.

“This place could look amazing. Wherever I go, my brain automatically thinks about placement, voltage, lumens. I’ve already outlined a rough plan for this island in my head. Completely within the interior so that nothing would be visible to the patrols. And the lamps would be concealed. Once I’m back in my office, I can whip up a design in CAD.”

He let the idea of his release linger.

“There’s no power source.” She coughed softly. “It wouldn’t work.”

He could tell by the yearning in her tone that she’d envisioned the effect.

“They could be solar powered.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, her brow furrowed in frustration. She really had been living under a rock. Or, rather, on a rock. “We could wire photovoltaic cells—”

She scrunched her nose. “Forget it. Your father’s on his way, and what I need from him is far more important than some pretty lights in the trees.”

Pretending to feel slighted, Finn cast his eyes down.

“That was mean. I’m sorry.”

“You’ll let me go—unharmed—once my dad tells you about the tunnel?”

“If he tells me. In this case, that subordinating conjunction is quite conditional.” She twisted to face a hole in the wall. “No sign of him