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

notion of Finn falling ill practically paralyzed her. To prevent that ball of dread from unraveling again, she concentrated on her hand. It was shaking. And her throat felt raw. Initial symptoms?

To check her face, she moved three feet into the bathroom. Already a yellowish pallor had replaced her tan. But no rash. Yet. Although her acorn-brown irises weren’t rimmed by red, dark bags had settled beneath them. And her hair, the color of rich potting soil, clung limply to her neck.

Her forehead seemed warm, which could be attributed to the ninety-degree room temp, thanks to the crappy air-conditioning unit sputtering in the window frame.

From Finn’s phone conversations with his dad over the past four days, he’d learned that Kristian, two doors down, had better odds of survival, despite his punctured suit. As Rollie’s research assistant, he’d been vaccinated against typhus fever, smallpox, typhoid fever, measles, and VZ. Lily shuddered.

She paced across the room, not much bigger than a coffin.

According to Finn, inoculations didn’t exist for Cora’s three other contagions: Ebola, Rift Valley fever, and Spanish influenza, all of which Gettler men had intentionally infected her with.

Neither Ebola nor RVF were airborne, but RVF could be transmitted through any mosquitos that had first bitten Cora. That rainstorm had washed off their bug spray, leaving Finn—and herself—fully exposed for over an hour.

Even worse: Spanish influenza was airborne, and could kill within a day of symptom onset. With a 10 to 20 percent death rate, if one of them had caught the highly contagious disease and passed it to someone in this hotel, it could decimate the world population within weeks.

Furious, Lily punched the remote control’s off button.

Even Rollie, secluded in his lab while running tests on their samples, might have been infected; he’d removed his suit to save her. Her heart hadn’t been beating on its own for a solid minute before he’d managed to bring her back. Ever since he’d finished drawing her blood on the shore of North Brother Island, as Finn secured her to a raft, she hadn’t spoken to him. Until she knew whether she’d contracted a lethal cocktail of diseases, she had no interest in his outlandish scientific theories.

Feeling a tickle in her throat, she coughed. Typhus? Breathing slowly, she listened to her lungs but detected no congestion. Yet. Rollie’s effort to revive her may have only prolonged her life by a few weeks. If so, he’d also inadvertently caused her death to be far more protracted and miserable.

Her bad gut feeling about the Gettlers hadn’t even scratched the surface.

On the walk to this seedy hotel, she’d been too agitated to speak to Finn. The Gettlers’ wild claims about Cora had been swirling through her head, as aggressively as the tornado that had cut a nine-mile path from Staten Island to Brooklyn. Finn must have been just as overwhelmed, for he’d also remained silent.

Only after she’d taken a long, hot shower and slipped on pajamas, from a package of necessities left by a delivery boy outside her door, had she called him.

“I get why you didn’t want to tell me,” she’d said quietly, wishing she could hug him. “Whatever your family’s done to her doesn’t make me love you any less.”

In response, he’d cried. Although his sobs had been practically inaudible, Lily could feel them reverberating in her chest. Only once before had he lost it in front of her, while still within view of the restaurant they’d left mid meal because his mom’s pain had been unbearable.

For a good half an hour, she’d stayed on the line with him, neither of them speaking. Simply being together had been enough.

The following morning, he’d told her about his mother’s note and the bats, and she’d admitted she’d seen the cage while spying on him. “If we live through this week, we’ll find the truth together,” they’d promised each other.

With nothing else to do, she rapped on Finn’s wall.

No response. He must be napping. The night before, they’d talked until three a.m.

She moved to the window and craned to see the sky, obscured by a building five feet away. After settling into this temporary prison, she’d secured a leave of absence at work due to “a death in the family.” More than anything, she wished she were outside right now, in the fresh air at the Conservatory Garden, pruning the Japanese holly.

Her cell phone rang.

Rollie must have their test results, she realized.

Unable to break the quick-spinning sensation that suddenly gripped her, she dropped to the sketchy bedspread.

Her phone continued to ring.

Pushing through vertigo, she flipped it open to check the caller I.D.

Kristian.

What does he want? The brothers were furious at each other, and she had no desire to get caught in the middle. So far, she’d followed Finn’s request not to answer Kristian’s calls.

The ringing ceased.

Pushing through the dizziness, she concentrated on the red digits on the alarm clock.

The way Kristian had treated Cora, as described by Finn, appalled Lily. She didn’t know what to think of him anymore, or her ability to judge character.

The phone rang again.

This time she answered it.

“Lily, I’ve got news.”

“Okay,” she said, gasping.

“You’re free. The tests were all negative.”

“Oh my God,” she choked out. “Are you sure?”

“Rollie ran them all twice.”

Shaking, Lily lowered her head to her knees. You’re cancer-free! Suddenly she was in a hospital bed, wearing a royal blue gown, a port in her chest.

“You still there?”

Kristian’s faint voice pulled her back, and she returned the phone to her ear. “What about Finn? And you and Rollie?”

“He ran your tests first.”

Finn had traipsed all over that germ-ridden island, and had been near Cora . . .

“Lily?”

“Yes.”

“He might be fine. She’s always been hyper diligent about containing her microbes.”

“Okay.”

“But Lily . . .”

“Yes?”

“I have to tell you . . .”

She blinked rapidly. “What?”

“The way Finn looked at her . . . and defended her . . . a woman who’s already killed one Gettler and won’t be happy till we’re all dead.”

“She did what?”

“Never mind.”

“What do you mean, the way