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

force, given her strength and prowess. He must have an ongoing means of manipulating her into submission. Finn prayed to God that it didn’t relate to the scars covering her body.

Rollie’s desire to hide from Sylvia his continued activity here would certainly explain why he’d lied to Finn.

To stay alert, Finn tugged at the corners of his eyes. Over the past week, he’d barely slept. The father he’d always known—a man who’d been strict yet also kind, generous, and fascinated by Finn’s comic card collection, ability to spout baseball stats, and Lego creations—might not actually exist.

He couldn’t shake the premonition that his family had been conducting involuntary human testing here.

At twelve, while building a model airplane in his room with his best friend, Finn had whispered that his family was doing important, top-secret work on a nearby deserted island. Dave had asked if they were working for the CIA. Just as Finn was clarifying, Rollie had thrown open the door, grabbed Finn by the ear, scolded him for not having helped his mother fold laundry, and told Dave to head home.

That was the only time—until he met Lily—that Finn had mentioned the project to anyone outside his family. In the days that had followed, Rollie’s edginess had made Finn wonder if he was afraid of getting caught for something far more severe than trespassing.

Yesterday, after seeing the weather forecast, Finn had hastened his preparations and rescheduled a client meeting. Offering to help her evacuate would serve as the perfect excuse for his return.

Breathing in the stench of the salted, moist dirt, Finn reminded himself that thinking of her only as a victim would put him at greater risk.

The woman had chucked four scalpels at him and might impale him with a fifth any moment. He was a Gettler; nothing she’d said or done suggested that she would spare him again.

Yet he didn’t regret his decision to return. If his intuition were correct, he had a responsibility to save her. And even if he was wrong, those scars had been caused by someone.

Although his father’s influence now seemed farcical, his parents had instilled in their sons a sense of altruism and purpose. Through their dedication to microbiology, they believed their future discovery would save humanity when—not if—a deadly pathogen emerged and spread like wildfire through our densely packed global society. The day his birth mother died, Kristian had accepted Rollie’s mandate to study medicine as if it had been his idea. Thirteen years later, upon hearing Kristian describe a cadaver dissection for a premed college class, Finn had declared that he too wanted to become a doctor.

“Finny,” Rollie had said, “the sight of blood makes you queasy. You’re a round peg; don’t force yourself through a square hole.”

To show Rollie that a round peg could bust its way through any square hole, at his kindergarten graduation ceremony, Finn proudly raised his sign that stated what he wanted to become when he grew up: “The Incredible Hulk.”

While not superhero worthy, he turned out to be muscular enough. Though, today, the survival skills he’d acquired in Africa would prove more useful.

A breeze rattled the bushes. She could be watching him now, her throwing arm raised.

Soon it would be light enough for him to begin his search.

From a pocket in his cargo pants, Finn retrieved his Swiss Army knife. Lily had given it to him after he’d completed his master’s degree in architecture at Cal Poly. In the past two years, it had traveled with them to four countries. Now it represented his only form of self-defense against a woman he could never bring himself to harm.

While packing for this trip, he’d wanted to tell Lily about her, but Lily would have made the connection between the woman and Finn’s worries about his dad. He still couldn’t bring himself to share his suspicions. For Lily, growing up fatherless had been like missing an essential vitamin, of which she now couldn’t get enough. Rollie, who’d always wanted a daughter, had leaped into that void.

Finn pictured her waking up alone, and a pang of guilt shot through him. To let her know he’d arrived safely, he sent a quick text—a row of M’s, signifying their willingness to move mountains for each other. It had started as a joke; now it was simply another way of saying, “I love you.” Then he turned off his phone to conserve its battery.

A heron squawked. Another responded and took flight. The ruckus of the colony intensified. The woman had to be awake.

He strapped on his pack and walked within a strip of forest near the meadow he’d sprinted across last time.

At least today he didn’t have to worry about running into any city parks workers. Before his first trip, Lily had learned that the parks department wouldn’t sanction visits to the island during the heron nesting season, which extended from March 21 through September 21. She’d tried to persuade Finn to wait until the fall, when she might be able to get them both included on an official tour.

Before this second trip, she hadn’t even asked to join him. Presumably because she’d expected him to say he needed to go alone, so he’d promised her that he’d tell her everything afterward.

Finn rubbed his lower back, sore from battling the currents. If the woman were still here, the tuberculosis pavilion seemed the most logical place for her to be staying. From his research in the New York Public Library’s archives, Finn knew the structure had been completed in 1943. Its walls had to be far sounder than those of the buildings constructed decades earlier, and from its top floor, she could survey the entire island.

The cawing of birds drowned out the sounds of the morning rush hour. He would never hear her approach.

Finn glanced back. The forest had blotted out the shore and Manhattan’s skyline. The humidity triggered a sense of déjà vu; he was back trekking through the jungle, about to cross one of the Mekong Delta’s infamous monkey bridges.