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

And saw her face.

Those startling baby blues.

“Hello!” he called out as he jerked his chin upward to search for her. The leaves blurred as he spun. Dizzy and disoriented, he stopped.

He consulted a small compass on a cord around his neck.

To the northeast, he could just make out an ivy-covered lane bordered by cast-iron lampposts that protruded from the overgrowth. He imagined how cool those lamps would look relit at night. Maybe he would find his sketchbook today. More likely, she already had.

He poked at the dirt with his hiking boot and uncovered cracked concrete, another reminder that this forest belonged to New York City. Wiping his brow, he rotated to face what had to be the maintenance building, the first of three structures that would block him from the view of passing watercraft until he reached denser foliage.

She could be hiding among the grime-coated rubbish that loomed beyond those broken windows.

He squeezed the folded knife and pictured his mother, back when she’d been strong enough to stand up for others. Although she was too ill to handle whatever Finn uncovered today, if she had known about his plan, she would have approved. Before his flight back to Ivory Coast in 2003, Rollie’s final words had been, “Don’t be a hero. We need you to come home alive.” Without echoing the sentiment, Sylvia had given him one last hug and kiss. She understood that someone must take on that role.

Even though his odds of convincing the woman to leave with him today were low, he had to try. Failure meant he’d have to confront Rollie.

The PowerBar he’d eaten on the subway to Barretto Point Park felt like a lump of wet cement in his stomach.

He continued along the ivy lane. A fire hydrant appeared among the brambles, and he shook his head in wonder at this place, forgotten by the world.

In case she was watching him, he called out a greeting: “A major storm’s headed this way! You won’t be safe here!”

The faint whistle of a commuter train sounded from the Bronx.

Maybe she’d already left. “I’ve brought `food.”

A bird took flight.

“Protein, a few oranges”—his voice cracked—“and chocolate.”

Still nothing. What woman doesn’t like chocolate?

“It’s a Toblerone,” he said to the leaf canopy.

It had been in his bag since his trip to Bryce Canyon with Lily. After each of their treks, financed through a combination of their wages and Lily’s trust fund—the only kind thing her asshole father had ever done for her—they gorged on McDonald’s cheeseburgers then split a Toblerone. Usually Lily followed a vegan, organic diet. At age four, she’d beaten brain cancer. Thirteen years later, she’d developed myelodysplastic syndrome, a blood cancer her doctors blamed on the original chemo. Convinced she had a genetic predisposition to cancer, Lily treated carcinogens like venomous snakes. Finn’s goal for their expeditions was to help her let go of her fears and live.

“Lils, I know you’d understand.” He propped the chocolate in the crook of a willow oak branch and stepped back.

The peace offering looked paltry, so he worked a tribal bracelet off his wrist and looped it over the bar.

Listening for movement behind him, he continued north, and the roof of the two-story male dormitory appeared. To his left, the sky reflected off a large cistern, its greenish water teeming with bacteria and parasites. In one of his father’s journals, he’d noticed a table containing the microorganism densities of samples taken from that tank.

Finn rounded the corner of the building and reeled back at the sight of the tuberculosis pavilion’s four-story central tower, jutting above the trees like a Mayan temple.

Finn hadn’t seen a single reference to its interior in Rollie’s logs, which made sense if he hadn’t wanted Sylvia to know what he’d been doing there.

Pocketing his utility knife, he threaded his way through the overgrowth. At the bottom step of the central entrance, he scraped the dirt from the treads of his boots.

Finn touched his phone within his pocket for reassurance and ascended the stairs. He reached the granite doorframe and paused. The crumbling walls and ceiling had left a layer of white dust on the folding chairs and broken furniture scattered throughout the dim, circular lobby. The room looked frozen in time. The scent of plaster was so strong; he could almost feel the grit in his nose.

Short patches of sunlight sliced into the gloom but did little to illuminate the far doorway. He stepped forward to study the structural integrity of the room.

A single, distant clanking sounded from above.

He jumped at the sound.

It could be her.

Or a new occupant.

Or a rat.

The noise didn’t repeat. He moved to the center of the room and slowly turned. The walls lining the exterior were decaying faster than those within, but overall, the structure appeared to be sound.

Boot prints, covered in a film of dust, crisscrossed the lobby. None looked recent or small enough to be hers. And the tread marks didn’t match the pattern of the orthopedic sneakers Rollie wore to combat his plantar fasciitis.

Curious if his fresh prints would be obvious, Finn scrutinized his tracks and noticed a clean line in the dirt near the entrance.

Crouching before it, he spotted a piece of twine. Visually he traced its path upward through a series of eye bolts screwed into the plaster. The string disappeared into a slit in the ceiling. On the opposite side of the entrance, six inches from the ground, he found a single empty hook. For a tripwire.

He tugged on the twine, and the distant clanging sounded again.

It had to be a homemade alarm system. Despite the humidity, a chill brushed the back of his neck.

“Hello!” he yelled, and his greeting echoed through the chamber.

As Finn crossed the lobby, the air thickened with the scent of decay. He took a deep breath and entered a dim room filled with broken desks and filing cabinets. Blue tiles coating the lower halves of the walls gave the administrative office an underwater-like quality. Finn passed a row of