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

She nodded at the bag. “That for me?”

“Depends,” he said, jouncing it, “on whether you’ve realized that kindness isn’t quid pro quo.”

She cocked her head. “Did you bring the fourth Twilight book?”

Involuntarily, he chuckled. In the crate he’d dropped off in midwinter, he’d included the second and third novels. “So you like the series?”

“It’s quite scandalous.”

Finn took that as a ‘yes.’ “Unfortunately, the release date isn’t until August second of this year.” Hoping she’d request it, he’d checked.

Cora grunted in disappointment.

“I know. It does suck that you can’t kill me today and still find out how the story ends.”

“That drawing of the Astor Hotel, it was stunning. Because of it, I’d already decided to spare your life, this time,” she added as she fingered the keloid encircling her neck, which, he realized, hadn’t been one of the scars she’d explained on the morgue roof.

Nonchalantly, he set the duffel bag halfway between them, then retreated.

“You could have left this by the seawall, like last time,” she said, eyeing it. “I haven’t changed my mind about the Lyme or giving blood.”

“I’m here on behalf of Sylvia.”

Cora jerked her head. “Now, that I wasn’t expecting. There’s no way she’d ask me to be their guinea pig again.”

“I have a message from her.”

Cora’s scowl vanished, and she blinked rapidly. “I’m listening.”

“She says, ‘It’s time to tell him.’”

Her hand flew to her mouth. “You’re sure? Those were her exact words?”

“I’ve a pretty good memory.”

In the pale, early morning light, Finn could just make out the glisten of a tear on her cheek. He debated asking her to explain.

“I’m so glad Sylvia’s come around to it.” Cora looked past Finn, and he guessed she was once again speaking to the island. “And she kept her promise, that I could be the one. Rollie’s okay with this?”

She was staring at him, and Finn surmised that the question had been addressed to him. “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about, but Sylvia hasn’t even told Rollie that she knows he’s continued his research. I highly doubt she consulted him about this.”

“They never told you.” She clicked her tongue. “You’ll find out soon enough, though you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

“Am I the ‘him’?” “No,” she said with a scowl.

“Is Kristian?” he asked, but she’d already turned away. From the shaking of her shoulders, he could tell she was crying.

Fidgeting, he felt uncomfortable witnessing this vulnerability from a woman who’d tried so hard to appear unbreakable.

This was a private moment; he knew he should leave. Debating whether he should slip away or say good-bye, Finn remembered the watch. “My mom wanted me to give you something,” he said softly, shrugging off his pack.

Plainly embarrassed, she ducked her chin and turned only partially to face him.

“Cora,” he said gently, “you’re human. It’s okay to cry.”

“No, I’m not. But don’t worry: I came to terms with that long ago.” Rummaging in her messenger bag, she pulled out an antiseptic towelette to wipe her cheeks.

He retrieved the small shopping bag and threaded his way through the debris to place it close to her. Keeping his light fixed on the package for her benefit, he backed away.

Clearly puzzled, Cora removed from the bag a patent leather box. Carefully, as if she thought it might be a trick, she opened the case and inspected the watch. After flipping it over, she read the inscription, then uttered a single cry.

Finn longed to know why she’d reacted so strongly to the simple German phrase.

Suddenly she glanced up and darted into the darkness of the adjacent chamber.

Faintly, he could hear her crying. Then she stopped.

The room was too quiet. He inhaled slowly, the air thick with the smell of rust and rot.

The brightening sky, visible through the missing roof, only increased the creepiness of the broken machinery around him. It was far too quiet.

He tore off the tape to access his switchblade.

The scraping of a metal bar against the ground behind him fractured the calm.

Whirling around as he fumbled for his weapon, Finn glimpsed a dark object flying toward him. As he yelled in surprise, the pipe crashed into his temple.

A single spike of torturous pain pierced his head.

The room blurred away.

1991

Nature has nearly reclaimed North Brother

July 4

trace of blue entered the sky as Cora wove her way through the forest canopy, which had been progressively darkening the Riverside campus for the past twenty-eight years. Behind her, the calls of awakening black-crowned night herons filled the woods. Since the single, warning squawk that had roused her, the heron colony at the southern end hadn’t made a sound. The only force capable of wholly quieting those birds was death, and she planned to silence whoever had served it to them.

Fingering the flap on the raccoon skin case she’d made to sheath her sole weapon, she stopped in a mulberry tree at the fringe of the nesting site. A breeze shook the leaves, and Cora recoiled at a familiar scent, like cut hay. Chloroform had always been a trademark Gettler tool, but Ulrich had grown too feeble to manage the crossing, and she couldn’t envisage Rollie needlessly exterminating the flock.

Bright light hit her eyes, momentarily blinding her. Shielding her face with her arm, she flattened her body against the far side of the tree.

“She’s over there!” shouted a wraithlike figure.

Cora studied the shifting shadow and decided it had to be a man in a black hazmat suit. His voice, warped by a gas mask, had sounded too young to be Rollie’s.

Kristian, she thought, and her hand flew to her chest, just as one of her feet slipped from its toehold.

She dropped and her abdomen and the underside of her arms scraped down the bark as she attempted to bear-hug the tree. A branch slowed her fall, and she wrapped one leg around the trunk and flailed the other until her boot found new purchase.

From below came laughter.

She shrank against the trunk and tried to ignore the stinging from the raw skin on her abdomen.

“I thought you said