Read The World Beneath (Joe Tesla) for Free Online

be, with high cheekbones and well-formed lips, the top one dipped in the center like a bow, almost feminine. Curly black hair was cut to his jawline. He wore a light blue suit that matched his eyes. And he grinned like he’d played the greatest trick ever on the world.
    Dirk read aloud as he skimmed it. “Joe Tesla, software millionaire…set to ring the bell at the New York Stock Exchange on the day his facial-recognition software company, Pellucid, went public…software uses a revolutionary algorithm…CTO never showed up…has disappeared from sight…rumors are that he has developed agoraphobia and not left the Grand Central Hyatt for six months.”
    Vivian sighed.
    “This was your guy?”
    She stared down at the green water flowing far beneath the bridge. “Something happened to him down there.”
    Dirk stood close to her, his warm form sheltering her from the wind. “How do you know?”
    “He had no trouble going outside when I was following him. He trotted right over to the terminal and stumbled back. He didn’t have agoraphobia then, but he does now.”
    “Weird, but not your problem.”
    “What if it is?” She shifted from one foot to the other in the cold. “What if something happened to him down there, something that wouldn’t have happened if I’d been there, and that’s what changed him?”
    “Even if,” he said. “He’s a big boy. Not your job keeping him out of trouble all the time.”
    “That night, it was.” She clenched her jaw. “And I blew it.”
    “What are you going to do about it?” Dirk asked. She liked it that he didn’t try to talk her out of anything, just asked questions.
    “I don’t know yet,” she said. “But something.”
    “You’d be better off letting it go.”
    “Sure,” she said. “You’re right.”
    They both knew she wouldn’t listen to his advice.
     

Chapter 4
    November 27, 3:17 p.m.
    Gallo Underground House
    New York City
     
    Edison’s warm nose nuzzled against Joe’s knee, and he looked up from his laptop. “What, boy? Can’t you see I’m busy?”
    He wasn’t really busy. He was never busy these days. On the day of his first panic attack, he’d quit work. Now he just screwed around online.
    The dog looked pointedly toward the door. He wanted to go outside. The poor guy had been watching Joe stare at his laptop screen and pound on the keys for hours. Dogs must think humans are completely strange.
    Joe checked his laptop’s clock. Just after three. Time for Edison’s walk. It was as if the dog had his own built-in chronometer. Joe stood up and stretched, causing Edison to make a break for the door. Joe loitered and looked around the room. It had originally been called the parlor, and it existed in a kind of time warp. Crimson velvet curtains, drawn on two walls, seemed to shut out the light of day. But, of course, they didn’t. The light of day never made it down here. The curtains hid stained glass windows backed by stone.
    He’d been sitting in a leather wingback chair with his laptop. In front of him an electric fireplace crackled like the real thing. He turned it on most evenings, for the warmth and the soothing noise. Even though the fireplace looked modern, the mantel built around it was an antique treasure made of hand-carved mahogany. He counted the sea shells scattered atop it—cyan, blue, red, green, brown, orange, and slate flashed in his head. A human skull rested among them and a statue of the Egyptian cat Goddess, Bastet , carved from black basalt. It had been collected by the Victorian gentleman who’d insisted on living here, in the midst of his greatest creation.
    Joe envied him. As much as he loved the house, he didn’t live here by choice. If he could have gone, he’d have been outside in a heartbeat, living in a glass house with the ceiling open to the sky. But he couldn’t.
    Joe turned off the fireplace and walked past the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with leather-bound volumes and passed a large oil