“Nessie,” she breathed.
Kris knew the rolling spots, which appeared very much like the humps of a sea serpent, would turn out to be shadows, a floating tree trunk, a combination of both, or even something else. Nevertheless, she crossed first the road and then the cool grass to reach the shore.
Sure enough, once she was closer those blips weren’t so round and humpy. More flat and woodsy, with the sparkle of the moon hitting one just right and causing what was perhaps a knothole to gleam like an unwavering eye.
This gave her the sensation of being watched again, and she turned, scanning the road, then the tree line behind her.
Problem was … she kept walking.
And tripped over the body.
CHAPTER 5
Kris flew forward, stumbling, stepping on something that felt like someone.
“Sorry!” she exclaimed, an automatic response.
Her first thought was that she’d interrupted a couple reclining on the banks of the loch, smooching and mooning at the stars. For an instant she envied them. She’d never done anything remotely like that.
Her second was that whoever she “felt” watching her had somehow gotten in front of her and tripped her on purpose.
She was from Chicago; she knew better than to walk around alone in the night. But she’d been lulled by the quaint hominess of the small Scottish village.
Maybe she had fallen out of the idiot tree and hit her head several times on the way down.
Lurching backward, Kris slid on the damp ground, falling to one knee, but as she did, she brought her arms up in a defensive posture, just in case a blow came in fast or grasping, groping hands reached for her throat.
Instead, she came nearly face-to-face with the dead girl.
Kris would have thought her asleep, her face still and peaceful, except for the moon shining off her open eyes the same way they’d shone off the log in the loch. She cast a glance in that direction, but whatever had been there before was gone.
“Son of a bitch,” Kris muttered. She lived in the land of five hundred murders, yet she’d had to come across the ocean to find her first dead body. Not that she’d ever wanted to find one, but still … at Loch Ness? What were the odds?
She lowered her arms, unclenched her fists, and, even though she knew the girl was dead, reached over and placed her fingertips against the pale, cool throat.
“Sometimes I hate it when I’m right.”
Kris had hoped that talking out loud might lower the creep factor. Instead, hearing her voice in the still of the night only increased it significantly.
She needed to call the police. Except she didn’t have a phone. She’d planned to communicate with anyone she needed to by computer.
Even if she’d had a phone, Kris had no idea how to call for help in this country anyway. She didn’t think 911 would do a damn bit of good.
Kris got to her feet, ignoring the damp patch on her knee, wiping the tingling fingertips that had touched the dead girl’s throat against her jeans.
She was going to have to walk into Drumnadrochit. Kris glanced at the empty, winding road, the dark, gaping fields, then again at the body. She really hated to leave the girl alone. She looked so … fragile lying there. Although what else could happen to her now?
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” Kris said, and didn’t even feel foolish for talking to a dead person.
Until she turned and ran smack into someone else.
*
Liam snatched Kris by the forearms as she bounced off his chest, caught her heels on something in the grass, and began to fall. She clutched at him, holding on—tightly, desperately—making him remember other women who had held on to him that way. Usually when he was rising above them, sliding into them, his hands braced on either side of their bodies as he gave them what he’d promised.
The memories, when combined with the scent of her hair, the warmth of her skin, the sharp intake of her breath that caused her breasts to rub against the insides of his wrists just once, were so vivid he nearly kissed her again. Then he saw what lay beneath and let her go.
“What—? Why—? Where,” Kris managed, “did you come from?”
Liam had watched her exit MacLeod’s and followed. Against his better judgment, but now he was glad that he had. She shouldn’t be out here alone, and she shouldn’t have to deal with this.
Liam knelt next to the girl, put his fingers against her throat, but she was dead. Had been for a while.
“Who are you?” Kris asked.
“Right now we’d best be more concerned with who she is.”
Liam didn’t recognize her, so she was probably a tourist. Which was only going to make things worse.
“I’ll go to the village and bring the proper authorities,” he said. “Will ye be all right?”
Kris hesitated, peering at his face as if she could see into his head and discover all his secrets. But Liam knew better. No one had discovered his secrets in years.
“Kris,” he said quietly when she continued to stare at him without answering.
Her eyes narrowed. “I’ll be fine. Much better than she’ll ever be again.”
“I’ll be quick as I can.” Liam turned, but she stayed him with her hand on his arm.
“How do you know my name?”
“A ghràidh,” he murmured, sliding out of reach. “Some say that I know everything.”
*
Kris kept her gaze on her mystery man until he melded with the darkness. What was it about him that made every lucid thought in her head fly away?
He’d nearly kissed her again. She’d seen the intent in his marvelous blue eyes, sensed it in the slight increase of his breath, felt it in his touch. But even more amazing than that intent was her desire to let him.
She should have pushed harder—for his name, for an explanation of how he had known hers. But it had seemed beyond tacky to do so with a dead girl at her feet. They had more pressing issues than names.
An icy, damp finger seemed to brush her cheek, and Kris glanced toward the loch. A thick haze had formed, hanging above the water, blocking any hint of the opposite shore. The wind pushed the fog in her direction; vapor settled on her skin and in her hair. She saw—
“Through a glass darkly.” She’d always liked that phrase but hadn’t really understood it until now. Peering at the dead girl through the mist was like peering into a murky mirror.
“First Corinthians.”
The voice was firm and commanding. The voice of God.
If God had a thick German accent.
The tall, slim outline of a man wavered in the depths of the haze as the voice continued: “‘For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.’”
The old man who’d been staring at her in the pub stepped from the gloom. He bowed slightly, an Old World gesture that seemed completely at home in this old world.
“Chapter thirteen, verse twelve,” he finished. “Very apropos. Soon, you will no longer know only in part.”
“Know what?” Kris asked. “How did you get here?”
“I walked, Miss Daniels. The same as you.”
He knew her name, too. Had it been written in the sky when she wasn’t looking?
“You followed me?”
“Why would I do that?”
Kris glanced at the dead girl, suddenly remembering that the old guy had disappeared from the bar before she had. He hadn’t followed her; he’d beaten her here. What had he been doing before she arrived?
Kris took a step backward, preparing to run, and he snatched her elbow with surprisingly quick and freakishly strong, bony fingers. “You do not want to do that,” he murmured.
She tugged on her arm. He didn’t let go, instead reaching his free hand beneath his voluminous coat and withdrawing a gun.
“I do not have the patience or the time to argue with you.”
He released her but kept the gun right where it was,
pointed at her sternum. His coat had caught on what appeared to be a bandolier of bullets strung across his chest. Kris could just make out another pistol stuffed into the loose waistband of his pants.
Who was this guy?
“The authorities will be back directly,” he continued, “and I’d prefer not to be here when they arrive.”
Rubbing her elbow, which would probably bear the imprint of his claw-like digits come the morning, Kris glanced at the corpse, then at the gun, then at him. “I bet you would.”
His bushy white brows lifted. “You think I killed her?” He shook his head. “She drowned, poor thing.”
“Drowning doesn’t preclude your killing her.”
His lips curved. “True. However, I did not.”
“I’m just supposed to believe you?”
He shrugged. “It is up to you. But you will learn that many have drowned here of late. I’m afraid more will follow.”
Kris frowned at the loch. “Is there some kind of undertow? A heavy kelp growth tangling in swimmers’ legs or boat propellers?”
“No boats have sunk; none are even missing. This is not a place for swimming, and the drownings, they are not accidental.”
The man was very good at saying murder without actually saying it.
“Why haven’t I heard about this?” Kris asked.
“Tourist town,” he said. “They do not like to broadcast such things.”
Kris could see where a serial killer might put a damper on the revenue.
“This girl is only the second to be found.” He jerked his head at the water, which had become completely obscured by the mist. “But there are more out there. Many more.”
“If you didn’t kill them, then how do you know that?”
“When people start to disappear, I am the man they tell.”
“Who’s ‘they’? No, wait!” The better question was: “Who the hell are you?”
He did that half bow again, which seemed much less polite with the gun still in his hand. “Edward Mandenauer.”
Maybe that hadn’t been the better question. She didn’t know him from Adam. So she reiterated the first.
“Who’s ‘they’? Why do they tell you?”
“Perhaps tell was not the right word.” He frowned. “Sometimes my English is still not vollkommen.” A growl of annoyance rumbled in his throat. “Perfect.”
Kris thought his English was damn perfect and he knew exactly what he was saying—and not saying.
“I have connections.” He rolled the barrel of the gun in a tiny circle. “Good ones. When people disappear, I hear of it. I come to the area, or send someone, and we discover what is making them go…” He lifted his free hand, fingers touching the thumb; then he released them toward the sky. “Poof.”
“Poof,” Kris repeated.
“Or…” He stared pointedly at the dead girl. “Not poof.”
“You belong to some kind of international serial killer task force?”
His lips twitched. “Some kind.”
“What kind?”
“We are called the Jäger-Suchers.”
“My German is worse than your English,” she said.
“Hunter-searchers. We hunt monsters.” Kris blinked. “As do you.”
“I’m not hunting a monster!”
“No?”
“I…” Kris paused.
She was pretending to be a writer; no one was supposed to know why she was really here or who she really was. But this guy—with his superior connections and monster-hunting task force—appeared to already know. Of course he could be nuts, probably was, but since he was holding the gun, she decided to tell him the truth.
“I expose hoaxes,” she said.
“Which you’re very good at.”
“Thanks. But I don’t believe there’s a monster here.”
“No?” he repeated, again glancing pointedly at the dead girl.
Kris sighed. “A human monster, sure. But a lake monster? No. And I plan to prove it.”
“You do realize it is impossible to prove something does not exist? You can merely prove it has not yet been found.”
“I’ve proved that things don’t exist.”
“You’ve proved that certain myths were being perpetrated by what you call a hoaxer. However, just because someone has hoaxed does not mean the myth is not real.”
“That’s exactly what it means.”
“No.” He shook his head as if she were a poor deluded soul. “It means that someone has been deceiving others. It does not mean that the monster might not still be there but not yet found.”
“I’ll prove the Loch Ness Monster isn’t real.”
“If you can, please do so. It will remove one more creature from my…” His mouth curved. “To-do list.”
“I don’t work for you.”
“Would you like to? I will pay you. You can accomplish all sorts of things with that kind of cash.”
“What kind?” Kris asked, intrigued in spite of herself.
He reached into his coat again—what all did he have in there?—and removed a plain, white envelope, which he tossed in her direction.
It was full of hundred-dollar bills. They looked pretty real.
“Who do you work for?”
“You are a smart girl. If you add one and one, I bet you will get two. Unlimited funding.” He waggled his gun. “The best weapons and a lot of them.”
She could add, and what she came up with was the U.S. government. Who else printed money like it was newspaper, let damn near everyone own a gun, and kept secrets like they were the gold stored at the Federal Reserve?
“Of course the powers that be would not admit to funding a monster hunt.”
“Of course.” Kris lifted the envelope. “What do I have to do for this?”
“Simply keep me informed of whatever you discover.”
“About the un-monster? I don’t see how that will help.”
“I’m not paying you to analyze the information; I’m paying you to let me do so. I’ve been in this job long enough to know that where there is smoke there is usually a dragon.”
“If there were actually dragons.”
“They’d call it a guivre in this area—serpent body, dragon’s head. Venomous breath. Afraid of naked humans. The females have green scales.”
Kris opened her mouth, shut it again, then: “Are you for real?”
Confusion fluttered over his well-lined face. “Why on earth would I not be real?”
Kris rubbed her forehead.
“Where there are rumors of a monster,” he continued, “a monster often appears—be it human or no. As you research the loch and its most famous inhabitant, I’m certain you will discover information that can be of use to me.”
“And then?”
“You will tell me.”
“How?”
“I will come to you.”
Kris got a little tingle across her spine at that statement. “It would be easier if you gave me your contact information.”
“No doubt,” he agreed, but he didn’t offer any. “I must be on my way. I’m needed…” He paused, then gave a tiny twitch of one shoulder in lieu of a shrug. “Elsewhere.”
“And the other Yag—” She bit her lip and tried again. “Suke—”
He sighed as if dealing with a slightly amusing but extremely annoying two-year-old. “Jäger-Suchers.”
“Yeah, them. No takers on the age-old Loch Ness problem?”
“I’m a bit…” He glanced toward the road, then back. “Shorthanded of late. And the monsters are multiplying.”
“I don’t believe in monsters.”
A sudden commotion from the road—voices, a siren—drew her attention. Headlights permeated the hovering haze.
“You will,” Edward Mandenauer said.
When she looked back, the old man was gone.
CHAPTER 6
Chief Constable Alan Mac was the first to arrive, but he wasn’t alone. Her mystery man, whose name she
still did not know, appeared to have roused half the village, then sent them ahead without him.
Some came in cars, some on foot, but come they did, and a crowd began to gather.
“Keep them back!” Alan Mac shouted to the other officers as they arrived. “This is a crime scene!”
He shot Kris a quick, unreadable glance before he knelt beside the dead girl and checked for a pulse. Then he sighed, and his big head dipped.
“Were you on duty when the other one was found?” Kris asked.
Alan Mac’s head came up so fast he must have gotten a crick in his neck, since his hand went there and rubbed. He climbed to his feet. “Where did ye hear about the other?”
“I … well … uh…” How was Kris supposed to explain that she’d learned the news from an ancient German who’d disappeared into the mist faster than the characters in a Stephen King novel?
Alan lowered his voice: “That information has not been released.”
Uh-oh.
She was saved from answering when a boatload of police and techs arrived and began to set up a perimeter, pushing her out of it. Alan’s attention was captured, but he pointed a large finger at her and said, “Dinnae go anywhere, ye ken?”
“I ken,” Kris muttered.
Her gaze wandered over the crowd, searching for the man she’d met at Urquhart Castle, but he wasn’t there. She almost asked Alan Mac where he’d gone, but she knew where that would end. With the beginnings of a headache when he insisted that there was no such man. Although if that were the case, the constable wouldn’t be here.
Kris’s mind whirled. This place was starting to get to her.
And now she had an envelope of cash from a man who’d “gone poof” after tasking her with gathering information on a monster. Or perhaps a serial killer.
“One is both the same,” she murmured, a saying of her brother’s that had always confused her. Until just now.
People came and went. In the states she would have identified a coroner or medical examiner, crime scene techs, forensic experts—hey, she watched SVU—but here she had no clue on procedure or the proper titles for the players involved.
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