Eventually, Alan Mac separated from the others, took her arm, and led her a few yards from the hubbub.
The fog still floated atop the loch, obscuring the opposite shore, but the police lights illuminated the near side like the grand opening of a used-car lot.
The constable removed a small notebook from his jacket and poised his pencil over a pristine white sheet. “What happened?”
“I was walking home from the pub—”
“Which one?”
“MacLeod’s.”
Alan lifted his gaze to hers. “Ye found that already, did ye?”
“Dougal invited me.”
He frowned. “Dougal Scott?”
“Is there more than one Dougal?”
“Around here? Aye. So ye had a date with Dougal—”
“No,” Kris interrupted. “I met him to talk about…” She waved her hand at the now-invisible loch.
“Ah.” Alan nodded. “He’s a good one for that. But he let ye walk home all alone?”
“Let me?” Kris bristled. “I’m not a child.”
“Mmm.” The sound made Kris bristle even more. But before she could say anything, Alan continued. “How did ye end up down near the loch?”
“I…” She glanced in that direction and hesitated.
“Did ye see somethin’?” Kris gave a reluctant nod. “What was it?”
“A log,” she said firmly.
“Mmm,” he said again, the sound very Scottish and male. “And then?”
“I tripped over—” She flipped her fingers at the dead girl, whom she could no longer see for all the people.
“Did ye touch her?”
“I fell on her,” Kris said, and shivered with the memory. “Then, yes, I touched her to make sure she was dead.”
“All right. How long until the boy came by, and ye sent him to the village?”
“I don’t think he’s a boy. He’s probably older than you.”
“The lad who came to find me was no more than fifteen.”
“No, it was…” She paused. This was what came from not insisting on a name. Now she didn’t have one to give. “The same man I saw at Urquhart Castle.”
“The ghost?”
“He wasn’t a ghost,” Kris snapped. “I saw him tonight at MacLeod’s.”
“Did anyone else?”
Kris scowled. “I spoke with him right there next to that body, and—” Yes! “He touched her, too,” she said triumphantly. “There should be fingerprints.”
“Mmm,” Alan murmured again. If he kept that up, she just might smack him. “It’s rare to get fingerprints off a neck.”
“Crap,” Kris muttered.
Alan Mac’s lips curved. “So ye came down to the loch because ye saw…” His smile widened. “A log. Then ye tripped over the body, and the boy came by—”
“Man,” Kris corrected. “The man from the castle, and he said he’d bring the authorities.”
“Anything else?”
Kris paused. Should she tell Alan about Mandenauer or shouldn’t she?
Her hesitation was answer enough.
“Ye better spill it all, lass. Holding back information in a police matter is serious business.”
Why had she even considered lying? Truth was her stock-in-trade. Getting to the truth was all she’d ever been any good at.
“There was an old man. He said this was the second body.”
Alan’s eyes widened. “Tall? Thin? White hair, blue eyes?” Kris nodded, and he sighed. “German?”
“You know him?” Kris imagined Edward Mandenauer escaped often from the local loony bin. And if that was the case, they needed to do something about those guns.
“He’s an American agent. Some sort of Special Forces operation. Though I’ve never been clear on what sort.”
Kris’s brows lifted. Mandenauer had been telling the truth.
“Comes about now and again. Checks in with us since he never goes anywhere without a gun.” Alan’s lips twitched. “Or five. Except…” Now his lips tightened. “He hasn’t checked in lately.”
“I—uh—don’t think he’s staying.”
“No? He said as much?”
Kris nodded, and oddly, Alan appeared to relax at the news.
Someone called his name, and the constable raised a hand to them before returning his attention to her. “Anything else?”
Though Edward hadn’t said she needed to keep their relationship secret, Kris decided to. She wasn’t supposed to be doing anything in Drumnadrochit but writing a children’s book about the local lake monster.
And wasn’t that a bizarre combination? Children and monsters? Then again, maybe not. Who else believed in them?
“If I think of something, I’ll let you know,” Kris said.
Since that was true, the words came out sounding sincere. Since Alan was preoccupied—his gaze had gone past her to the thick grove of trees—he didn’t notice Kris’s tension at omitting the truth. To her, a lie of omission was still a lie, and she didn’t like it.
“Ye know where t’ find me.” Alan inched past but paused when Kris spoke.
“Is this murder?”
His face gave away nothing, but she had the distinct impression he was annoyed. “A drowning is usually an accident.”
“Unless it wasn’t.”
“We’ll have t’ wait and see.” He walked away.
She didn’t like withholding information from the police. It made her uncomfortable. But if she was going to find out anything at all about who was perpetrating the Loch Ness hoax, she’d best keep her secrets a secret. If word got around—and it would in a place like this—that Kris was some kind of spy for an American agent, there was no telling what would happen.
*
Liam watched from the forest as Kris made her way to Loch Side Cottage
“He’s here.” Alan Mac strode into the cool, mellow darkness of the trees. “He was talking to her.”
“There are a lot of hes about right now. Ye’ll have t’ be more specific.”
“Mandenauer.”
Liam tensed, then narrowed his gaze on the crowd. “I dinnae see him.”
“Gone now. But he could still be in Drumnadrochit.”
“What did he tell her?”
Alan Mac shrugged. “Didnae seem like much, but with him ye never know.”
Liam relaxed just a little. “He’ll no doubt visit now and again until the day that he dies, and he often talks to people. He often does much more than talk. ’Tis nothing new.”
“These killings are.”
“Ye think Edward Mandenauer is drowning young girls? He’s in lovely shape for an old, old man, but I doubt he’s capable of that.”
Alan didn’t answer but continued to stare at Liam until Liam sighed and met his eyes. “Ye think it was me?”
“Was it?”
“I havenae drowned a maiden in years,” Liam said dryly.
Alan Mac snorted. “Like ye’d tell me if ye had.”
The two of them pondered the crowds, the lights, the tarp-covered body at the edge of the loch.
“We aren’t going to be able to keep this quiet anymore,” Alan Mac murmured.
Liam didn’t answer. He hadn’t thought they’d be able to keep it quiet this long.
*
Kris returned to the cottage, hoping she could fall into bed and straight into sleep. Instead, as soon as she closed her eyes, she saw the face of a nameless dead girl.
Still, Kris tossed and she turned and she tried for quite a while, but eventually she sat up and turned on the light. Where was her book?
Kris padded into the living area, where her copy of Supernatural Secrets—always a good place to ferret out her next hoax—lay on the couch. She leaned over to pick it up, glancing through the window as she straightened.
Someone stood near the water.
Her heart leaped. The murderer perhaps? How long until he headed for the cottage? Kris wished Edward had handed over one of his guns along with his money.
As if she’d know what to do with a gun if she had one. Though how hard could it be? Long end pointed toward what you wanted to shoot and then—
“Bang,” she murmured, still staring at the figure near the loch.
The moon shone down like the beam of an alien spacecraft. If she were fanciful she’d expect him to drift upward, captured forever and gone.
Instead, he bathed in the light, as if the moon were water and he was parched. The sheen sparkled in his hair like dew, and suddenly she realized who it was.
Despite the chill and her bare feet, as well as her nighttime attire of T-shirt and flannel pajama pants, Kris slipped out of the cottage and down to the loch.
If he heard her coming, he gave no sign, continuing to stare into the water. The mist had disappeared as quickly as it had come, and the night was clear and cool.
He wore the same thing he’d worn the first time she saw him. Dark jeans, dark short-sleeved shirt—in this climate he should be cold; she was—yet he stood there on the banks of Loch Ness, arms at his sides instead of wrapped around himself like hers were, as if it were the first day of summer in the tropics and not the beginning of autumn in the Highlands.
Kris paused a few feet away, waiting for him to speak, to offer some sort of explanation, but he didn’t. Eventually she had to ask: “Why did Alan Mac say a boy had come to tell him about the dead girl?”
He breathed in and out a few times. Kris didn’t like the hesitation. In her experience, hesitation meant lies. Of course, in her experience, a too-quick answer meant the same.
Hell, be honest. In her experience, damn near everything that came out of people’s mouths was a lie.
“I couldnae find him,” he said at last. “So I snatched a lad, sent him one way, and I went in the other.”
It sounded plausible enough; however— “You have an answer for everything.”
“Shouldn’t I?” He continued to stare at the loch as if transfixed.
“Alan Mac thinks I imagined you.”
“Alan Mac thinks many things. ’Tis his job.”
“Why is it that no one seems to know who you are?”
“I couldnae say.”
“Couldnae?” she mocked. “Or wouldnae?”
He took another deep breath and let it out. “My name is Liam Grant.”
She waited, but he said no more.
“That’s it? You kiss me in the moonlight and all you tell me now is your name?”
“What would ye have me say?”
What would she have him say? She wanted to know both everything about him and nothing at all. She’d had men tell her things before—both lies and the truth—that she’d wished later they hadn’t. Perhaps it was better to kiss but never tell.
“You didn’t come back.” She hadn’t meant to say that. She sounded like an abandoned girl. Something she’d been once but had sworn never to be again. Which might be why she had so few dates and even fewer friends. If she didn’t care, she couldn’t hurt.
“I’m here now.” His voice, low and soft, trilled along her skin like a gentle spring breeze, raising gooseflesh in its wake. She rubbed her hands against her arms, but it didn’t do any good.
Drawn by that voice on the wind, the moon in his hair, and a promise of warmth, she stepped closer. “Why are you here now?”
“D’ ye expect me to say I came to kill ye?”
“Did you?”
He laughed, short and sharp. Then he spun, grabbing her shoulders, and she had no choice but to steady herself by reaching for him. Her hands landed on his hips.
His blue eyes caught the light from above and shone like molten silver. “If I’d wanted t’ kill ye,” he whispered, “I’d have done it before, then tossed both you and the girl back to Nessie.”
She took a single step forward, surprising him, so his hands at her shoulders slid free, encircling her back and turning what had begun as imprisonment into an embrace.
“Then why are you here?” she repeated, every breath she took brushing her breasts against his chest in a rhythm as old as the sea.
He cursed in a language she didn’t understand—Gaelic most likely—and then he was kissing her as if he’d been denied such things for longer than either of them had been alive.
His mouth was cool, damp, like the loch, like the mist and the night. She opened, drinking him in as he had drunk the bright and shiny moon.
His tongue was warm when it stroked hers, igniting the heat she had craved. He tasted of desire, a flavor like the darkest chocolate; his hair was as smooth as satin sheets, and the way he smelled … He could be wearing a cologne called Wicked. Was there a cologne called Wicked?
She pressed against him. He was all sharp angles and sleek muscle, while she was just round and soft. That had always bothered her, being round instead of slim, soft instead of hard. Right now she couldn’t think why.
Her mind spun away on sensation. His skin blessedly cool against her hot, hot hands. His mouth so clever—a nip here, a caress there. Who would ever have believed that a bit of pain could bring so much pleasure?
His palm at her waist, his thumb stroked her belly. She arched, wishing he would lift that hand, that thumb, and—
He cupped her breast, the chill of his skin sifting through the cotton, making her nipple tighten even harder. When he brushed the tingling bud—back and forth, back and forth—mimicking the motion with his tongue against the tip of hers, she moaned.
Her hands in his hair clenched; she tilted his mouth just so. She’d forgotten where she was. She’d forgotten who she was. This man—Liam—had become the whole world.
Something splashed in the loch—close enough that she felt a hint of spray. An instant later they had both dropped their arms to their sides, disentangled their tongues, and taken one giant step backward.
Kris was trembling—from the cold, the shock, the lust, she wasn’t sure. Maybe all three.
“What was that?” she whispered.
“Sturgeon,” he said quickly.
She’d meant what was that in relation to the strange sense of need that seemed to overtake her whenever he came near. All she wanted to do was kiss him, touch him, and more.
She’d never been tempted by a stranger, seduced as if she had no will to resist a man whose name, until only moments ago, she had not even known.
The splash came again. Ripples spread toward the shore. “That sounds pretty big,” she said.
“They are.” Liam frowned at the water. “Big. The sturgeons. They can grow t’ be twenty feet long. Some have mistaken them for sharks.”
“Or lake monsters?” she murmured.
“Aye.”
“Do you believe in lake monsters?”
He glanced at her, and his lips, gorgeous, wet, and clever, quirked. “I think they could exist.”
“Do you think Nessie exists?”
His smile faded, and his deep blue gaze held hers. “I’ll not lie to ye. I’ve lived here all my life,” Liam continued, “and I have never once seen Nessie.”
Usually when someone said they wouldn’t lie, it was right before they lied their butts off, yet, strangely, she believed him.
“You’d be the one of the few in Drumnadrochit,” she said. “Or one of the few who admits it.”
“Aye,” he repeated, but she wasn’t sure which part of her statement he was agreeing with. Reaching out, he tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “Best get inside before ye freeze, Kris.”
Her name, uttered in that low, sexy burr, made her shiver again, and she lifted her hands to rub at her bare arms. “Aren’t you cold?”
“Not anymore.”
“You could…” She paused. “Come in.”
He looked at the loch, a quick, sharp glance like he’d heard something, although she hadn’t. “I have to go.” He turned away.
“Wait.” Kris reached for his arm but let her hand fall back to her side before she touched him. She’d never been clingy—had learned long ago that clinging only made
people run away faster—and she wasn’t going to start now.
Liam turned with a lift of one dark brow.
“Where do you live?” she asked. “What do you do?”
“Do?” he echoed.
Was that expression too American?
“For a job,” she clarified.
“Whatever comes along.”
Before she could ask what that meant or point out that he hadn’t answered either of her questions, he jogged down the shore, disappearing into the sudden darkness caused by the fall of the moon.
The eastern sky had begun to lighten. She should really go inside. Instead, Kris stayed right where she was, hugging herself for warmth and watching the sun rise.
As it burst over the horizon, all red and orange and yellow, a distant splash echoed across the murky expanse of the loch.
This one didn’t sound anything like a sturgeon.
CHAPTER 7
Kris had stayed up all night in the past. Studying. Working on Hoax Hunters. Talking with Lola. Crying because what was left of her family ignored her.
The latter hadn’t happened in quite a while. Neither her father nor her brother ever remembered her birthday; they seemed to have completely forgotten Christmas. After the third time June 8th had passed with no call, no card, no damn e-mail, Kris had snuffled through a bottle of champagne and vowed never to shed a tear over them again. So far she hadn’t.
It was a new experience, however, to remain awake all night because she’d found a dead body. She’d have to rank the experience just above the crying-over-Daddy episode.
Kris considered trying to sleep, but with the sun up and the birds tweeting and the loch lapping she doubted she’d have any luck. Instead she made a pot of the coffee she’d bought from Jamaica yesterday and sat in front of her computer to work.
She typed up what she’d learned so far, which wasn’t a helluva lot more than she’d already discovered from books and the Internet. Sure, she’d heard a few Nessie-sighting stories, but there were thousands of them. Besides, she’d come here to debunk the myth, not add to the lore that perpetrated it.
How was she going to catch the hoaxer in the act of hoaxing? With all the extra interest that would soon be focused on the loch now that two dead bodies had been found, she doubted anyone would be out and about creating mischief.
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