CHAPTER 3

Liam watched from the trees, moving along slowly, silently, nearly parallel to their path.

Though the moon was rising, it was still very dark. But the flare of Alan Mac’s trusty flashlight surrounded the two figures in an eerie yellow glow.

Their voices carried in the still, chill night; Liam heard everything. Her name was Kris, and she was here to write about Nessie.

He didn’t believe her.

However, he didn’t think she was here to hunt the thing. He’d met hunters, and she wasn’t the type. For one thing, she was a terrible liar.

She asked about the man in the ruins again. What did Liam expect when he’d kissed her like that? He knew better. His talent at kissing was second only to his talent for everything that came afterward.

Liam had been born for seduction. Seduction was what had gotten him into trouble in the first place.

Kris disappeared inside the cottage. Alan Mac turned and headed right for Liam, pausing a few yards away. “I didnae think she believed me when I said you were a ghost.”

Liam didn’t think so, either.

“You should stay away from her.”

Liam should, but he wasn’t sure that he could.

The constable walked on, leaving Liam to stand in the trees and watch the full moon rise over the loch.

God, how he hated them. People behaved foolishly beneath the bright round moon.

He certainly had.

*   *   *

Kris awoke to sunlight spilling in through her bedroom window. She’d been so tired the night before she hadn’t thought to draw the drapes.

After a quick shower, Kris checked her e-mail. She’d promised to meet Lola for Skype sessions while she was here, but the way the Internet behaved—switching off and on at will, as well as crashing completely when she tried to access a large Web site—Kris doubted that would happen.

Instead, she sent her friend a quick note telling her not to worry. She’d be in touch. Since the same thing had happened on other trips, in other places, Lola would deal. She didn’t have much choice.

Effy had left tea in the cabinet, but in Kris’s opinion tea was for the sick. Coffee was for her right now. Or as soon as she could walk into Drumnadrochit and buy some.

Once outside, Kris glanced in the direction of Urquhart Castle, but she couldn’t see the ruins from here due to a bend in the road. She could, however, see the loch. Beneath the brilliant sun it should have been blue and clear. But this was Loch Ness. Due to the high peat content in the surrounding soil, the water was often the shade of wet sand.

Therefore, while the area around the loch was a postcard of beauty—cobalt-tinged mountains, rolling emerald hills, and pine forests—the loch itself … eh. Nevertheless, several boats chugged along, most sporting signs that identified them as offering various Nessie tours.

Kris turned in the opposite direction from the one she’d taken the night before and, after crossing a few fields, strolled into Drumnadrochit.

Considering that the area’s main business was tourism, she found a coffee shop without any trouble. Americans needed their fix—witness the Starbucks on every other street corner—and the French and Italians were no doubt the same, though never suggest Starbucks to a Frenchman. Kris had learned that the hard way while filming Hoax Hunters in New Orleans. Of course when you had Cafe du Monde, what possible reason could there be for Starbucks?

It appeared they had no need of one in Drumnadrochit, either, since the sign with the steaming cup of dark liquid was perched in the window of a place called Jamaica Blue.

The woman behind the counter wore a purple tie-dyed T-shirt and ancient, ratty jeans. She sported sun-streaked light brown dreads, hazel eyes, skin the shade of the loch beneath the sun, and an accent that made Kris long for sand, coconut oil, and a Beach Boys sound track.

“What can I get you?”

“Do you have Blue Mountain?”

“Have you looked outside?”

“I meant in a cup.”

“We have dat, too.”

In seconds Kris did, along with a bag of ground beans to take back to the cottage.

“You must be de writer woman stayin’ at Effy’s place.”

“Word travels fast.”

“Word is all we have here of a misty eve. I’m Jamaica.” She offered her hand. “Jamaica Blue.”

“That’s really your name?”

The woman just smiled.

Over the intoxicating aroma wafting from her cup, Kris smelled a story. “Care to join me?” she asked.

Jamaica’s exotic eyes flicked around the currently empty shop. “Don’t mind if I do.”

She grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler. “I drink my share of coffee before seven A.M.,” she explained.

They took a table by the window and watched the crowds stream by.

“Is it always like this?” Kris asked.

“Some days are busier dan others, but…” Jamaica took a large swig from the bottle. “Yes.”

“Nessie’s good for business.”

“Nessie is our bizness.”

Kris took a sip of coffee. “Mmm,” she said, the sound a commentary on both the taste and Jamaica’s remark. “How long have you lived here?”

“Ye dinnae think I’m a local?” Jamaica replied with a perfect Scottish brogue.

Kris lifted a brow, and Jamaica laughed.

“I opened dis place … oh, ’bout five years back.”

“Have you seen Nessie?”

“Of course.”

“Really?”

“You t’ink I’m lying?”

Kris thought everyone was lying, but that was just Kris. “You said yourself, Nessie is your business.”

“Mmm,” Jamaica murmured, the sound very Scottish.

How long had Jamaica had to live here to acquire the talent for a murmur that said both everything and nothing? Perhaps it came with the ability to speak in a brogue.

“You are right. Nessie is good bizness.” Jamaica gazed out the window in the direction of the loch. “But I have seen her.”

“When? Where?”

“De day I arrived I drove along A Eighty-two. Sun was shinin’ like today. Saw something move on de loch, and when I turned my head, dere she was. Plain as dat sun, swimming along right next to de road.”

Kris opened her mouth, but nothing came out. What could she say? The word in her head—bullshit—just didn’t seem appropriate.

“She welcomed me to my new life. Led me right into Drumnadrochit.”

“Have you—uh—seen her since?”

Jamaica shook her head, and her dreads flew. “I don’t need to. I know she’s dere.”

“Mmm,” Kris said, the comment not Scottish at all.

“You don’t believe?” Jamaica drank some water, but she kept a measuring gaze on Kris.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“I met a man last night,” Kris blurted.

Jamaica’s perfectly arched brows arched further. “Already? Good for you. What’s his name?”

“I’m hoping you might know. He disappeared before I could ask.”

“Disappeared? You sure he was dere?”

Kris sighed. Questions like that always gave her a headache.

“I’m sure.” Quickly she described her mystery man, ending with, “His hair was wet. Anyone like to swim in the loch?”

Jamaica snorted. “De experts say de loch too cold to support a monster. Which makes it too damn cold for swimming.”

“Monster, by definition, means something beyond anything we know. So how can the experts say the water’s too cold for a monster?”

“Experts say a lot of t’ings,” Jamaica observed. “Most of it’s crap.”

Kris laughed. She liked Jamaica more with each passing minute.

“I t’ink in dis case dey talkin’ ’bout de plesiosaur principle. You know it?”

“Sir Somebody theorized that the Loch Ness Monster was a plesiosaur, a long-necked reptile that swam through warm inland seas in the days of the dinosaurs.”

“But Nessie would have to be a herd of plesiosaurs. Just because dey might not be extinct don’t mean dey be immortal.”

“Right,” Kris agreed. “The shape and size of what people have seen is about right for a plesiosaur, or so this guy said.”

“Sir Peter Scott,” Jamaica said. “British naturalist. Plenty famous. But a plesiosaur was a reptile and so cold-blooded. Which means it wouldn’t survive in de freezing cold of de loch.”

“There goes that theory,” Kris muttered. “So how cold is the water?”

“Average temperature around six degrees Celsius.”

“English, please.”

“Dat is English.” Jamaica shook her head. “Six Celsius is … oh,” she pursed her lips, “about forty-two degrees American. You know, besides de cold, you can only see five feet down, which means you’re swimming above a great black maw of nothing.”

“Not only cold then, but creepy.”

Jamaica lifted her nearly empty water bottle in a toast. “No one swims in de loch unless dey had ten too many local lagers. Maybe dat was de case with your mystery friend?”

Kris shook her head. “He didn’t taste like Guinness.”

The sudden silence made Kris glance up, then curse. She’d actually said that out loud.

“You kissed him?” Jamaica asked.

“He kissed me. It was—”

Fabulous, she thought.

“Weird,” she said.

Jamaica remained silent, in her eyes an expression Kris couldn’t read. She seemed both concerned and annoyed, with a bit of afraid thrown in. But none of that made any sense. Unless—

“You know who he is now?” Kris asked.

“Why would now be any different dan before?” Jamaica returned.

Two customers burst in the door, and Jamaica hurried off with a “Nice talking to you” that held the distinct undertone of Get lost.

Since Kris had just met the woman, she couldn’t say for sure what she’d seen in Jamaica’s eyes or heard in her voice. But Kris had done enough interviews to realize that answering a question with a question was almost always an attempt to hide a lie. Although why Jamaica would lie about something so minor as knowing the identity of the man who’d kissed Kris in Urquhart Castle was anyone’s guess.

Sufficiently caffeinated, Kris went in search of lunch. Along the way, she became enchanted by the wonder of Drumnadrochit.

Lola owned a large collection of old Hollywood musicals, and Brigadoon was one of her favorites. Kris had probably watched the movie a dozen times, and parts of Drumnadrochit had her humming “Almost like Being in Love.” She half-expected to turn a corner and find Cyd Charisse twirling and jumping along the sidewalk.

Other parts resembled every small tourist town in America—shops, museums, tours, hotels with catchy names like The Highlander, and restaurants that advertised a “Nessie-sized breakfast.” One place in particular caught her eye.

“The Myth Motel,” Kris read. “Museum, gift shop, rooms, and eatery. Specialty—Nessie Nuggets.” How could she pass that up? Especially since she was by now hungry enough to eat Nessie.

Kris paused with her hand on the door, wondering if Nessie Nuggets were shaped like Nessie, something to feed to Nessie, or made of Nessie.

She snorted. There was no Nessie. Sheesh. If she wasn’t careful she’d be sharing the delusion of everyone in Drumnadrochit. Where would Hoax Hunters be then? Where would she be?

“Out on my ass with no place to go,” Kris muttered, and yanked open the door.

A tall, slim man in a kilt stood just inside. His close-cropped dark hair and goatee proved a stunning contrast to his light gray eyes. “Welcome to The Myth Motel.”

“You’re American?” Kris blurted, both startled by the lack of an accent and thrilled by it. She hadn’t heard English without an accent since she got off the plane. Sure, it had only been a day, but she missed it.

“Technically, no.”

Kris tilted her head and waited.

“Raised there, born here,” he explained. “I’m Dougal Scott.”

Kris offered her hand. “Kris Daniels.”

They shook. He had nice hands, a good handshake. Not too soft, not too hard, and he looked directly into her face with a smile. “The writer woman?”

Kris rolled her eyes, and he laughed, the sound deeper than she would have expected and very engaging.

“You’ll soon learn that everyone knows everything in Drumnadrochit.”

Kris certainly hoped not. She might find herself tossed into the loch if they did. She was, after all, planning to expose their livelihood as one of the biggest tourist traps of all time.

“I’ve never met anyone named Dougal,” she said, eager to change the subject before he started posing more questions that would require more lies.

“I went by ‘Doug’ in the states, but I’m back to ‘Dougal’ now.” He indicated the kilt. “Anything to appease the tourists.”

“Yet you don’t add a brogue?”

His lips curved. “I come off sounding more like Foghorn Leghorn than William Wallace.”

“How long were you in the states?”

“Most of my life. I inherited the motel from my granaidh. My grandfather. I added both the restaurant and museum. If I do say so myself, my museum’s the best in the area. A combination of scientific facts, cryptozoological theory, and the most comprehensive list of sightings available in this country or any other.”

Kris felt a prickle of excitement. She’d never been able to find information on all of the sightings compiled in one place, so it was impossible to compare and discover if some were repeats of others.

Meeting this guy was a golden opportunity. And she’d walked in for the Nessie Nuggets.

“You sound like a true believer.” Though Kris wanted the information, she was kind of disappointed to encounter yet another sheep in the “I love Nessie” flock. Was no one in Scotland a skeptic, like her?

“Don’t tell, but…” Dougal made a show of looking around, then stepped closer and lowered his voice: “I’m here to cash in. People want Nessie…” He swept a showman’s hand toward the museum’s entrance. “I’ll give them Nessie.”

Kris smiled. At last. Someone with a clue.

“I’d love to hear more,” she began, and the door opened, spilling tourists into the foyer.

Dougal appeared torn. He obviously sensed in her a kindred spirit and he wanted to talk longer, but he needed to deal with all those wonderful customers.

“Are you busy tonight?” he asked.

Kris blinked. Was he asking her out?

Kris hadn’t had a date in six months, with good reason. The last had been of the blind variety. Lola had set it up with a friend of a friend of a ticket taker at the ballet.

“He’s a nice guy,” Lola had insisted.

Apparently his wife thought so, too.

Lying creep.

Such was the way with dates. They looked good on paper. Even seemed to go all right on the phone. But by the third meeting, if not before, the lies started to tumble out.

Dougal patted Kris on the shoulder, already moving toward his unexpected mother lode. “Don’t look so deer-in-the-headlights. I was just going to suggest you walk through the museum and if you’re still interested in talking, there’s a pub where the locals go. MacLeod’s. The oldest of its kind in the village.”

“How old?”

“Maybe eight hundred years,” Dougal answered. “They say Andrew Moray’s troops drank there. And there are the usual tales of the Bonnie Prince, Robert the Bruce, and William Wallace all lifting a tankard on their way to the next kill fest. But I think, sometimes, those tales are very much like the American claims that ‘George Washington slept here.’ If the man slept everywhere they say he did, he wouldn’t have had any time left to win the war.”

“Where is it?”

“Next street over.” Dougal jerked a thumb past his right ear. “I usually get there around sunset.” He turned and greeted his guests.

Kris ducked into the eatery ahead of the crowd. Nessie Nuggets turned out to be deep-fried chicken strips shaped like a herd of bumpy-backed dinosaurs.

“Chicken McNessies,” Kris commented when they were placed before her.

From the waitress’s expression, she’d heard that one before and hadn’t found it funny then, either. Kris had done her share of waiting tables in college and understood the sentiment. Everyone was a comedian. Or at least thought they were.

The Nessies came with chips and veggies, she assumed the latter to help clean out the arteries being clogged by the deep-fried former.

She ate everything, washing it down with what had been billed on the menu as “Scotland’s other national drink” or Irn-Bru—which tasted like a combination of orange pop and 7UP.

Kris exited the restaurant ahead of a large group of Belgian tourists, then paid the nominal fee for the museum to a young, dimple-cheeked woman who did have a brogue and slipped inside.

If the museum were comprised of a few out-of-focus photos of fish fins and some inflatable purple plesiosaurs, Kris wouldn’t feel bad about skipping the rendezvous at MacLeod’s, although from the description of the place she would need to stop there at some point. An ancient, authentic Scottish pub should not be missed.

However, Kris was impressed by Dougal’s museum. He’d done a fantastic job with the displays. He obviously had artistic training or perhaps had hired someone who did. Everything was well lit, colorful, easy to read, and there was a lot here Kris hadn’t seen before. She wished she’d brought her notebook so she could write down the questions she wanted to pursue later.

Dougal Scott just might be her new best friend.