AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Then she began to scream.
CHAPTER 21
An hour later Kris was still on the bank of the loch, but she was no longer alone.
She’d only screamed once, and she was embarrassed she’d done that. If she was going to cry out you’d think she would have done so at the sight of her first dead body, not the second. But when she’d looked down, the dead girl’s hand had been resting on her shoe and Kris hadn’t been able to help herself.
A passing motorist had heard her and come to the rescue carrying a tire iron. Alan Mac arrived shortly thereafter, giving Kris a glance that was easy to read: You again?
She supposed it was odd that she kept finding bodies. Particularly odd that Nessie had brought this one to her. It was almost as if Nessie had been saying, See? I didn’t do it. If I had, why would I bring you the evidence?
Because monsters reasoned like that all the time.
A hysterical giggle escaped Kris’s freezing-cold lips. She was in shock. Again. Luckily, the man who’d come running in answer to her screams kept a lovely plaid blanket in the trunk with his tire iron. Kris pulled it more tightly around her shoulders and huddled on a rock.
Local law enforcement had set up their perimeter and begun to process the scene. A crowd had gathered on the road, kept back by several of Alan Mac’s men. Kris wasn’t sure how long it was, but eventually the wide shadow of the constable blocked the sun.
“Let me guess. Ye were just out walkin’ and lo and behold, surprise! Another body.”
Kris hesitated. Should she go with that? Or tell him the truth?
That she, who had always valued honesty above all else, was considering a lie to the lead officer in a murder investigation showed how far Kris had come from the woman she’d been.
Kris’s gaze went to the arm where she’d seen Alan Mac’s tattoo, covered now by a jacket. He was either a guardian or a shape-shifter. If he was the former, she should tell him about Nessie bringing her the dead. He’d want the monster exonerated. If he was the latter …
Kris cursed beneath her breath. She should pull out the silver Celtic cross she still wore beneath her clothes and take it for a test drive on Alan Mac’s skin. If he fried, probably shape-shifter, and then …
Well, she wasn’t really sure. If the chief constable transformed into one of many Nessies
would he be okay with Kris’s knowing that or wouldn’t he? Was a shape-shifter test really her best option with all these people around and the possible shape-shifter wearing a gun?
Alan Mac raised one hand and scratched at his arm, right where the tattoo would be, and Kris blurted, “Yep. That’s what happened. Walking along, saw what I thought was debris on the shore, came down here, and—” She spread her hands. “You know the rest.”
“Mmm,” Alan Mac said. He didn’t believe her. Hell, she didn’t believe her. “Did ye touch the body?”
Kris shook her head. Not this time. This time she’d known what dead looked like.
Alan Mac peered out over the loch. “I dinnae know the girl,” he said quietly. “She’s not local. From her clothes, her hair, I’d say American. Which means…” He sighed.
“Shit storm,” Kris filled in. When Americans died in foreign countries, Americans went ballistic. Kris kind of liked that about America.
“Aye,” Alan Mac agreed. “There’ll be no keepin’ it quiet now. I have to wonder who hates Drumnadrochit so much.”
“Hates the village or hates Nessie?” Kris asked.
“Arenae they one and the same?”
An interesting comment. Did he mean that if Nessie was proved a real monster and tourism died, then Drumnadrochit would die, too? Or was he talking about the tattoos? If everyone in Drumnadrochit had one and everyone who had one was a Nessie, then the village and the monster were one and the same.
Kris started to see sparkly white lights at the edge of her vision. Exhaustion? Or was her brain about to explode?
She closed her eyes tightly, and when she opened them the lights had receded, though they had not disappeared. She decided to ignore them. “You think whoever’s doing this isn’t from here?”
“I’d like to,” the constable said. “Really, why crap where ye eat?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Why kill where ye live? Isn’t there some kind of rule about that?”
