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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.
