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“You have five locals missing and two dead strangers. What about tourists? Students? Hikers? It could take weeks for people to figure out they’ve gone missing and where. What if your victims were missing, but you just didn’t know it yet?”
Alan Mac groaned. “Yer just a ray of sunshine, aren’t ye now?”
Kris shrugged. Truth was truth, and she couldn’t help but say it.
“On the bright side,” she continued, “I can’t see how that many bodies could be hidden regardless of the terrain.”
“I doubt anyone’s been hidin’ anything,” he muttered.
“You think they’re all in the loch, don’t you?”
Alan Mac’s eyes met hers, and he nodded.
*
After that, there wasn’t much left to do. Alan Mac said he’d be in touch. Kris said he knew where to find her. He strode off barking names, and officers scurried toward him as if a five-star general—or whatever the equivalent rank in the Highlands—had summoned them.
“Definitely military,” Kris muttered. The underlings practically saluted him.
Alan Mac seemed capable. So why then were there so many missing? Why did he seem not to have a clue as to a culprit? And how many more would disappear before this was through?
Kris made one more stop before she returned to Loch Side Cottage. Unfortunately, Dougal wasn’t in.
“He’s off to…” The young girl left in charge of the front door scowled mightily as she tried to remember. “Belgium?”
“Why would he go to Belgium?”
“Maybe it was Bordeaux.” She cocked her red head. “Bolivia? Somewhere that starts with a B.”
Terrific.
“Again I ask ‘why?’”
“Ach.” The girl waved her han
d. “He travels all over the world.”
“Because…?”
“I thought ye said ye knew him.” The girl put her hands atop the plaid that draped her hips.
“I do.”
“Well, if that’s the case, then ye’d know he goes on these trips a few times a year. Gotta buy bric-a-brac and the like for the gift shop.”
“Isn’t the gift shop full of Scottish gifts?”
“Not all of them are made in Scotland, ye ken?” Kris shook her head, and the girl leaned over, lowering her voice. “China.”
“The gifts are made in China?”
“Most of the plastic and the toys. Ye think anyone in this country would make inflatable Nessies for a competitive price?”
Probably not.
“He also likes to offer wines of the world in the restaurant,” she continued. “He’d never serve anything he hadnae tried first himself.”
“When will he be back?” Kris asked.
