AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Before the weekend. We’re too busy for him not to be here then.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
Kris found it odd that Dougal hadn’t told her he was leaving for Belgium.
Or Bordeaux.
Maybe Bolivia.
Then again, they were friends. The kiss and their shared lack of belief in the unbelievable aside, they had barely gotten past the acquaintance stage. Why should he?
She returned to Loch Side Cottage. Several law enforcement officers stared dispiritedly at the tramped-down mud and grass near the loch.
“Good luck with that,” Kris muttered, and headed inside.
Had her attacker known there would be a bus arriving with the dawn, the footprints of the tourists obliterating any and all evidence? Seemed far-fetched, but what didn’t these days?
Once in the front door, Kris paused. Something wasn’t right.
She scanned the room. Everything appeared to be where she thought she’d left it.
Maybe.
This wasn’t her house. Had that lamp been so near the edge of that table? Had she neglected to close the cabinet over the sink? Or was it one of those that popped open by itself?
The doors to both her bedroom and the bath were flung wide. No one in there that she could see. Of course why would she see them? Anyone in her cottage when she wasn’t would not want to be seen.
Kris slid toward the outer door. She’d fling it open, call the police. They’d come running and take care of everything. If there was anything to take care of.
And if there wasn’t?
The idea of those officers looking at her with the same expression that had been on Alan Mac’s face when he believed she’d imagined the man in Urquhart Castle had her rethinking her plan. Death or embarrassment? Maybe she could compromise.
Kris opened the outer door, just in case she wasn’t crazy and she did need to shout for help; then she marched to her room, peered in the closet and under the bed, with a side trip to the bathroom, where she peeked behind the shower curtain.
She felt very foolish when she found nothing. Although not half as foolish as she’d have felt if she’d had the constables in here doing the same thing.
Kris shut the door, then sat on the couch. She had to admit, she was spooked.
But maybe that was okay. Better to be overcautious than floating at the bottom of the loch.
Kris glanced at the computer.
Then she clapped her hands over her mouth to keep from shrieking.
CHAPTER 11
“What have you discovered?” Edward Mandenauer asked.
Kris scrambled over the back of the couch. “How did you get in there?”
“Irrelevant.” He waved the question away as if it were a pesky fly, the movement of his monkey’s paw hand causing Kris’s head to shift back and forth as though she were watching a tennis match. Right now, she really wished she were watching a tennis match.
In Prague.
“No, really,” she said. “How are you doing that?”
He could have hacked her Skype. But the old man’s image wasn’t in a Skype window. He filled the entire screen like wallpaper. Not to mention that up here Skype didn’t work.
