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A car swished by but didn’t stop. No one could see her lying on the bank like a dead fish. She didn’t want them to.
A twig snapped to her right. Kris jerked in that direction, and every muscle in her shoulders shrieked. Her eyes strained against the night, but she could see nothing beyond the looming curve of the trees.
A sharp, heavy splash had Kris scrambling several feet up the bank before collapsing. She forced herself to glance over her shoulder. The loch gleamed like a sheet of black onyx—smooth and impenetrable—all the way to the distant shore. Kris was as alone as she’d thought she’d been on that overhang. Before someone had pushed her in.
Hadn’t they?
“Yes,” she whispered, scaring herself with how scared she sounded.
She had not leaned over that far. She had not been that close to the edge. She’d been off balance, distracted, then one little shove and down, down, down, until she plunged beneath the surface.
She’d come up once, and she could have sworn she’d seen someone watching her struggle and flail and eventually go under.
Or had that been a hallucination produced by her terrified, dying mind? Right now, she couldn’t remember if she’d seen the person on the eastern shore or the western. In the trees or up on the cliff.
And if she couldn’t remember where she’d seen him, or her, she certainly wasn’t going to remember what he, or she, looked like.
Kris needed to get inside. Not only because she was wet and cold and had begun to shake, but also because even though she couldn’t see anything sneaking up on her, she knew that it was.
She risked another glance behind her. A mist had begun to skate across the onyx surface of the loch, swallowing everything in its path.
Forcing herself to stand, Kris gritted her teeth and made her weaving way up the bank. Once she was on her feet, she felt better. Until she glimpsed the smoky fingers of mist curling around her ankles.
With a gasp, she twisted and met a wall of swirling white. From deep inside came another splash.
Then Kris was lurching across the road, into her yard, and up to the door. She had an irrational fear that if the mist caught her she’d drown in it like she hadn’t drowned in Loch Ness. She reached for the knob, moving forward eagerly as she did.
And bashed her nose into the wood when the knob refused to turn and the door refused to open.
Locked.
Kris spun about. The fog was cat-footing across the road.
She slapped her hand to the pocket of her jeans, then remembered. The key was sharing space with her video camera.
Out there. Where whatever had splashed was still splashing.
She was going to have to walk into the village and get another key from Effy. Just not—
“Now,” Kris muttered, and let her chin sag nearly to her chest. She wanted to let her body slide to the ground, but if she did that she didn’t think she’d get back up.
Maybe if she just rested for a minute, she could—
Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
Footsteps on pavement. Steady. Sure. They knew where they were going. Too bad Kris couldn’t figure out where they were coming from.
The utter darkness combined with the mist made it seem as if she existed in a strange otherworld. Sounds were not only magnified but also distorted, impossible to detect from which direction they came.
Sure, the splash earlier had seemed as though it had erupted from the loch. But was that because she’d equated splash with water—go figure—or because it had actually happened there?
Right now she couldn’t tell if those footsteps were coming from the highway, the hills behind the cottage, a trail at Urquhart Castle, or her very own sidewalk.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
Louder. Closer. Faster.
Kris’s gaze flicked right, left. Her flight instinct kicked into full gear. She no longer felt exhausted and lethargic but twitchy and hyperalert. Still, she fought that urge to flee, because she knew she wouldn’t get far.
