Moon Cursed (19 page)

He crossed the room and sat next to her. “Who lied to you so well and so often that ye dinnae trust anymore?”

“Who didn’t?” she muttered.

Liam brushed his fingertips over her cheek. “So many?” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

She wanted to rest her head on his bare chest and press her lips to his skin, pull him back into bed, and forget about talking at all. What was it about him that made her not only trust when she shouldn’t but also lust at a time when most wouldn’t?

Liam glanced at the window again where the darkness had begun to become light. Then he stood and covered all that luscious skin with a shirt. “Meet me tonight at MacLeod’s?”

“When?”

“After the sun goes down.”

“What kind of time is that?”

“The best time. I like the night.”

“Why?”

“Because I dinnae have to work.”

“What do you do?”

He hesitated, and for an instant she just knew he was going to lie. When he spoke she wasn’t all that certain he had not.

“I protect the loch.”

“Like a park ranger?”

“A bit. I walk about, do what needs doing. Pick up the garbage. Clip the trees that hang too far down. Make sure the roads are nae full of potholes. Help the wee animals and such.”

“You patrol Loch Ness, yet you’ve never seen the monster.”

“Do ye ken how big the loch is?” he asked, then continued before she could answer. “Twenty-four miles long, over a mile wide in places. The deepest part,” he jerked a thumb over his shoulder, “near Urquhart Castle is more than twice the mean depth of the North Sea.”

Kris wasn’t sure what a mean depth was, but she got what he meant. The loch was damn deep.

“The surface sits fifty-two feet above sea level, but the tallest point around it is over twelve hundred feet higher than that. It’s bordered by mountains and rock face and forest. There are parts ye can barely get to on foot. Professional divers speak of a terrifying blackness that surrounds them at an easy depth of fifty feet. The shock isnae that I
havenae
seen Nessie but that anyone has at all.”

He sounded like a tour guide. Or maybe a park ranger.

“I didn’t mean—”

“It’s all right. I know ye’ve been lied to again and again, and I’m sorry for it.”

“You aren’t the one—” Or ones. “Who made me so mistrustful.”

Liam ran a hand through his hair, then changed the subject: “Ye’ll meet me tonight, and I’ll prove to ye that I’m no ghost.”

Said out loud, that sounded as foolish as it had in her head.

“I don’t think that,” Kris blurted. “How could I? I’ve exposed several ghosts as fakes.”

“There
are
ghosts, lass.” His voice had gone soft and a bit sad. “Around here, there are a lot of them.”

“
Those
you’ve seen?”

“Aye,” he said, gaze gone distant. “That I have.”

“Why?”

He blinked, and his eyes returned to hers. “Why what?”

“Why have you seen ghosts? Have you gone looking for them?”

“No.” He leaned over, placing a quick kiss on her lips before he headed for the door. “The ghosts come looking for me.”

CHAPTER 14

Had Liam been teasing about the ghosts? Kris didn’t think so. His face, his voice, had reflected a sadness she recognized.

He’d lost people, and he felt guilty about it.

Kris’s mother had fought. She’d tried. She just hadn’t been able to win. However, Kris hadn’t been able to forgive her for promising a desperate teenager what she had no right to promise. She should have been honest. She should have prepared Kris and her brother better instead of lying right to the end about her chances of survival.

The denials were what Kris had been unable to forgive. Certainly the lies and her reaction to them had fueled her career, but they’d also fueled her guilt. Kris harbored a deep anger at her mother for them still, and that she did kept her up a lot of nights. Kris was surprised
she
hadn’t started seeing ghosts.

Or at least
ghost.

Of course she didn’t believe in visits from the great beyond. But she hadn’t believed in Nessie, either. If she proved to the world that the Loch Ness Monster was real, would she also start seeing the spirit of her mother around every dark corner?

Kris wasn’t sure she was ready for that.

Despite her strange and disturbing thoughts, Kris fell asleep, waking late and stretching luxuriously. The clock read: 11:00
A.M.
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d stayed in bed so late. Then again, it wasn’t every night you nearly drowned, had your life saved by a lake monster, followed by mind-blowing sex with a hot Scottish park ranger.

Kris went into the bathroom. One glance in the mirror revealed she was grinning wider than she’d grinned in a long, long time. Probably since the last time she’d had mind-blowing sex.

Whenever that was.

Sure, she’d had sex, but she hadn’t had this. She hadn’t had Liam. She couldn’t wait to have him again.

A trickle of laughter escaped as she picked up her sodden clothes and started the shower. It appeared that she’d at last found something in the world worth giggling about.

But the laughter died as she hung her clothes on the towel rack. Someone had tried to kill her. Again. She was going to have to tell Alan Mac.

“Because he’s been
so
useful thus far,” Kris muttered as she stepped beneath the stream.

However, beggars couldn’t be choosers and Alan Mac was the officer in charge. Besides, she should probably report her missing camera. Just in case it washed up somewhere and was turned in to the authorities.

Although what would she do with the thing? It wasn’t as if the camera would still work or her film would be—

Kris froze in the middle of rinsing shampoo out of her hair. Could that be why someone had given her a free ride to the depths of Loch Ness? Because she’d been filming Nessie?

She continued to scrub at her scalp, lifting the thick, curling mass of hair and letting the water wash away all the suds as she considered. Every bit of film taken of Nessie was …

“Crap,” she murmured.

The lack of decent photos—still or cine—was a bullet point of interest on the “Reasons Nessie Doesn’t Exist” list. If the monster were real, there would be a physical record of it—especially during modern times when every third person had a camera and knew exactly how to use it.

Underwater attempts understandably produced junk. The damn peat content made seeing your hand in front of your face a fricking miracle. Kris had firsthand knowledge of that.

The motion pictures that had been shot were hazy, spotty, dark, and wavering. Half of them had been ruined or lost.

The still photography wasn’t much better. Certainly getting close enough to the loch with the right light, appropriate lenses, and film speed at a time when the monster just happened to appear was a neat trick. But someone in the past decade, when cameras had become damn good, should have been able to manage it.

Yet they hadn’t.

Kris shut off the water. Or perhaps they had. Perhaps anyone who’d filmed Nessie without trembling hands or garbage equipment had found themselves at the bottom of the lake.

Like her.

She blew a derisive puff of air through her lips as she snatched a towel. How could that happen? It wasn’t as if the loch had someone who watched over it 24-7 like a—

The towel dropped from Kris’s suddenly limp fingers. “Park ranger?”

Hell!

Maybe Liam
had
tossed her in.

*   *   *

By the time Kris got dressed, microwaved some of the coffee that Liam had made last night but they’d never gotten around to drinking, then drank it before heading for Drumnadrochit at a brisk pace, she was calmer.

Kris was nothing if not a logical woman. And logic dictated that if Liam wanted her dead, he’d had plenty of chances to kill her.

Of course there was also the little voice that whispered:
He doesn’t need to kill you now that your film is swimming with the fishes. At least until you do something else that threatens—

“What?” Kris muttered. “What did I threaten?”

Proving Nessie existed would be good for business. Why would anyone want to stop that?

As far as Kris could tell, everyone in Drumnadrochit worshiped the creature. But maybe whoever wanted to destroy the legend of Nessie wasn’t from here. Or maybe they just wanted the mystery to remain a mystery.

Kris paused for a second. That actually made sense. If the monster was proved to exist beyond a shadow of a doubt, there’d be biologists and naturalists and all sorts of -ists who weren’t
tour
ists. And then the government would get involved.…

Kris wasn’t sure how the British authorities worked, but she was quite familiar with the United States. They’d capture Nessie and put her in …

“Sea World,” Kris whispered. Or that big, echoing warehouse where they kept the Ark of the Covenant.

So, she could see why someone might want to protect the monster from detection. It
did
make sense.

Until you added murder.

Wasn’t killing someone to prevent them from discovering the truth called overkill?
Ha-ha.
Then again, murders had been committed for less than that.

Kris began to walk again, faster than before. Thinking about murder made her twitchy. She wanted to get to the village, where there were other people, a few cops, eyewitnesses, and she wanted to get there fast.

As she continued at power walk speed, Kris eyed the trees that bordered the loch. The sun shone, and everything should appear cheery and safe. Except in those trees shadows reigned and damn near anyone could hide.

Her gaze went to the water, where several boats bobbed, but the surface remained as impenetrable as interrogation room glass. The loch and the forest had a lot in common.

She glanced toward the distant hills. Those, too, were as mysterious as midnight. She was going to need Liam’s help to figure this out. Unless he’d tried to kill her.

Then he was fired.

A bubble of hysterical laughter escaped as Kris reached the outskirts of Drumnadrochit. She really needed to stop thinking so much. Her mind was twirling in circles, and she was beginning to get seasick.

Or maybe it was just the reheated coffee. Her gaze went to Jamaica’s place. Kris
hated
reheated coffee. It rolled around in her stomach like standing water in a freeway pothole—complete with the top layer of oil.

“Glurk,” Kris muttered, gaze still on the coffee shop; then she shook her head.

Not yet.

First Alan Mac, then Effy Cameron—Kris needed to tell her landlady that the door to the cottage was broken—
then
fresh coffee.

She strode to the station. This time the constable wasn’t standing out front. He wasn’t even working inside.

“He was called to Dochgarroch,” the woman at the desk informed her. “Something was stuck in the lock.”

“I don’t remember there being a Dochgarroch Lake.”

“Not a lake loch, lass.” The receptionist grinned. “And would ye like to say that five times fast?”

Since she appeared to be waiting for Kris to answer, Kris shook her head, and the woman continued. “A lock on the canal. Helps with the boats and such.”

“And this is Alan Mac’s problem, why?”

“We won’t know until he returns.”

Kris thanked her and left. She had a bad feeling she knew what was stuck in Dochgarroch Lock.

Another body.

Strolling back through the village, Kris heard someone call her name. She glanced toward the coffee shop. A hand reached out the door, beckoning her with a go-cup. She could have sworn she saw
Kris
written in the steam that trailed upward.

Kris hesitated. She hadn’t actually
talked
to Alan Mac, but she’d tried. That should be enough for at least one cup of the good stuff in reward.

She looked both ways—waiting for a tour bus, followed by a few bikers, to trundle by—then crossed the street, taking the cup from the outstretched hand and her first blessed sip as she stepped inside.

The place was empty.

“What’s going on?” she asked.

Jamaica, who was dressed in an eye-shockingly bright yellow skirt that reached to her ankles and an equally bright orange peasant blouse, raised her sculpted brows. “What you mean?”

Kris lifted her chin toward the bare tables even as she slurped coffee like she’d been denied for weeks instead of hours.

“Oh, dat.” Jamaica waved her hand dismissively. “Such a nice day. Everyone take dere coffee to go. We’ll get busy again once de sun go down.”