Love on Loch Ness (17 page)
Authors: Aubrie Dionne
Preparations
"Spak o' the devil, here he is nou." Blarney spit on the forest floor and returned, hoisting an adjacent tent that would cover most of their equipment and bags. The postman had already picked up Gail's sonar equipment and the packages were on route to Boston, so she didn't have anything too bulky to hide.
Gail turned, hoping Tom had brought Flynn back with him. Instead, he stumbled into their camp hauling all of his equipment and cursing more like a drunken sailor than a professional videographer.
Gail interrupted a particularly nasty chain of profanity. "Want me to help with that?"
Tom gave her a suspicious look and clung to his bags. "No thank you. You've done enough already." He walked toward a stand of trees, lowered his bags, and started digging through them. He froze and gave Gail an icy glare. "You didn't open one of these, did you?"
"Of course not." Gail wasn't a thief or a spy. What would she need with video equipment?
"Good." He brought out a small handheld camera along with a roll of duct tape. "This is sensitive equipment only to be used by experienced hands."
Experienced hands? Yeah, right.
Gail wanted to bring up the fact his video camera hadn't even been turned on that one time, but she thought better of it. She had enough bad news for him as it was.
"Did Flynn mention the fact you'll be stationed up the hill?"
Tom nodded. "Yeah. I prefer it that way anyway. Better for the angle." He dragged the bag with the giant tripod up the hill and deposited the equipment in a clump of bushes.
Angle?
That sounded like the biggest piece of Loch Ness monster poo she'd ever heard. How could a view blocked by ten trees be any better than a shore side one?
Was he afraid?
She wouldn't doubt it.
Well, let him sit up there. At least he'll leave me, Blarney, and Flynn alone.
Still, a pang of guilt shot through her. The man hadn't done anything wrong, yet they'd exiled him. "You sure you don't want me to help you set up that tripod?"
Tom scratched his head. "What tripod?"
Maybe the alcohol still hadn't worn off. "The one you just dragged up the hill."
"Ohâ¦
that
tripod." Tom furrowed his brow and dropped his gaze to a clump of pine needles on the forest floor. "Naw. Don't need it. I'm taping all the cameras to the trees."
Then why did he haul the thing all the way out here?
She was just about to ask when Flynn broke through the woods with his arm wrapped around a small, hooded figure. The figure slumped forward as if she had trouble standing upright, clutching the fabric of the hood tightly around her neck. Pink pajamas with hearts and rainbows were tied loosely around a waist so small Gail could put her hands around it.
"A child? Flynn's brought a kid to the stakeout?" Tom taped a camera to a branch just above the water.
Suddenly, Flynn's actions made perfect sense. "It's Tabitha." Gail rushed forward to help him.
Flynn smiled as Gail approached. "Tabitha, I want you to meet someone very special to me. This is Gail Phillips."
Gail glanced down at the small girl. She raised her head and sharp features stuck out from the edges of the hood. Gleaming green eyes stared back at Gail, framed in dark sockets. She had Flynn's charming smile. Tabitha held out a thin hand. "Gail, huh?"
Gail took her hand. Her skin was colder than Loch Ness's black waters. She hoped her embrace warmed the girl's fingers. "You have a very special brother, Tabitha."
Tabitha stared from Gail back to Flynn and her painted eyebrows rose. "Wait, are you two going out or something?"
"Two minutes here, and you're already stirring up trouble. Come on." Flynn grinned and pulled her toward Blarney's tent. "I'll get you set up with a mug of hot chocolate."
"You never tell me anything."
Flynn showed her the tent and introduced her to Blarney. Gail was surprised at Tabitha's normality in the face of all she'd been through. She still gossiped about people's love lives, just like any other teenage girl.
Gail walked under the tree that held Tom. Tom tested the branch to make sure the camera wouldn't fall off in the wind. The tape held.
"Why in the world would he bring a kid here?" He seemed angrier than he should be. If Tabitha stayed quiet, she wouldn't affect their mission in the least.
Gail turned to Tom and put her hands on her hips. "Because she's dying, lugnut. This is her last chance to see something special."
Tom didn't seem fazed by Gail's shock factor. He climbed a tree a few feet away and brought out another camera. "When the moment comes, just make sure she doesn't get in the way."
Gail froze as an uncomfortable shiver crept up her spine. What did he think was going to happen?
"Aw duin." Blarney's voice brought her back to reality. "Want tae join the lad and his li'l sis and hae a cup of hot cocoa?"
Gail glanced back at Tom. Either that or stay outside with him. The twilight brought a cool breeze to the forest, rustling the leaves and poking through her sweater. She'd packed all her warm clothes. At least the tarp would block the breeze.
Besides, she had a lot of catching up to do if she was considering a relationship with Flynn. Getting to know Tabitha was important to her. "I'd like that very much."
****
"Listen, Blarney. Lady Gaga is only one of the most famous pop singers in the world." Tabitha threw up her arms. "He's hopeless."
Flynn sighed and sipped the froth off his mug of hot chocolate. Putting Blarney and his sister together was like trying to mix toothpaste and orange juice. "Give the man a break. He's been living in the woods for the last twenty years."
"But
everyone
knows who Lady Gaga is."
Blarney waved his hand. "That Hollywood shizazzle niver intrested me. Gie me the trees blowin' in the wind any day over the soond of a radio."
Tabitha rolled her eyes and shook her earphones. "It's an MP3 player."
Gail smiled. Flynn had been nervous about her meeting Tabitha. She wasn't the most polite teenager on the face of the planet and she didn't like nerdy teacher types. Tabitha's personality seemed to amuse Gail more than anything.
"What about you, Gail?" Tabitha gazed at her from across the tent. "You know who Lady Gaga is, don't you?"
Flynn held his breath.
Oh no.
Tabitha would draw her whole impression of Gail from her knowledge of Lady Gaga. Gail didn't strike him as a pop-star-adoring kind of scientist. Teens could be so judgmental. Especially Tabitha.
"Actually, I dressed up as her for Halloween once." Gail laughed. "Not very warm or comfy for October weather in New England, but you never think about that part when choosing a costume, do you?"
"No, you don't." Tabitha grinned.
"I'd like to have seen that." Flynn imagined Gail in skimpy tights and an outlandish wig. He bet Tabitha's estimation of Gail had just risen by ninety percent. Gail wasn't as nerdy as he'd thought.
Gail blushed. "Still have the outfit back in Boston."
"Ewww, gross-a-rama, guys. Save it for later." Tabitha pretended to hurl.
Gail smoothed her hair, and Flynn's neck grew hot. Somehow Tabitha had managed to embarrass both of them, and they were the grown-ups.
"Shhh!" Blarney held up a finger and peered out the opening cut into the length of the tent. "Somethin's oot thare." He whispered softer than the wind.
Silence fell as everyone crawled to the peephole. Flynn's heart raced as he scanned the shadows. Leaves crunched by the water's edge. A dark form moved from one stand of trees to another, picking berries off branches.
"You don't think that's Tom, do you?" Gail whispered.
"Naw. He's not that stupid." Flynn squinted in the darkness, hoping he was right.
Tabitha rubbed her hands together and blew on them as if cold. "Is it Nessie?" Her voice shook.
The dark form turned toward them as if it felt their gazes on its back. Two glossy eyes stared back at them. Flynn's stomach sank. The eyes were too small to possibly mirror the yellow orb they'd photographed that night. The animal shot into the woods without another sound.
"Deer." Blarney let out a long sigh, as if he'd held his breath. "Juist a deer."
"Great. That's freaking marvelous." Tabitha breathed heavily as if she was going to cry.
Flynn crouched beside her in the small space. "Are you okay, hon?"
She rubbed her forehead. "Meh. I'm just not feeling all that hot."
Guilt trickled through him. He'd smuggled her from the hospital for a deer. "Lay down. Use my backpack as a pillow. I'll wake you if we see anything."
Tabitha pulled the backpack toward her. She set the back of her head on it, tied the strings of her hood tighter, and closed her eyes. "You'd better."
She fell asleep. Her head jerked with small movements as if she suffered in her dreams. He placed a hand on her forehead. Her skin was burning up. A slick sheen of sweat covered her face.
Had bringing her here been a mistake?
Predator and Prey
Gail's eyes watered from staring at the moonlit waves without blinking in fear she'd miss the one time the waves would change. Blarney sat beside her with a fathomless expression crinkling the wrinkles in his age-old face. He was part of this forest now, and he could blend with the terrain as if they were one entity. If anyone could spot Nessie, it had to be him. Gail was just backup.
She took off her glasses, wiped the lenses on her sweater, and rubbed her burning eyes.
Tabitha slept soundly beside Flynn as he held his hand to her forehead, gauging her temperature every few minutes. It was his turn to take watch next, but she didn't have the heart to tear him away from his ailing sister.
I can keep watch longer. I just have to remember to blink.
Gail put her glasses back on and focused her attention back on the black crests that formed on the surface in tiny mountains, then disappeared just as quickly, ever-changing yet always the same.
So much rested on this one night.
She had to believe.
Blarney moved beside her. "Keep gaird, lass. I'm gaun for a snack."
As he dug in his backpack, Gail stared across the water at the reflection of the shimmery moon. A loon bobbed on the waves, dipping its head under the surface and coming back out again. She'd watched the loon for hours, tracing the black bird's journey across the lake.
The loon flapped its wings and took flight, disappearing into the shadowy forest on the opposite shore. The emptiness and isolation started to get to Gail.
What am I going to look at now?
The image of the silvery moon broke as a bubble popped, disturbing the surface. Gail blinked, making sure she wasn't imaging it.
A fish jumped from the water toward shore. Gail straightened, pressing her face against the tarp.
Well, that's odd.
Too bad the loon had decided to leave.
Another fish followed, leaping from the water and diving back in two feet closer. Soon, a school of minnows, salmon, and even some smaller pike hurled themselves toward the rocks in the shallows, creating a pitter-patter of commotion like falling rain.
Gail froze.
Open your mouth and say something. Turn around and let them know.
She couldn't tear her eyes from the mass exodus of fish bubbling up against the shore as if the water temperature had risen too high. The urgency, the utter desperation clutched her throat like thick fingers, tightening. "G-guysâ¦"
"Gail, are you okay?" Flynn's voice broke through the haze. "Blarney, check on her. Something's wrong."
Blarney moved to the slit he'd cut in the tent. "Well, I'll be a mither of a goat."
"What is it?" Flynn joined them.
"Guid ol' Nessie. That's whit it is."
"No way." Even though Gail had been waiting for this moment ever since she'd started to believe, the reality of Nessie being real was too much to swallow. Could the migration of fish be something else? Could Blarney be wrong?
Gail's hair stood on end, spreading around her. She gazed at Flynn, and his hair spiked as well. Blarney's beard seemed to rise a quarter of an inch.
"What's going on?" Gail tried not to panic.
"Electromagnetic waves," Blarney said as if he was the scientist and she a homeless wild woman. "Ayeweys happens whan Nessie's aboot." When he smoothed his beard down, the air crackled around his fingers.
Fish of all sizes threw their bodies against the rocks, some of them landing on shore to writhe on the leaves in apparent suicide. As a marine biologist, Gail had never seen anything like it.
A long snout with impossibly long, spindly teeth snapped through the surface, catching a mouthful of fish and gulping them down in one smooth jerk. The fish traveled down a long, scaly, bluish-gray neck that rose twenty feet above the water, towering over the trees on the banks. Small, webbed dorsal fins spiked from the back of the neck all the way down on ridges. The fins grew larger at the base, each one stringing along strands of peat moss that dripped over the surface.
Holy moley.
Gail couldn't breathe. Was she dreaming? She bit her lower lip until it bled onto her tongue and she tasted metal. The night air was too biting, the smell of rotten leaves too thick, and the fear all too real.
The reptile turned its head and a large, golden orb scanned the rocks while two nostrils puffed a fog of hot air around its yellow-toothed mouth. Each breath sounded like the exhaust on a steam engine. Out of instinct, Gail, Blarney, and Flynn ducked farther into the tent.
I'm not seeing this.
Gail clutched the branch holding the tent in place. It would be a bad time to have their only form of protection come down on their heads. "She's not going to come up here, is she?"
Blarney's eyes never left the shore. "I pit this tent here for a reason, lass. Nessie feeds off the banks. I hae niver seen her haik too faur from water."
The neck swung forward and a webbed flipper landed on the rocks, shaking the ground underneath them. The clawed edges clutched stone, clicking against a rock as the beast pulled itself to shore. An oily, scaled hump like a small mountain rose from the surface, covered in patches of algae. Massive muscles bunched under the bluish-gray scaly skin as the beast reached for a clump of trees and bit off a mouthful of leaves. Its flippers spread like massive wet pancakes over the land.