Free Moon Cursed by Lori Handeland Page A

burst over the horizon, all red and orange and yellow, a distant splash echoed across the murky expanse of the loch.
    This one didn’t sound anything like a sturgeon.

CHAPTER 7
     
    Kris had stayed up all night in the past. Studying. Working on Hoax Hunters. Talking with Lola. Crying because what was left of her family ignored her.
    The latter hadn’t happened in quite a while. Neither her father nor her brother ever remembered her birthday; they seemed to have completely forgotten Christmas. After the third time June 8th had passed with no call, no card, no damn e-mail, Kris had snuffled through a bottle of champagne and vowed never to shed a tear over them again. So far she hadn’t.
    It was a new experience, however, to remain awake all night because she’d found a dead body. She’d have to rank the experience just above the crying-over-Daddy episode.
    Kris considered trying to sleep, but with the sun up and the birds tweeting and the loch lapping she doubted she’d have any luck. Instead she made a pot of the coffee she’d bought from Jamaica yesterday and sat in front of her computer to work.
    She typed up what she’d learned so far, which wasn’t a helluva lot more than she’d already discovered from books and the Internet. Sure, she’d heard a few Nessie-sighting stories, but there were thousands of them. Besides, she’d come here to debunk the myth, not add to the lore that perpetrated it.
    How was she going to catch the hoaxer in the act of hoaxing? With all the extra interest that would soon be focused on the loch now that two dead bodies had been found, she doubted anyone would be out and about creating mischief.
    Although … she wouldn’t put it past the hoaxer to attach the blame for these drownings to the monster. What a perfect way to draw attention to their little lie. And if the deaths were later proved to be caused by something else, the doubt would always be there and the publicity would already have been had. The idea that Nessie had pulled a few unsuspecting folks to their deaths in the depths of the chilly water would only increase the whole “monster” cachet.
    Kris sighed. She was going to be here a lot longer than she’d originally thought. She’d bet the rest of this fabulous coffee that until the drowning hoopla settled down there’d be no Nessie sightings. Luckily she now had enough money, courtesy of Edward, to remain here until the hoaxing started up again—then she’d pounce.
    “Which reminds me.” Kris frowned at her computer, considering what she should Google first, hoping the Internet was in the mood to work right now. Thankfully, it was.
    Edward Mandenauer brought up very little, and none of it referred to an ancient German man who liked guns. Which was disturbing. Most people had something about them somewhere on the Internet. That he didn’t meant someone had removed it. Which leant credence to his claim of being backed by the U.S. government.
    She tried Jäger-Sucher and received half a dozen online translation sites. Hunter-searcher only brought her hunting stores, adventure vacations, search-and-rescue units.
    But she kept at it. Kris never would have gotten anywhere in life if she’d given up at the first hint of trouble.
    She continued to feed words into the search engine. It wasn’t until she typed old German man with sharp, hard clicks of frustration that she actually found something worth reading.
    From the National Enquirer :
     
    Werewolves Attack Small Town in Northern Maine
     
    Under siege during a terrible blizzard, the residents of Harper’s Landing watched their numbers dwindle as the number of werewolves increased.
    They were saved when an old man with a heavy German accent walked out of the storm carrying guns and silver ammunition. Within days, every werewolf was dead and the old gentleman disappeared as mysteriously as he’d arrived.
    “Werewolves,” she said. “Great.”
    But she followed the lead, typing werewolf and following the