Remnants
Flynn sat on the sofa, watching the flames in the fireplace cast shadows on Nessie's stone belly. The creature had to have been with them last night. That call was ancient history come to life. The sound prehistoric men heard while hunting on the prowl. It was primordial, ravenous, pining. It rattled his bones and shook his world. To Flynn that sound was magic.
Gail had used her equipment to call to the creature, and Nessie had responded. He couldn't imagine what it felt like to think, for a moment, you weren't alone after centuries of isolation. Had the beast recognized their bait before they could snap a picture?
Guilt zapped through his chest. Was he cruel to lure Nessie out for Tabitha's sake?
Flynn thought he'd heard someone at his door last night while he'd spoken with Tabitha. Tom had been snoring through the wall, so it must have been Gail. Had she overheard his conversation? Tabitha wasn't a subject he could talk about easily. He ate another spoon of cereal and glanced at the stairs. What was taking Gail so long?
The morning newspaper lay on the table and he riffled through the front pages. An article about Charles Fayette, the sport fisherman who illegally hunted all manner of endangered species, took up most of the right column. Before he could read if the local authorities had caught him, a door cracked open from upstairs. Flynn dropped his spoon into his cereal bowl.
Gail shuffled down the stairs dressed in a navy sweatshirt and white skinny jeans. Her hair was moussed and wet from the shower, tossed in gentle waves around her fine-boned face. Even with her little round glasses, she looked hot.
"Sleep okay?" Flynn set his bowl on the coffee table and stood.
"Yeah, like a rock." She looked away as if she hadn't meant it. "Where's Tom?"
"He went out early to take more footage of the lake." Flynn smirked. "Why? Do you miss him?"
"Very funny." She had a stern look on her face, but the corners of her lips twitched into a smile. "Do you have any more of that cereal?"
"Sure, I'll make you a bowl." Flynn jogged to the kitchen.
"Thank you. Bring it up to my room."
Flynn's heart sputtered. Her room? "Why?"
"There's something you've got to see."
The sputter turned into a full-fledged butterfly attack on his heart. Flynn almost dropped the cereal box on the floor. Either she wanted to show him her naked body, which would be fine with him, or she'd found a picture of Nessie from the drop camera's digital memory card — which would be not as good, but still fantastic.
Dreaming of both possibilities, Flynn brought the cereal bowl up to Gail's room. Her door was slightly ajar, but he knocked anyway.
"Come in."
Flynn pushed the door and stepped in. Gail sat on her bed using her computer, still wearing what she'd picked that day. Option one out of the question. Trying to not be disappointed, he settled in beside her and handed her the bowl. Option two was almost as good. "Did you find something?"
She raised a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. "Look at this."
A snapshot of a massive conglomeration of decaying vegetation filled the screen.
"I don't see anything."
"You're not supposed to. Until you look at this same shot, two seconds later." She clicked on the arrow, and the same murky muck lay unchanged.
"I don't see—" Flynn ate his last word. "What is that?" He pointed to a glowing yellow orb in the bottom right corner.
"You tell me." Gail enlarged the image and a black slit appeared, slicing the yellow orb in half. When they looked even closer, the reflection of the front of the drop camera showed in the curve.
"Is it an eye?"
She took his hand and held it up to the screen. "If it is, then the eye would have to be the size of your hand to be at scale with what the drop camera picked up."
"Wow." She still held his hand. He didn't take it away. She could have it. "This is amazing."
"This is still only speculation."
"Of course, but what if Nessie is down there playing dead, so to speak? What if she came to check out the noise, but she knew it was us and hid?"
Gail dropped his hand and it flopped on the bed like a dead fish. "You're saying she's intelligent now, too?"
"She's survived all these centuries without being found. So yeah, I'd say she's developed great survival instincts."
Gail put her face in her hands. "Surviving centuries? I mean, sure, Bowhead whales live for centuries. Scientists found a nineteenth century harpoon inside a live one, and they estimate they can live for two hundred years. But you're talking since six hundred and sixty five AD. That's a lot longer than two hundred years. Do you know how ridiculous you sound?"
Flynn gave her his charming smile. It usually worked on women. "Only to you."
It didn't seem to work on Gail. She pulled out a notepad and scribbled Possibilities as the title on the blank page. "Let's talk about what else the image could be. Could someone have dropped a toy or a ball into the water?"
She wrote ball.
Flynn took the pen from her hand and crossed her word out. "Balls don't sink."
"Or a flashlight? Maybe a boat light that fell off?"
She took the pen back and wrote light.
"The battery would die." Flynn moved to grab the pen again, but she was quicker this time and held it away.
"Unless it was recent."
Flynn leaned toward her and wiggled his fingers at the pen as if he wanted it. "Why would the light blink off and on?"
"I'm not sure. Maybe the flashlight was dying right when the drop camera took the picture." Gail stashed the pen on the other side of the bed where he couldn't reach it. Unless he tackled her.
She clicked to the next image. "Two seconds later it's gone."
Breathing out in frustration, she crossed her arms. She looked more angry at the world than anything else.
Tackling her wouldn't be the best way to her heart. At least not right now. Flynn leaned back on the bed, positioning himself against the wall, and folded his hands in front of himself, trying to behave. "I'll tell you what. Tonight we'll go back to that same spot and sweep the bottom. We'll bring up whatever's down there and have a look."
She clicked off the screen and ate a spoonful of cereal. "All right. I'll go with that."
As she turned around to turn off computer screen, Flynn reached over and took the pen. He scribbled one word next to the others on her notepad. Eye.
The bed creaked under his weight, and Gail whirled around. Flynn leaned against the wall. He hid the pen underneath his hand.
She creased her brow and glanced down at the pad. Her eyes shot back up with fiery wrath. "Give me the pen."
"So you can cross it out? No."
"It's my pad of ideas."
"We're working together." He loved this new un-scientific facet to her, an inner rebelliousness.
She stuck out the palm of her hand. "Just give me the pen."
Flynn dangled it in front of him. "Come and get it."
"So we're five years old now, are we?"
He shrugged, not expecting her to go after it. She was so serious. He needed to have a little fun now and then. Flynn bit the end. "Guess you don't want it."
Gail lunged forward, surprising him with her speed and aggressiveness. Flynn grabbed her arm with his free hand. She moved in with the other hand, and he dropped the pen and took that one as well. She twisted in his grasp until they fell onto the bed. She wiggled one of her hands free and dug around him for the pen. Ticklish to a fault, he started hysterically laughing and reached out and tickled her on the stomach. She shrieked with laughter. That was the Gail Flynn wanted to get to know better.
"Did I miss something or are you guys just rolling around in the sack?"
They froze, twisted in each other's arms. Tom stood in the doorway with his toupee sideways. A smug grin curved his thick, mustached lips as if he wouldn't mind watching.
"We were researching a photograph." Gail shot up and grabbed her computer. She pulled her hair back and tied it in that tight ponytail Flynn didn't like as much, as if to say enough fun, now down to business.
"Sure you were." Tom put his hand on his hip and gave Flynn a thumbs-up.
Flynn recoiled with embarrassment and waved for him to put his thumb away. The last thing he wanted was to make Gail feel like a conquest in front of another man. A jerk, at that.
"Look here." Gail was back to full professional; the sweet smile he'd seen vanished from her lips. "And then again at this one."
Tom leaned over and squinted his beady eyes. A raw hunger stirred in the depths, making Flynn uneasy. "So, when are we going after it?"
Gail clicked the image and set it as her desktop. "Tonight."
****
The sun set in a gorgeous blaze of red and orange, but Gail was too busy dragging her equipment to the dock to admire it. If she'd asked Flynn, he would have helped her in a heartbeat, but she was already getting too close to him. So close she looked forward to the boat ride that night way too much.
Honestly, what's gotten into me? All the oxygen in the clean, crisp Scottish highland air was making her feel more alive than ever. It was nothing like the smell of gasoline, oil, and smog mingling in Boston's Back Bay. This place felt like a different world, a world where you could almost see tiny leprechauns running around with Loch Ness monsters and pots of gold.
She reminded herself tonight was strictly business and she was here to burst his bubble and prove him wrong. The more she got to know him, the harder that would become.
When Gail reached the Nessie, Flynn was already busy with his head down in the cabin, so she hefted her own suitcases onboard. Tom watched her struggle with ambivalence, then returned to setting up his cameras. Seeing him standing on the bow gave her a tug of recognition. The feeling came and went as quickly as a leprechaun trick. Too many men with bad toupees.
When she got a good look in the smudged windows of the cabin, Flynn was hunched over the controls, on his cell phone.
A current of unwarranted jealousy shot up her spine. Was he talking to his hon?
Tom caught her watching Flynn and gave her a curious raise of his eyebrows, almost asking if they were…. He was so gross.
Gail ignored him and began setting up her equipment. Tonight she'd send the drop camera in when they swept the bottom with Flynn's fishing net. If the net stirred anything up, she'd catch it either in the net or on camera.
"Ready to go?" Flynn's voice stopped her from calibrating the sonar echoes.
Gail turned around. "Ready as I'll ever be. What about you?" Her tone had an edge of skepticism to it. Where had this sassy attitude come from? Flynn had a right to make whatever calls he needed. He might be booking customers for his Loch Ness tours for all she knew.
"Yeah." Flynn stuck his phone in the pocket of his nice-fitting jeans. "Just had to make a call."
Gail wanted so badly to ask whom he'd called. She bit her tongue so the question didn't come out and went back to work. Flynn returned to the cabin and started the engine. The hum rumbled in her gut, stirring up apprehension and excitement.
A cool breeze blew over the lake and she slipped on the lavender sweater her mom bought her for Christmas the year before. The holidays were never the same without her dad. As Gail watched the water break before the boat, sending ripples throughout the lake, she thought of him. Would he approve of her work?
Using last night's coordinates, they anchored in the same spot just as the curve of the sun disappeared behind the hills and the sky turned deep purple and gray, like a bruise reflected on the water.
Flynn joined her on deck. "Is this spot good?" His hair had fallen in front of his left eye, and Gail wanted to reach up and brush the honey-blond lock behind his ear.
She kept her fingers on the controls and checked her radar. "Yes. It's perfect. The mass of vegetation is just beyond the hull." She dropped the drop camera into the water.
"Does the shape look the same?"
"Yes."
His shoulders sagged with disappointment.
"The same" meant non-living, unless the Loch Ness monster sat like a turtle on the bottom for days on end. Gail gave him an encouraging smile. "Let's drop the net and see."
The crank of the wheel lowering the net echoed over the lake. Every living thing within a mile would hear the rusty squeals. Good thing Flynn didn't make his living catching fish.
As the drop camera snapped pictures, the net scraped the bottom of the lake floor over seven hundred feet down. Gail tried to imagine the depth — half the height of the Empire State Building. She vacationed at Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire every summer and she'd always thought that water felt bottomless at over two hundred feet. Loch Ness was more than three times that depth.
Darkness had fallen by the time Flynn hauled the net back up. Tom videotaped while the mass hung above the water, dripping like a soggy mop of hair. A dank, rotting smell filled the air, and Gail covered her nose with her arm.
Flynn shone the boat lights on the deck. They stood back while he lowered the net and the contents sprawled out. Brown sludge splashed Gail's legs, making long smudges on her white pants. An icy chill spread through her clothes.
Flynn smiled apologetically. "Sorry."
"It's not your fault." Gail tried not to cringe. It was her fault for wearing white skinny jeans. That's what I get for wanting to look sexy for no good reason.
A few small fish wiggled at Gail's feet as she took a paddle and poked through the sludge. An old boot protruded from a tangle of string. Gail pulled it toward her and an eel squirmed out, lunging at her feet. She jumped back and shrieked.
"It's not gonna hurt you, honey," Tom teased.
Gail shot him a nasty look. She wasn't his honey. "It just startled me."
Flynn got down on his knees like a child at Christmas before a stack of presents. He pushed the eel over the rim back into the lake and dug through the sludge with his bare hands. "No lights, no toys, nothing." He glanced at Gail. "What could have made the orb on the screen?
"Aliens," Tom joked behind them. "It's got to be aliens."
Gail paddled through more of the muck. "I don't believe in aliens either."
"Look at this." Flynn pulled his hand from the sludge and opened his palm. In the center rested an ivory tooth the length of his forefinger and a good two inches wide at the base. "Who do you think this belongs to?"
Gail's mind ticked away, trying to place the tooth. "Pike have teeth, but nothing that big. It's too long and narrow to be a shark's tooth, not that sharks live in Loch Ness."
She picked up the tooth and smoothed her fingertip down the side. The bottom was an ugly yellow color with brown stains at the root. Whatever had had this tooth had it for a long time. "It reminds me of a Goliath Tigerfish, but they're native to the Congo River basin in Africa. Besides, this is way too big. The fish would have to be at least twenty feet long, and their maximum length is five feet."
"What you're trying to tell me is you don't have an answer." Flynn teased her with his smile.
"Not yet." Gail gave Flynn the tooth back and wiped her hands on her jeans. Not the best night to wear white. "Do you want me to send out some echo calls?"
"That would be great. I need to sort through the rest of this sludge and clean the deck." Flynn dangled a long strand of grassy moss then threw it back into the lake.
Tom turned his camera toward the water. "Hit the jukebox, Gaily-girl. We're gonna have us a parrrr-ty."
Tom's sense of humor was rearing its ugly head, and Gail didn't like it one bit. Noticing an embarrassing blunder, she walked up beside him and pressed the button on his camera. "Helps if you turn it on."
"I knew that." Tom's voice had an ugly, defensive edge. "I was just taking a break."
Gail gave Flynn a questioning look then returned to her equipment. What kind of videographer would forget to turn his camera on?