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photos of “Nessie.”
    I turned to throw on some clothes and ran right into Jen, scaring her half to death.
    “Easy, easy. It’s just me,” I said, holding her by the shoulders. “Run get Leo—and tell him to bring his rifle.” I gave her a push for the door and that kid moved like a house afire.
    So did Leo. By the time I’d got my gear together, double-checking the flare gun to make sure it had a healthy charge left, he was on my doorstep, rifle in hand.
    We ran down the steps together, pausing only once—to ask Jen which way Susan had gone. Jen said, “Down to the loch, she calls it your favorite place! I thought you’d know
    !” She was on the verge of another wail.
    “I know,” I said. “Now you wait here. If we’re not back in two hours, you wake Elly and tell her to get on the phone to Mike.”
    “Mike,” she repeated, “Mike. Two hours.” She plopped herself down on the floor directly opposite the clock. I knew I could count on her.
    Leo and I switched on flashlights and started into the woods. I let him lead for the time being—he knew the paths better than I did and I wanted to move as fast as possible. We made no attempt to be quiet at it, either. In the dark and shorthanded, I’ve always preferred scaring the creature off to facing it-down.
    We got to the boats in record time. Sure enough, one of them was gone. Leo and I pushed off and splashed across the loch, Leo rowing, me with the shotgun in one hand and the flare gun in the other.
    Nine times out of ten, the flare gun is enough to turn a Dragon’s Tooth around and head it away from you. The shotgun’s there for that tenth time. Or in case it was threatening Susan.
    A couple of large things rushed noisily through the woods to our far right. They might have been stag. They might not have been. Neither Leo nor I got a look at them.
    “Duck,” said Leo, and I did and missed being clobbered by one of those overhanging branches by about a quarter of an inch. Turning, I made out the boat Susan had used. There was just enough proper shore there that we could beach ours besides it.
    “All right, Susan,” I said into the shadows. “Enough is enough. Come on out. At my age, I need my beauty sleep.”
    Leo snorted.
    There was a quiet crackle behind him, and Susan crawled out from the undergrowth looking sheepish. “I only wanted it to be a surprise,” she said. She looked all around her and brightened.
    “It still is—you’ve scared them off!”
    “When you’re as old and cranky as I am, there’s nothing you like less than a surprise,” I said.
    “Oh.” She raked twigs out of her hair. “Then if I can get them to come out again, would you take your birthday present a month early?”
    Leo and I glanced at each other. I knew we were both thinking about Jen, sitting in the hallway, worrying. “Two hours and not a minute more,” Leo said.
    “Okay, Susan. See if you can get ’em out. I’ll want a cell sample too.” I rummaged through my gear for the snagger. Nice little gadget, that. Like an arrow on a string.
    Fire it off without a sound, it snaps at the critter with less than a fly sting (I know, I had Mike try it on me when he jury-rigged the first one), and you pull back the string Page 16

    with a sample on the end of it.
    “Sit down then and be quiet.”
    We did. Susan ducked into the undergrowth a second time and came out with half a loaf of Chris’s bread. She made the same chucking noise I’d heard her use to call her otters. She was expecting something low to the ground, I realized. Not the enormous thing I’d seen swimming in the loch.
    I heard no more sounds from that direction, to my relief. I wish I could have thought I’d dreamed the entire thing but I knew I hadn’t. What’s worse, I picked that time to remember that one of the Nessie theories had made her out a displaced plesiosaur.
    I was about to call a halt and get us all the hell out of there till daylight and a full team, when something stirred in the