The Loch Ness Legacy

EPILOGUE

Alexa felt an intense sensation of déjà vu as she rode in Grant’s Tahoe down the driveway at André Laroche’s estate. It brought back memories of her jittery arrival after being rescued from the kidnapping attempt at Pike Place Market. The difference was that the fear, urgency, and desperation were gone, replaced by calm anticipation.

She couldn’t help looking at Grant for any signs of a relapse, but he seemed stronger than ever, the wrinkles and grey hair erased as if they were never there. It seemed the antidote not only stopped the progression of the poison but had a rejuvenating effect as well. The treatment in London had lasted a week, followed by recuperation in Seattle, during which she’d taken care of him. Other than one dinner at a local Chinese restaurant, this was their first foray out into the world since leaving Urquhart Castle.

He parked in front of the mansion and shut off the engine.

“Thanks for coming with me,” she said, putting her hand on his.

“After what you did for me? I would have come if you were visiting a scorpion pit.”

Alexa smiled because for Grant that was saying a lot. Through their long discussions in the last month, one tidbit she’d learned was that he was deathly afraid of scorpions, an aversion forged by a bad experience when he was camping as a child and found one had crawled into his shoe during the night.

“Aw, thanks, honey,” Alexa said. She leaned over, and they shared a hungry kiss that went on for a minute. If they had been at Grant’s apartment, she was sure the make-out session wouldn’t have stopped there.

When she drew back, Grant stared into her eyes with a pained expression.

“Are you sure we have to tell Tyler?” he asked.

Even though she’d made frequent visits to Grant’s place, they’d successfully kept the relationship a secret, which was even easier in the past week with Tyler gone on a well-deserved vacation in the UK. She knew he’d be seeing Brielle and secretly hoped it would lead to something more. She thought they made a good couple.

“I think you’re making too big a deal of this,” Alexa said. “He’ll understand.”

Grant shook his head. “You’re not a guy with a sister. I know if anyone messed with my sisters, I’d have some strong words with them.” His balled fists at the thought made it clear that words weren’t the only thing the offender would get.

“So you’re just messing with me?”

Grant’s eyes went wide when he realized how that had come out. “No, no. It’s kind of an unwritten code. You’re not supposed to…get involved with your friend’s sister.”

“So a stranger would be better? Why?”

“I don’t know. That’s how it works.”

“You want me to talk to him?”

He hesitated. She was amused that Grant would face down hordes of enemy soldiers armed with guns, but admitting something like this to Tyler was terrifying to him.

“No,” he finally said, “I think we should do it together.”

“So do I,” she said lasciviously.

“See? That is exactly why the rule is in place.”

“It’ll be okay. Trust me.”

“I do,” Grant said. “But if it goes south, I’ll tell him it was all your idea.”

“Yes, you were completely helpless under my spell. That’ll work.”

Alexa and Grant got out of the car and knocked on the front door. A woman in a nurse’s outfit answered and brought them inside. She didn’t have Marlo Dunham’s panache, but she had a friendly smile.

They walked down the long hallway where Marlo Dunham had shot at Brielle, and Alexa could still see where the bullets had torn out chunks of wood and drywall.

Entering the living room, they found André Laroche seated in a chair, a cane by his side. He’d come out of the coma two weeks ago but had been able to return home only yesterday. Though the left side of his face drooped from paralysis, the doctors hoped that he’d someday regain control of his features. Even so, he looked much better than the last time Alexa had seen him, unconscious in his vault. His color had returned, and he still had the regal bearing she recalled.

He gave Alexa a lopsided smile and held out a wobbly hand. She took the cue and went to him, bending over to give him a traditional French kiss on both cheeks.

“Sit down, please,” he said, his voice slurred and shaky. “Can I offer you some tea?”

“That would be lovely,” Alexa said. She and Grant sat on the settee opposite him.

“Ms. Frost, would you please prepare some Earl Grey for us?”

She nodded and left the room.

“I’m so sorry for what I put you through,” Laroche said. “Both of you. I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive an old man.”

“Of course, André.”

He shook his head with a look of profound disappointment. “My trust in Marlo was so misplaced.”

“Justice will catch up with her some day,” Grant said.

“Yes, I suppose it will, one way or another.”

“At least this affair has opened up a whole new line of research into the aging process,” Alexa said. “Without your contribution to discovering the Loch Ness monster, that wouldn’t have happened.”

“It really does exist?” he asked eagerly. “You saw it with your own eyes?”

She nodded. Her heart was still heavy at the magnificent creature’s loss, but she hoped they’d be able to find its remains someday for proper study and display. Alexa wanted to share the exhilaration she’d felt upon seeing it. She’d start by sharing her experience with the person who would appreciate it most.

Laroche leaned forward. “Tell me everything.”

Dr. Wayan Sulastri of Rumah Sakit Wongaya Hospital in Denpasar rushed down the hall in response to the code called on his pager. He entered the patient’s room and found two nurses already getting the crash cart ready.

He checked the monitor and confirmed that the elderly woman was suffering another episode of ventricular tachycardia, the third since she’d been admitted to the hospital several days before. He took the paddles and yelled, “Clear!”

Her chest heaved up in response to the electrical shock. It took two more to revive her. The heart was beating, but thready and weak. One of the nurses collected the cart and left while Sulastri stayed with the other nurse to jot down some notes.

The English interpreter, on call for the many tourists who became ill on their visits to Bali’s capital city, appeared in the door.

“Do you need me?” she asked Sulastri. He spoke only Balinese and Indonesian.

He looked at the patient, who was stirring. She was frail, assumed to be in her eighties, with hair falling out in clumps, loose teeth, and severe osteoporosis resulting in a broken pelvis. Nothing they did seemed to reverse her rapidly deteriorating state. Sulastri had no options but to keep her alive as long as he could and make her comfortable.

“Ms. Duncan,” he said, focusing on the patient instead of the interpreter, “you’ve suffered another arrhythmia, so we had to resuscitate you again. Is there anyone you want me to call?”

The interpreter translated, and then shook her head at the wheezed response. “She keeps repeating the same thing, that the only way to cure her is by creating some kind of elixir from the flesh of the Loch Ness monster.”

“It must be delirium.” He made a note of the ramblings, and the interpreter left him and the nurse alone with the patient.

“Poor woman,” the nurse said. “To be alone in her last days. It must be horrible.”

“Any luck finding a relative? Her passport says she’s American.”

“We’ve tried contacting the home of every Marley Duncan in the United States. None of them have ever been here. I’ll try the US embassy next, but I don’t even think it’s a real passport.”

“It’s definitely been altered in some way,” Sulastri said, looking at the chart, “because there’s no possible way this fragile old woman is twenty-nine years old.”

The only enjoyment Victor Zim got these days was from imagining Marlo Dunham at the moment she would have realized that Zim poisoned her. All it had taken was a quick pour into her coffee on board the Aegir when he’d been fed up with her for good. At the time he’d regretted his impulsive use of the remainder of Altwaffe he’d retained, but now he was glad he’d had the foresight to do it. She was either dying somewhere or in custody in order to receive treatment. He alternated between gratifying thoughts about each outcome.

Staring at the ceiling from his bed, he didn’t know how long such entertaining reflection would stave off the boredom that he was sure would eventually drive him insane. Returned to California, Zim had been denied any kind of entertainment except for one hour a day when he was allowed to watch television. There would be no trips to the exercise yard, and he was allowed no visitors other than his court-appointed lawyer. No trial was forthcoming; it hadn’t been deemed necessary since he could still be incarcerated under his original sentence. He longed for his last cellmate at Pleasant Valley, a crass plumber who’d murdered his wife but had amusing stories about his four exes before the one he killed.

At times Zim was filled with rage at his situation, but it was primarily the depression that consumed him. Although he did have a window, all he could see was the sky. It was probably the only outdoor view he’d ever see again, since they’d never let him go. But even if they did, his life was over.

A nurse entered his room and adjusted his arms and legs to prevent bedsores. She might as well have been adjusting couch cushions for all he could feel. He looked down and saw that the muscle tone in his limbs was already drastically reduced. In another few weeks, his arms and legs would look like toothpicks.

When Zim had awoken in an Inverness hospital, he’d been told that the fall at Urquhart Castle had crushed his third cervical vertebra, instantly turning him into a quadriplegic. His situation was irreversible, paralyzing him from the neck down.

Without saying a word, the nurse finished her job and left.

He was as helpless as a baby, suffering every indignity to which a newborn was oblivious. And there was nothing he could do about it. Even if the nurse had left a loaded Glock on the bed, he wouldn’t have been able to put himself out of his misery. He’d tried to kill himself by refusing to eat, but they’d put a disgusting feeding tube down his nose.

He looked back at the featureless sky outside the window, and tears rolled down his cheeks as he thought about the reality of the next forty years being confined to the worst prison he could imagine.

Tyler climbed up to the top deck of the Nessie Seeker II with two glasses of scotch and took a seat next to Brielle, who was dressed only in a long-sleeved shirt and light pants made possible by the unusually warm breeze blowing across Loch Ness. She took her tumbler and they clinked them together.

“To Nessie,” she said.

Tyler smiled. “May her legend live on.”

Tyler took a sip and savored the peaty scotch, which went down oh so smoothly. A little liquid anesthetic would help ease the ache in his shoulder, which had come out of its sling the day before. It would take a few months to get back to ninety percent, but the doctors didn’t know if he’d ever regain a full range of motion. Still, it was a small price to pay for Grant’s return to health.

They quietly watched the sun descending over Urquhart Castle, the azure sky broken by a few wisps of white cloud. Tyler had to admit that the view from Greg Sinclair’s new boat was much better than it had been from the cramped submarine.

After his original boat sank, Sinclair told Tyler that he’d been in the process of searching for a replacement anyway, and the insurance money allowed him to buy the boat he’d had his eye on, a beautiful forty-two-footer. When Tyler had left him at the helm, Sinclair was still playing with the new gadgets that came installed in the control panel.

The leisurely cruise went on for a while without conversation until Brielle turned to Tyler.

“Do you like blintzes?” she asked.

Tyler thought about it for a moment. “I don’t know if I’ve ever had blintzes.”

“Then I think you should try them.”

“Okay. Do you know a good place?”

She nodded. “In London. My mum makes the best cheese blintzes you’ll ever taste.”

Tyler was genuinely surprised. And pleased. He was beginning to think they might be taking this beyond a fling. “Are you asking me over to your parents’ house?”

“It’s not an audition or anything like that. I just think they might like you, even if you aren’t one of the chosen people. What do you say?”

“I’d be honored.” They clinked again.

“Has Grant met your father?” Brielle asked.

“Oh, yeah.”

“But not since he started seeing Alexa.”

Tyler shook his head and grinned. “They don’t even think that I know.”

“You’re going to let them sweat it out?”

“I don’t know how serious it is, but they’ll tell me when they’re ready.” All he wanted was for them both to be happy, and if they found happiness together, that would be great as far as he was concerned.

Another few minutes of silence went by before Brielle spoke again.

“Are you ready to tell me why we’re here?”

“A romantic boat ride isn’t enough? We are his first passengers.”

“I know you well enough now to realize you brought us back up here for another reason.”

She really did know him well. “You’re right. I promised Mr. Sinclair that we’d help him get a photograph to promote his business.”

“A photo of what?”

Tyler pulled a tablet computer from his bag, drawing a quizzical look from Brielle. He opened the cover and tapped on the screen to bring up an app specially designed by Gordian. The app showed a satellite map of Loch Ness. There were three dots on the map — red, yellow, and blue.

“That’s us right there,” he said, pointing at the blue dot. He zoomed in, and the dot moved steadily toward the south. The stationary yellow dot was only a few hundred yards off their port bow.

“What does that represent?” Brielle asked.

“That’s the wreckage of the Aegir. When Gordian did its survey last week with the unmanned submersible, they marked the location with a submerged buoy, far enough beneath the surface that no boat would ever hit it.”

“It’s a shame they couldn’t find Nessie down there. From what Alexa told me, the animal’s carcass could have provided scientists with valuable insight into preventing cell decay.”

“They have enough of a sample for now. I hear they’re already making progress.”

“They found the harpoon and nothing else?”

“The official story is that the creature must be buried in the muck, irretrievable without a serious dredging effort.”

“What do you mean, official?”

“I haven’t told Alexa any of this yet because I didn’t want to get her hopes up until I’d confirmed it, but the part of the story you haven’t heard is that they found the tail with the harpoon still buried in it. Remember when Alexa was telling us about lizards shedding their tails to get away from predators?”

Brielle’s mouth fell open. “You mean…”

Tyler nodded and scrolled the screen to the southern portion of the loch, where the red dot representing the Loch Ness monster was located, a three-digit number next to the dot indicating depth in meters. It currently read 045.

“That’s her.”

Brielle gasped when she saw the dot change position.

Nessie was moving.