The Scottish Highlands were doing their absolute best to look brooding, but the local café was sabotaging the vibe. It smelled aggressively of toasted cinnamon and damp wool.
I carefully set down two oversized mugs of hot chocolate, making sure the whipped cream towers didn't collapse. Across the scarred pine table, Dr. Veronica Vance was staring intensely at a grainy photograph of what looked suspiciously like a floating log. She didn't look up, but her hand unerringly found the handle of her mug.
"It’s a pleiosaur, Gregg," she said, her voice carrying that crisp, academic cadence that usually meant she was about to ruin my day with logic. "The skeletal structure matches the late Cretaceous aquatic reptiles. If the geothermal vents at the lake bed are active, the micro-climate could sustain a small breeding population."
"Veronica, it’s a telephone pole," I replied, sliding into the booth opposite her. "A waterlogged, deeply uncharismatic telephone pole. And you’re dripping marshmallow onto your thermal scanner."
She gasped, quickly grabbing a napkin to buff the plastic casing of her favorite piece of government-surplus tech. She glared at me through her tortoiseshell glasses—the ones she only wore when she was either deeply invested in a cryptid or deeply annoyed by me. Usually, it was both.
"This scanner is a finely tuned instrument of science," she informed me, taking a delicate sip of her cocoa. "Unlike your 'gut feelings,' which currently have us stationed in a tourist trap during peak midge season."
"My gut feelings have a seventy percent accuracy rate," I reminded her, leaning back. "And they also told me you wanted the extra sprinkles. Which I got you. You're welcome."
We were the Unexplained Phenomena Division—or, as the guys in the basement bureau called us, the 'Weirdo Brigade.' Veronica was the skeptic with three Ph.Ds and a complete inability to pass a stray dog without talking to it in a high-pitched voice. I was the believer who thought the universe was full of beautiful secrets, and who also happened to know exactly how Veronica took her coffee depending on which time zone we were in.
We had been partners for three years. We had fought off mutated moth-men in West Virginia, tracked phantom hitchhikers down Route 66, and spent a deeply uncomfortable weekend in Roswell sharing a motel room with only one bed because the local UFO convention booked out the town. I slept on the floor using my duffel bag as a pillow, and she called me a gentleman for a week. We didn’t talk about it. We didn’t talk about a lot of things.
"The local constable said three sheep went missing near the Boleskine pier," Veronica said, shifting back to the files. "No tracks. Just a flattened path of reeds leading into the water."
"See? Nessie wanted a snack," I said, winking. "Classic monster behavior."
"Or a rogue wave," she countered, though a tiny, frustratingly cute dimple appeared near her mouth. She suppressed it immediately. "We head out on the water at midnight. The mist should mask our thermal signatures from the local authorities."
"Midnight? Perfect. That gives us exactly three hours to argue about whether the Bermuda Triangle is a magnetic anomaly or a temporal rift."
"It's a magnetic anomaly, Gregg. We settled this in Miami."
"We agreed to disagree in Miami while eating key lime pie, Veronica. Big difference."
Outside, the rain began to patter against the windowpane, blurring the distant, dark waters of Loch Ness. Inside, the fire crackled, and for a fleeting second, Veronica's eyes met mine over the rims of our glasses. There was a warmth there that had absolutely nothing to do with geothermal vents or prehistoric reptiles. It was the comfortable, terrifying gravity of two people who knew each other’s worst habits and still chose to share a rental car.
"Ready to catch a monster, partner?" I asked, raising my mug.
Veronica clinked hers against mine, a small, genuine smile finally breaking through her professional exterior. "Let's go prove you wrong, Gregg."
