Matthew Silver and the Monster Hunters, Book One: The Darkest Waters

Chapter Sixteen

Jay poured herself a mug of some hot coffee that she’d finished brewing, then offered me one, which I accepted gratefully. It was just straight black, but I’d learned to ignore the bitter taste and appreciate its effects. “Then I guess we’ll just have to make multiple passes.”

I almost coughed up my coffee. “On a twenty-three mile long stretch of water? That could take months.”

She stretched out onto her own lawn chair with a steaming mug of caffeine goodness. “We’ve got a lot of time, don’t we?”

I smiled. “I guess we do.”

This was the part of a mission that wasn’t so bad. All we had to do was kick back and relax, until we found our dangerous monster, so we could hunt it down and capture it. I know, piece of cake, right?

“Sometimes I think that this is even better than back at the Sector,”Jay said from her chair, all curled up by the fire.

“Yeah, I guess. Why?”

“Oh.”She looked startled. “Well, we really don’t have to do anything for starters.”

I got up and poured myself another cup of coffee. Steam swished into the air as the dark liquid poured in. “True, but we can’t let ourselves start to slack off. We’ve got a lot riding on us.”

“I know, I know.”Her voice got small and quiet. “It’s just nice to be relaxed.”

I got the feeling that I’d done something wrong, but if I couldn’t tell where she was coming from, how could I be expected to give a right answer? I mentally kicked myself for saying whatever it was that was wrong.

I was taking a sip of the coffee, when a loud noise went up into the air. I had heard a whale call before in my life, and it sure sounded like one, but that didn’t make any sense. I wasn’t aware that there were any whales so far inland.

I looked at Jay, completely perplexed. We both ran to the sonar display, as if coming to a silent agreement.

There wasn’t anything unusual onscreen. According to the active sonar, nothing was out there. But the passive sonar was insisting that something was out there. I was stumped. One sonar was detecting motion under the water, while the other sonar was saying there was nothing there. Both couldn’t be right. I began rechecking everything to make sure nothing was broken or improperly adjusted.

Jay used her laptop to message Sandy. I suppose I could’ve used my Morse laser beam, but that would’ve taken forever to make an entire conversation. Jay tapped away furiously on the keys. Don’t even ask me how she had Wi-Fi. With her skills, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d already put up her own satellite for occasions like this. After a few minutes, she turned back to me. “Scott doesn’t have anything either. They heard it too, but they didn’t find anything. Same problem as us.”

“Okay, that rules out equipment failure,”I said. “We must’ve just missed something then. Human error.”I racked my brain for anything that I might’ve done wrong, anything to explain away the anomaly, but I came up empty. “When should we move again?”I asked, mostly to take my mind off the problem. “Whatever we missed could be moving farther down the loch.”

She thought for a second. “Let’s wait here another day before moving, just in case. I’d hate to miss an opportunity, just because we weren’t patient.”

“One more day of this? Oh, how will I ever live?”I said, pretending to sound exasperated.

She looked at me like I’d lost my marbles. “One more day of doing absolutely nothing?”

I winked and finger gun shot her. “For the good of the mission, of course.”

Awesomeness!

The sonar didn’t showed anything out of the ordinary again, but in all honesty, I had hardly been paying attention to it. I didn’t hear any more strange calls, I didn’t see any ominous events, like green fog rolling in, and I didn’t see any strange reptilian shapes rising dramatically from the loch. I was starting to think that this whole idea of a mysteriously dangerous loch was overly romanticized. The area was actually pretty cool. It had a historical feel to it. The loch was ugly, but interesting at the same time.

Jay and I looked like wrecks. I hadn’t even showered after my little swim in the Atlantic. I probably smelled of dead fish. Jay’s hair was loose and tangled. She had a few leaves in it, but she didn’t seem to notice or care. I stole a glance at her. She was reclining on one of the lawn chairs, sunning herself.

She looks cute when she’s messy, the crazy part of me said.

Shut up! the reasonable part of me said.

“What?”Jay said looking up at me.

“What, what?”I said, hoping I wasn’t blushing.

“You were looking at me funny,”she persisted.

“Oh…”Okay, that was lame, but I wasn’t sure what else to say. “It’s nothing,” I said a little too quickly.

She looked at me, a little concerned. “You sure?”

No. “Yeah, I’m fine. Everything’s cool.”

She went back to sunning herself, and I held back a sigh of relief. Dodged a bullet, there!