Moon Cursed by Lori Handeland Page A

tell.”
    “Who’s ‘they’? No, wait!” The better question was: “Who the hell are you?”
    He did that half bow again, which seemed much less polite with the gun still in his hand. “Edward Mandenauer.”
    Maybe that hadn’t been the better question. She didn’t know him from Adam. So she reiterated the first.
    “Who’s ‘they’? Why do they tell you?”
    “Perhaps tell was not the right word.” He frowned. “Sometimes my English is still not vollkommen. ” A growl of annoyance rumbled in his throat. “Perfect.”
    Kris thought his English was damn perfect and he knew exactly what he was saying—and not saying.
    “I have connections.” He rolled the barrel of the gun in a tiny circle. “Good ones. When people disappear, I hear of it. I come to the area, or send someone, and we discover what is making them go…” He lifted his free hand, fingers touching the thumb; then he released them toward the sky. “Poof.”
    “Poof,” Kris repeated.
    “Or…” He stared pointedly at the dead girl. “Not poof.”
    “You belong to some kind of international serial killer task force?”
    His lips twitched. “Some kind.”
    “ What kind?”
    “We are called the Jäger-Suchers. ”
    “My German is worse than your English,” she said.
    “Hunter-searchers. We hunt monsters.” Kris blinked. “As do you.”
    “I’m not hunting a monster!”
    “No?”
    “I…” Kris paused.
    She was pretending to be a writer; no one was supposed to know why she was really here or who she really was. But this guy—with his superior connections and monster-hunting task force—appeared to already know. Of course he could be nuts, probably was, but since he was holding the gun, she decided to tell him the truth.
    “I expose hoaxes,” she said.
    “Which you’re very good at.”
    “Thanks. But I don’t believe there’s a monster here.”
    “No?” he repeated, again glancing pointedly at the dead girl.
    Kris sighed. “A human monster, sure. But a lake monster? No. And I plan to prove it.”
    “You do realize it is impossible to prove something does not exist? You can merely prove it has not yet been found.”
    “I’ve proved that things don’t exist.”
    “You’ve proved that certain myths were being perpetrated by what you call a hoaxer. However, just because someone has hoaxed does not mean the myth is not real.”
    “That’s exactly what it means.”
    “No.” He shook his head as if she were a poor deluded soul. “It means that someone has been deceiving others. It does not mean that the monster might not still be there but not yet found.”
    “I’ll prove the Loch Ness Monster isn’t real.”
    “If you can, please do so. It will remove one more creature from my…” His mouth curved. “To-do list.”
    “I don’t work for you.”
    “Would you like to? I will pay you. You can accomplish all sorts of things with that kind of cash.”
    “What kind?” Kris asked, intrigued in spite of herself.
    He reached into his coat again—what all did he have in there?—and removed a plain, white envelope, which he tossed in her direction.
    It was full of hundred-dollar bills. They looked pretty real.
    “Who do you work for?”
    “You are a smart girl. If you add one and one, I bet you will get two. Unlimited funding.” He waggled his gun. “The best weapons and a lot of them.”
    She could add, and what she came up with was the U.S. government. Who else printed money like it was newspaper, let damn near everyone own a gun, and kept secrets like they were the gold stored at the Federal Reserve?
    “Of course the powers that be would not admit to funding a monster hunt.”
    “Of course.” Kris lifted the envelope. “What do I have to do for this?”
    “Simply keep me informed of whatever you discover.”
    “About the un-monster? I don’t see how that will help.”
    “I’m not paying you to analyze the information; I’m paying you to let me do so. I’ve been in this job long enough to know