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panties in a ball. Ye dinnae have tae lure a
real
monster; ye could jist claim tae find clues. A few white lies and ye could jumpstart tourism again. Ye could save Drumnadrochit and the other hamlets. Ye’d be a real hero tae yer people.”
    “Brandy, I’m a scientist, a respected marine biologist, not a cryptozoologist or some headline seeker feeding fake monster stories to the weekly tabloids. Do you want me to destroy everything that I worked for?”
    “There’s wee uns goin’ hungry, Zach. What if it were yer son… yer kin? They’re starving because o’ ye bein’ such a great and respected marine biologist.”
    “You’re blaming me? Brandy, the damn thing killed three people!”
    “Aye. And far more will go hungry this winter because of yer bravery and brains. But ye can still make things right again.”
    “You’ve been talking to Angus.”
    “Aye, and he has a plan. But he needs yer help. All ye have tae do is authenticate a monster kill, and the press will do the rest.”
    Months of pent-up frustration set my blood to boil. “I won’t do it, Brandy. I can’t do it. It goes against everything I’ve dedicated my life to. My father, on the other hand, has no morals. He’d gamble his own sons’ souls in a poker game with the devil if it meant filling his resort to capacity.”
    “And tae whit devil have ye sold yer soul, Zachary Wallace? The one who feeds yer own massive ego?”
    That conversation took place in late January. Best friends and lovers, we allowed our desire to be right to overrule our marital vows. Days passed in silence. With each passing week our love grew colder, and the noose of debt around my neck grew tighter, making me resent her even more. My thoughts turning to the previouslyunthinkable, that maybe Brandy and I were not meant to be together after all.
    Without discussing it with my wife, I began contacting private companies and major universities, letting them know I was now fielding offers. By March I had narrowed my choices down to a faculty position at Cambridge University, a research position at Scripps Institute, and an interesting offer from Masao Tanaka at the Tanaka Oceanographic Institute.
    Tanaka and I shared a common love for cetaceans. One of the most respected marine biologists in the world, he had constructed a man-made whale lagoon some twenty years ago on the coast of Monterey, California. The idea had been to offer pregnant gray whales migrating south from the Bering Sea a shallow harbor to birth their calves before reaching Baja. Instead, the facility had been sealed off to hold a newborn megalodon pup captured off the coast. Believed to be extinct, megalodon was a sixty-foot prehistoric cousin of the great white. The shark’s pregnant parent had escaped the deep waters of the Mariana Trench after Jonas Taylor, a deep-sea submersible pilot, had dived the abyss with Masao’s son to retrieve an earthquake sensor. The pregnant female had given birth to the pup before being captured and eventually killed (in self-defense) by Jonas. The offspring, an albino named Angel, had grown to monstrous proportions, and for the next four years, the Tanaka Institute had been the most popular tourist destination in the world—until the creature broke free and returned to the trench. That was fifteen years ago, but the megalodon’s scent trail persisted, keeping whales out of the vacated pen. Masao Tanaka was offering me three hundred dollars a week, with free room and board, plus a twenty-thousand-dollar bonus
if
I could figure out a way to lure whales into his empty lagoon.
    Cambridge University’s salary offer wasn’t much higher, but it was guaranteed. And its proximity to the Great Glen would allow me to visit my family on weekends.
    But it was the work at Scripps that enticed me the most. I would be set up in my own lab with a staff of my choosing. Inaddition to a decent salary and benefits package, I would receive thirty percent of any profits generated by my