you should snap your own picture of Erik so you can show your siblings what he looks like with his shirt on.”
Cameron threw a wary look crossdeck and nodded. “Yeah. Maybe I should.”
For the next fifteen minutes, as we motored down the loch’s long, narrow finger, I snapped occasional pictures of the hilly shoreline.
There was so much sameness in the scenery, however, that other than taking a few pictures of Alex and Erik and one of Cameron that he thought good enough to make into a Christmas card, I didn’t feel impelled to go hog wild with the photography. By the time the skipper turned the boat around and headed back to shore, I’d seen more than enough of Loch Ness to satisfy my curiosity. I was just a little bummed that Nessie had kept such a low profile. Dad would be so disappoint—
Commotion in the wheelhouse. A loud thump. Shouts. A piercing scream. A high-pitched whine. A grinding of gears. And in the next instant we were careening toward shore like a rocket in hyperdrive.
I was catapulted off the bench and hit the deck hard on my hands and knees.
“Grab the throttle!” came the yell from the wheelhouse.
“Is he dead?”
“It’s stuck!”
“Gimme a hand, someone!”
“Ohmigod! He’s dead!”
“I can’t budge it!”
“Outta the way! Let a real man give it a try.”
Gasps of horror.
“You broke it!”
“It wasn’t my fault!”
“Brace yourselves!”
“You mean, we can’t stop?”
Air whooshed out of my lungs as Cameron heaved his body on top of mine. “Stay down! I’ll try to—”
“We’re all going to die!”
CRRRRRRRRRRRUNNNNNNNNNCH!
ELEVEN
“IT WAS NESSIE,” DAD said breathlessly as we watched the ambulance tear out of the parking lot, siren blaring. “She showed up as a gigantic blip on the monitor. And she was right under the boat! But the skipper was too busy giving his spiel to notice what was happening on the fish finder.”
“So you pointed it out to him?” I questioned.
“Yup.”
“Which explains why we suddenly headed toward shore at warp speed?”
Dad crooked his mouth. “Not exactly. The throttle got pushed forward when the skipper passed out on top of it. And then it jammed, so we couldn’t slow down. And that Gordon fella didn’t help any when the knob came off in his hand.” He glanced toward the waterfront, where boat company personnel were milling around the wreckage of what used to be their main dock. “How many knots do you suppose we were doing when we hit that thing?”
I followed his gaze, a fist clenching in my stomach. “I don’t think I want to know.”
“Guess it’s not such a bad thing that Iowa’s landlocked,” he said upon reflection. “No docks to run into.”
Despite ramming the dock at warp speed, we’d all managed to survive the crash with only minor scrapes and bruises. The only person needing transport to the hospital was the skipper, and this, only as a precautionary measure. His vital signs had been so good that the paramedics had ruled out a heart attack and suggested his sudden fainting spell might have been a vasovagal episode triggered by extreme emotional distress.
I guess this was the first time he’d ever seen a blip the size of Delaware on his fish finder.
“I caught the whole thing on video,” Dad affirmed as he cradled his precious heap of camcorder scraps against his chest. “I could even show you what the blip looked like”—a piece of plastic casing slipped between his fingers and clattered onto the ground, prompting him to peer down at it—“if my camera was still in one piece.”
“But you’re not the only one who saw the anomaly. The captain saw it, too, right? So you can back each other up?”
“Yup. The skipper’d even be able to replay the actual footage for us”—another piece of camera casing fell to the ground—“if his fish finder was still in one piece.”
The captain’s new multifunction fish finder had been the only casualty in the accident, having crashed to the deck upon impact and disintegrated into a thousand slivers and shards. The Highland Queen herself had escaped damage, save for a few more chips gouged out of her already peeling paint. She might be an eyesore, but she was apparently an indestructible eyesore.
“Could I have your attention, please?”
At the sound of Wally’s voice, we glanced toward the bus, where guests had congregated to compare their war scars and one-up each other with exaggerated tales of heroism and survival.
“Considering what many of you have just experienced, I’m not sure you want to proceed with the rest of the day’s