Wickedly Dangerous

by Deborah Blake

Eventually, gratitude won out and she managed to say, more or less graciously, “Thanks. You can tell Bob to fix the metal bits; I can take care of the paint job myself. I’d rather not be without the bike any longer than I have to.” She could feel the space where it was supposed to sit outside the Airstream like an empty socket from a missing tooth. “Tell him I’ll pay double if he can put a rush on it.”

  Liam raised an eyebrow at that but relayed the message. A startled look flitted across his face at Bob’s reply, and he gazed at the phone thoughtfully for a moment after he hung up.

  “He said you don’t have to pay him double, but he’d really appreciate it if you could make him an herbal remedy for his father’s gout. They share the garage, and when the gout is acting up, the old man is as grumpy as a hibernating bear.” Liam shook his head. “He said someone told him about you when he was in Bertie’s this morning and he was going to contact you anyway.”

  Baba was pleased. It was probably irrational, but she felt better being able to barter for part of the work. When she was growing up, that was the way it was done. The previous Baba was paid in chickens far more often than in coin.

  “Excellent,” she said, already thinking of which herbs she might use from her current stock and which ones she would need to forage for. “I’ll make him up something right away.”

  Liam patted her leg, carefully avoiding the bruised bits that were already turning vibrant purples and blues, like a garden of pansies sprung up overnight. “Don’t worry about the bike,” he said, sympathy softening his tone. “Bob is a wizard with anything that has wheels and a motor.”

  “I don’t need a wizard,” Baba said, rolling her eyes. Wizards tended to be annoying and smell like sulfur. Too many alchemical formulas and not enough bathing. “I just need a mechanic.”

  “What?” Liam looked confused for a second, then laughed. “You have the strangest sense of humor.” A shadow wiped the smile away, leaving somber lines behind.

  Baba braced herself, fingers clenched around the sweating beer bottle. One cold drop ran over a knuckle and hit the floor with a silent plop. In the woven carpet under her feet, a tiny lizard flicked its tongue out to catch the unexpected moisture. Why did she find him so attractive? He did nothing but annoy her. Well, bandage her wounds and annoy her. How was it possible he could make her feel like this?

  “Look, we have to talk about this Maya thing,” Liam said, reluctance giving his deep voice a sharper than usual edge. “I don’t understand why you are so sure she is involved in the disappearance of all these children. Most crimes are motivated by love, money, or revenge—which one do you think this is?” He tilted his head, apparently willing to listen to her reasoning, although clearly not expecting to agree with it.

  Baba tried to figure out something that would make sense to him. As an explanation, “She’s using magic and I’m pretty sure she tried to kill me with it,” wasn’t likely to go over well.

  “Maya works for Peter Callahan,” Baba said slowly, feeling her way. “Big money there. And she told me that he has a lot of influence in this area now. I have a feeling that the kidnappings have something to do with one or both of those.”

  Liam pondered this for a minute. “Are you suggesting Maya is stealing the children and selling them to raise money for Callahan’s drilling project? Or trading them to people who want small children for some kinky reason in exchange for influence in some way?” He looked doubtful, but was apparently giving the idea due consideration, in the manner of a lawman who isn’t willing to rule out any possibility, no matter how improbable. “There are a lot of very rich people involved with the oil and gas industry overseas. Do you think they’re shipping the kids out of the country? That would explain why there has been no trace of them.”

  Then he shook his head. “No, no way. It’s just too Movie of the Week.” At Baba’s baffled look, he added, “Too far-fetched. Peter Callahan has a lot invested in pushing this fracking thing through—he stands to make millions if it all goes according to plan—but I can’t see him doing anything so drastic.”

  He tapped one finger against his empty beer bottle before putting it down next to the first aid kit and saying in a low voice, “Peter Callahan might be a son of a bitch, but he has a young son of his own. I can’t believe he would be involved in selling children for some kind of twisted business advantage.” Baba hoped she was wrong too, but she had less faith in humanity than he did. Still, if that was what was happening, surely they’d be subtler about it.

  But the children had to be going somewhere. If Maya wasn’t just killing them (and sadly, that was still a possibility), then what was she doing with them? A glimmer of an idea floated to the surface of her brain, like a will-o’-the-wisp in a swamp full of marsh gas; flitting to and fro, impossible to pin down. But something, nonetheless.

  “Maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way,” she said, trying to grasp the errant notion.

  Liam grunted and shoved himself to his feet, fatigue showing in the long lines of his body and the shadows that hung under his eyes. “There is no we here, Ms. Yager. Let me be perfectly clear about that.” He met her glare with a steady gaze.

  “I’ll give this all some thought, and I’ll look into it in any way I can, but you need to stay away from Maya Freeman, Peter Callahan, and anyone else associated with the gas company. There is only so much I can do to protect you.”

  Baba snorted through her nose, wishing she could breathe flames like Chudo-Yudo. It would serve the sheriff right if she accidentally set him on fire. “I don’t need you to protect me, Sheriff. I have been taking care of myself for a very long time.”

  She gave him a measured look. “On the other hand, I have been told that you are a broken man, and that’s why they don’t consider you a threat. Is that true?” Maybe it was tactless to ask, but if she was going to have to rely on him for an ally, even a reluctant one, she needed to know for sure that she could depend on him. And she’d never been known for her tact.

  A hint of color touched his strong cheekbones. He looked, for a moment, as though he might stalk off without answering. One deep breath brought him back under control with an effort that bespoke of long practice. Baba suddenly found herself reassessing his constant calm, which she sometimes found so provoking, and seeing a vision of an armored wall instead, built brick by brick with bloody fingers.

  “No,” he said. And the pain in his eyes was so deep, for a moment, she almost forgot the question. “Not broken. Just a little banged up. Kind of like you. And like you, I’ll heal. It’s just not a rapid process.” A sly smile gave her a glimpse into the keen brain hidden under his too-long hair and deceptively mellow exterior. “Besides, in some ways, my troubles work in my favor. The people around here like me. As much as the county board would like to get rid of me, they haven’t wanted to look bad by firing a man who survived a major tragedy.”

  Baba opened her mouth to ask and then shut it again when he shook his head.

  “Don’t worry about it.” A shadow flitted over his face, like a cloud blowing across the full moon. “I doubt you’ll be around long enough for it to matter.”

  She couldn’t argue with that; he was almost certainly right. Babas didn’t stay.

  “I’ll talk to Bob in the morning,” he added. “I can call you to let you know when he thinks the bike will be ready.”

  “I don’t have a phone.”

  “You don’t have a phone,” Liam repeated in a disbelieving tone. “Then how the hell do people get in touch with you?”

  Baba shrugged. “Usually they just show up at the front door.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” he said.

  “Really?” She raised one eyebrow. “You did.”

  Before he left, Liam turned around and gave her a hard look that sent a little shiver down her spine. She chose to blame it on the cool night air instead of the chill in his eyes.

  “Reme
mber what I said about staying away from Peter Callahan and his assistant. I don’t care what you suspect them of—I am the law here and you are a professor who is very far away from home. Make no mistake; I like you, but that won’t keep me from tossing your ass into jail if I have to.” He turned his back on her and left, slamming the door behind him to emphasize his point.

  Baba scowled at the place where he’d been, and fingered the perfectly applied bandage on her elbow. It had been a long time since anyone had bothered to take care of her—she couldn’t tell if she liked it or not. She felt oddly off-balance, as if the gravity in the room was no longer what she was used to. The air tasted strange, like strawberries and spring. He said he liked her.

  “I had a thought,” she said slowly to Chudo-Yudo.

  “Gods help us,” he growled. “The last time that happened, we had to replace all the furnishings.”

  “That fire was not my fault,” Baba said crossly. “And not that kind of thought.” She sank down on the couch, feeling every bruise and scrape complain in an unmusical chorus. Now that Liam was gone, she could get herself a tiny glass of the Water of Life and Death. That would speed up her healing and kill the pain at the same time.

  “It just occurred to me that right now, Maya and whoever she is working with think Liam is nothing more than an annoyance. What do you suppose will happen if he starts digging deeper into their business and actually finds something that could hurt them?”

  Chudo-Yudo hopped up on the sofa next to her, making it creak in protest. He lay his blunt head on top of a red-and-purple tapestry pillow and sighed. “In that case,” he said in a mournful tone, “I suspect he dies.”

  TEN

  LIAM HAD EVERY intention of following through on his promise to Baba and checking up on Peter Callahan. If nothing else, he was perversely looking forward to his next confrontation with Baba and seeing that strange light flashing in her eyes. He didn’t know how she did it, but she was astonishingly beautiful when she was angry.

  If she was his, he’d make her angry from time to time, just to watch the fireworks. Not that she would ever be his. Especially not now, when finding three missing children was a lot more important than suddenly, inexplicably discovering he still had an interest in women after all. One woman anyway.

  It made no difference, since he hadn’t had time to see her in days—or investigate anything to do with Peter Callahan. He’d been way too busy answering call after call from irate citizens who kept him hopping with their bizarre complaints.

  He pulled into the parking lot of the sheriff’s department, so relieved to be back that the long, narrow building actually looked good to him, faded red bricks, straggling shrubbery, dirty windows, and all. The summer heat radiated up off the concrete sidewalk, and the few weeds that were attempting to work their way through the cracks looked depressed and wilted.

  Kind of like he felt after spending over an hour standing in a field of reeking cow patties, trying to convince Stu Philips that his neighbor Henry hadn’t deliberately pulled down the fence between their farms so his heifers could eat the crops on the other side. The two men had finally stopped yelling long enough for him to point out that said cows were now halfway down the hill, leaving trampled rows of young corn as evidence of their passage. When he left, both the cows and farmers had been headed for home, none the worse for their adventures. He wished he could say the same for his boots.

  The cooler air inside the station was like a melody written in the key of relief. He nodded at a couple of deputies sitting at their desks in the outer room, ignoring the wrinkled noses and grimaces that followed in his wake. He’d come in smelling like worse things than manure; they’d live. The ancient AC units wheezing within the frames of windows with peeling white paint would eventually clear the air.

  His secretary, Molly, trailed him into his office, her low heels tapping on the beige linoleum floor. “Nice aftershave, boss,” she said, waving a sheaf of colored papers in front of her nose. “Something new you’re trying out?” The message memos were color coded in various shades to indicate urgency, and Liam noted an unusual number of oranges and reds in the midst of the usual yellows. It was a hell of a stack too.

  “I’ve only been gone for two hours,” he complained. “How many problems could possibly come up during that time that somebody else couldn’t handle?”

  Molly’s normally placid face pinched with worry. “Almost everyone else is already out dealing with other things. Sorry, Sheriff. It’s been like a zoo. The phone hasn’t stopped ringing since I got here.”

  Liam gave her an apologetic smile. It wasn’t her fault the sudden summer heat wave was making everyone cranky. “Hey, at least this zoo doesn’t come with livestock.” He pointed at his boots, which still had manure embedded in every nook and cranny, despite his efforts to wipe them off. “Go ahead, hit me.”

  Molly looked over the top of her glasses at the first note, held at slightly less than arm’s length. She’d turned forty the year before, but was still resisting the bifocals she clearly needed. One strand of brown hair had slipped out of her usually tidy bun, and while she was as calm and pleasant as always, something about the set of her shoulders told Liam she hadn’t had an easy morning either.

  “Roy Smith called,” she said, reading the yellow note written in her precise cursive hand. “He says that something savaged three of his lambs—either a wolf, or some kind of wolf-dog hybrid. He wants you to look into it.”

  Liam rolled his eyes. “Call him back and tell him I am neither the game warden nor the animal control officer. Next?”

  This note was on orange paper. “Clementine Foster called because someone poisoned her well. She helpfully provided a list of suspects, most of them kids she had in last year’s math class.” Molly tucked that one behind the rest of the batch, and read off the one after it. “Lester Haney wants you to investigate the vandalism on his farm. Says someone is sneaking around at night letting all the air out of the tractor tires, stealing plastic parts off the equipment, and hiding half the tools.”

  “Just the plastic parts?” Liam thought that sounded odd. “Maybe it’s teenagers, doing it on some kind of a dare?” Molly gave that theory a dubious look, which he tended to agree with. “Well, tell him I’ll get out there when I can, but in the meanwhile, maybe he should tie his dogs outside at night for a bit.” He took a deep breath, bracing himself as he looked at the size of the stack still remaining. “What else ya got?”

  She flipped through them rapidly, finishing up with, “Sherwood Latham wants you to find out who is threatening his migrant workers; suddenly they’re packing up their families and leaving town in droves. He says if you don’t get to the bottom of it, the crops are going to rot in the fields.”

  Oh, for the love of Pete. “How am I supposed to know why the migrant workers are leaving? Maybe they got a better offer from someplace else. What the heck is going on around here, anyway? Has everyone lost their minds?”

  He took off his hat and threw it on the pole in the corner, running his fingers through his hair to try to get some shape back into it. The coatrack was as utilitarian and functional as the rest of the room; the message memos were by far the most colorful thing in it. But even though he’d never admit it, Liam loved this office, with its clunky old wooden desk covered with towering piles of neatly organized files, and the big dusty window that overlooked the town he’d pledged to keep safe. The thought of losing it sent a shockwave of pain through his chest. He wasn’t sure he could bear one more loss. But he couldn’t think of any way to prevent it, short of a miracle.

  “You look like you could use this, Sheriff,” Nina said, walking through the door with a grease-dotted takeout container in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. She plopped them both on the desk blotter, carefully moving an active file out of the way with one well-placed elbow. The aroma of grilled meat and hot coffee filled the room and made Liam’s chest loose
n so he could breathe again.

  “Is that from Bertie’s?” he asked. As if Nina would take her lunch break anywhere else.

  “You bet your bippy,” the older woman said, a smart-assed grin creasing her narrow face. Her chin was pointed and her eyebrows sparse, and even when she was younger she’d been no one’s idea of a beauty, but Liam valued her more than any ten runway models for her loyalty and her brains. “Bertie’s special bacon cheeseburger with the bacon extra crispy, just the way you like it. I had a feeling you probably didn’t remember to stop and eat.”

  Molly nodded in satisfaction. Nina and Molly had been mothering him since Melissa left. Since before that, really. Sometimes it got on his nerves, but he knew they meant well. Besides, if it got him a bacon cheeseburger from Bertie’s, it was worth it. They both stood there and waited until he’d taken three huge bites, savoring the moist ground beef, the sharp bite of the cheddar cheese, and the smoky richness of the bacon, almost moaning as the juices dripped onto the napkin spread out in front of him.

  “Thanks, Nina,” he finally said, swallowing the last delicious mouthful. “You may have saved my life.”

  She sniffed. “Hey, I was there anyway. It’s no big deal.” It was their unspoken agreement: she pretended not to care, and he pretended to believe her. Nina liked to believe that no one saw through her tough exterior to the warm heart underneath, and everyone at the station played along, just to keep her happy.

  Molly put the memos for Liam to deal with down on the desk, their corners neatly aligned. “I’m glad you’re back, Nina,” she said, a tiny wrinkle appearing between her brows. “Dispatch has been hopping since you went out; I thought Deputy Lewis was going to give himself a muscle spasm trying to keep up.”

  “Crazy,” Liam repeated, shaking his head. He pushed the second half of his lunch away, his appetite suddenly gone. “What the hell is going on around here?”

  Nina pursed her thin lips. “You should hear the talk at Bertie’s. People are saying their feed supplies rotted overnight, or are infested with rats. Frank Shasta said he had a plague of snakes—just harmless garter snakes, but apparently they were everywhere. His wife Mildred got so freaked out, she went to stay with her mother until he could get rid of them.”