Wickedly Dangerous (Baba Yaga, #1)(59)
“But we still don’t have any way to prove it,” Liam said, frustration tensing his shoulders and clenching his jaw. “We need more time to look at these files, but I don’t dare take them. The last thing we want to do is tip Maya off that we’re on to her.”
“It’s too bad we can’t copy them,” Baba said, glancing over at the huge printer-copier that sat on Callahan’s desk. “But it would take too long. We’re already pushing our luck.”
Liam agreed, but he suddenly got an idea. “Hang on,” he said, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket. “If you shine your light over this drawer, I can at least take a few pictures with my phone. Then we can take a closer look at the names later, when we’re someplace safer.”
Baba looked impressed. “You can do that with your phone?”
He rolled his eyes and started grouping the files together so he could get a bunch of names into one shot. “You have got to move into this century, Baba.”
She gave an ironic snort that somehow contained a joke he was pretty sure he wasn’t getting. He was about to ask her what was so funny, when Gregori materialized out of the darkness, almost giving Liam a heart attack.
“Jesus!” he said, grabbing onto the metal drawer so hard, the edges cut into his fingers.
“No relation, I’m afraid,” the Asian man said dryly. “Although I have been known to walk on water occasionally.”
Gregori turned to Baba. “I caught two Otherworld creatures skulking around outside. I took care of them, but there’s no telling if there are more on the way. I think it’s time for you two to get out of here.”
Liam tucked his phone back into his pants and turned around to thank Gregori, but the other man was already gone.
“How the hell does he do that?” Liam muttered under his breath.
Baba just laughed quietly and headed for the window. She gave the room an unreadable look, shrugged, and hopped back over the sill and out into the silent night. Liam followed, slightly less gracefully, then almost tripped over two long-limbed beasts with lizardlike snouts and tails, and claws that dripped with a tarlike viscous substance.
They lay on the ground in a position that suggested their narrow, pointy heads had been knocked together with considerable force. Liam couldn’t tell if they were still breathing or not, and he didn’t particularly want to get close enough to find out. Something about the way their teeth and claws glistened made him think of rattlesnake venom.
“Don’t worry,” Baba murmured in his ear, startling him. “Gregori is very neat; he always cleans up after himself.” She kicked one of the creatures hard with one heavy boot as she walked past. “Basilisks. I hate those things.”
They walked in companionable silence back to where they had left his cruiser and her motorcycle a few blocks away, tucked behind a tiny neighborhood convenience store. As usual, Liam had very little idea what Baba was thinking, and his own thoughts skittered like water bugs on a murky pond, from the possibilities they’d opened up with their illicit explorations to more personal possibilities he didn’t dare explore in any depth, lest they root themselves any further in the unfertile soil of his damaged soul.
“I’m going to go home and download these pictures onto my computer,” Liam said as they stood next to the BMW. “I want to see if I can compile a list of all the people in the green-coded files. It might tell us something we don’t know yet.”
Baba cocked her head to the side as she thought, errant strands of hair escaping from the braid she’d tucked it into for their after-hours foray. “You know, if all the missing kids are from names in that group, maybe we can figure out which families have children that are still at risk. If you eliminate the people without kids, or with kids who are too old, you’ll have a short list of which children might be Maya’s next target. There can’t be that many of them.”
Liam’s heart beat faster. “If the list is short enough, maybe we can prevent her from taking any more children.” A fraction of the two-ton weight he’d been carrying around on his shoulders seemed to lighten and drift off into the dark night.
A wicked smile flitted across Baba’s austere face, making her seem for a moment like some wild and dangerous beast out of legend. “Better yet,” she said, looking into Liam’s eyes, “if we can catch her in the act trying to steal another child, you get to keep your job. I can make her tell me where the doorway is, so I can tell the queen and get to keep my head. And the queen can make Maya give the missing children back. All we have to do is narrow down the list enough to figure out who her next target is, and we solve all our problems at once. And protect the child, at the same time.”
Liam gazed at her in the moonlight. “You’re a genius,” he said. And seized by an uncontrollable impulse, he put his hands on the side of her face, leaned in, and kissed her soundly. Pulled back, looked at the stunned expression on her face, and did it again. Her lips tasted like blackberry wine, felt soft like rose petals as they gave under his, and the elusive scent of orange blossoms floated through the air like nature made manifest.
Stepping back, he grinned at her, ridiculously pleased by the mixture of shock and pleasure he could see in her wide amber eyes. He was a little shocked himself by the strength of the longing that surged through his body, and had to fight the impulse to put her up against the closest wall and claim those lips and everything that came with them.