Wickedly Dangerous (Baba Yaga, #1)(89)

“Sheriff? Sheriff McClellan, are you there?” Nina’s voice spilled out of the radio in a muffled whisper, as if she was trying to talk without being overheard. “Liam? Pick up the damned radio!”

“I’m here, Nina,” Liam said as he stuck his head into the car and thumbed on the two-way. “Why didn’t you just call me on my cell phone? You’re going to get in trouble if someone catches you talking to me over official channels now that I’m suspended.”

The dispatcher’s exasperated sigh came clearly down the line between crackles. “Because you’re someplace out in the middle of nowhere, and your cell has no reception. I’ve been trying you on it for the last ten minutes.”

Liam glanced at the rural countryside surrounding him and grimaced. “Fine. But what’s so important you had to reach me right away? If it’s a fight at The Roadhouse, somebody else will have to deal with it this time.”

Nina lowered her voice even more, and Liam had to bend down closer to the speaker to hear her, the top of his body twisted awkwardly half in and half out of the open cruiser window.

“Peter Callahan’s wife called in, completely hysterical. She insisted on talking to you, no one else.”

“Nina,” Liam said in his most patient tone, “I’m not the sheriff right now. She’s just going to have to talk to someone else.”

“You don’t understand,” Nina said urgently. “She says that Maya took her son.”

Behind him, Liam could hear Baba let out a quiet gasp.

“What? When?” he asked, already fumbling for his car keys.

“She wouldn’t tell me anything else,” Nina said, clearly put out by not being in the loop. “Just insisted on talking to you. Said you were the only one she trusted. She wants you to meet her at the crossroads where Country Route Twenty and Blue Barn Road meet, as soon as you can get there.” Nina paused. “You don’t think it’s some kind of trick, do you?”

Liam had been wondering that himself. “You talked to her; what did you think?”

Nina pondered the question for a second. “I think she sounded like a desperate woman in a world of trouble. Do you want me to send someone else?”

Liam and Baba exchanged glances over the roof of the cruiser. “That won’t be necessary,” he said. “I’ve got this one.”


*

AT THE BLUE-PAINTED barn, a long-abandoned landmark that gave the road its name, Baba and Liam found Penelope Callahan waiting impatiently, pacing by her boxy green Volvo and wringing her hands. A large red and purple bruise decorated most of one side of her otherwise attractive face, and she limped slightly as she paced. The Volvo’s right headlight was bashed in, its injuries seeming to match her own.

She rushed over to meet them as soon as the cruiser pulled into the lot, ignoring Baba and addressing Liam with barely restrained hysteria. Her carefully coiffed hair stuck out at the sides, as if she’d been running her fingers through it repeatedly.

“Sheriff McClellan, thank god you’re here!” Penelope gasped. “Nina said you couldn’t come, because they’d suspended you, but I knew you wouldn’t let me down.” One trembling hand dashed away tears impatiently. “You have to help me get my son back!”

Liam put one arm around her shaking shoulders briefly before stepping back to take a closer look at her face. “What happened, Mrs. Callahan? Did Maya do this to you?” Baba could see the muscles in his jaw tense as he clenched his teeth.

Penelope shook her head, wincing a little. “No, no,” she said. “Maya was there when I got home from doing the shopping with Petey. She said we’d had a major flood in the basement and Peter had asked her to take Petey out of the way while we dealt with it.” She looked indignant, as if insulted by the suggestion that she couldn’t cope with a household emergency and a four-year-old at the same time.

“I said no, of course,” she went on, speaking in the rapid breathy tones of the truly frantic. “But she just took him anyway, and Peter didn’t do a thing. She didn’t even have a car seat!” Panic rose up in her eyes and Liam took one of her hands in his.

“I’m sure that Maya is a very safe driver,” he said soothingly. “Now, you said Maya didn’t give you those bruises. Can you tell us who did?”

Tears sprang into Penelope’s blue eyes, but to Baba, they looked more like tears of anger than the fearful ones she’d been shedding a minute ago.

“I confronted Peter when he tried to stop me from going after Maya. Hell, I knew that she was lying when she said all those horrid things about you, so that meant she had to be involved somehow. But Peter just stared at me like a zombie.”

Penelope pulled herself up straight. “When I told him I was going after Maya by myself, he hit me.” She touched one trembling hand lightly to the side of her face. “So I knocked him over with the car and followed Maya anyway.” She glanced at Liam. “I didn’t really hurt him; he was already getting up as I drove away.”

Baba let out a choked laugh and looked at the prim and proper Mrs. Callahan with newfound respect. “You ran him over with the car? That’s fabulous!”

Penelope sniffed back tears and gave Baba a tiny nod and a lopsided smile, wincing when the action pulled at the bruise. “I know, isn’t it? I should have done it years ago.” She sobered quickly. “If I had, my son wouldn’t be in the hands of that woman now.”