Page 20 of The Flame Game

“I’m sure he was aware I would be despoiling his daughter thoroughly. I was quite enjoying myself thinking about the things I’d do after making sure you’d eaten enough to be appropriately energetic for my plans. That was entirely on purpose.”

“You’re pure evil.”

“I love you, too.”

I grinned at that, separated the laptop boxes, set aside the laptop marked as for work, and freed my new toy from its packaging. “I’m proud I didn’t run from the altar. Or throw up on you. Or do anything even more humiliating than what I babbled.”

“As always, you were perfect.”

“No, you’re perfect. I’m just really lucky. And jealous.”

“I love your jealousy. To answer your question, I have my dress uniform with me.”

I stilled, staring at him with wide eyes. “What does a woman have to do to get you out of those pajamas and into your dress uniform?”

Quinn chuckled. “Ask, but only after we get some work done. Try not to destroy my dress uniform when you get your hands on me, as I’d rather not go in for a fitting before we go back to work. Did your father give you any hints on where we should start?”

“He’s mostly concerned about rabies, as I have a reputation. It involves me rescuing animals from dumpsters. If people didn’t leave animals in dumpsters, I wouldn’t fetch them.”

“It would be good for my blood pressure if you stopped rescuing rabid animals from dumpsters, but I understand why you won’t stop. And Blizzard is a good puppy despite the fact you acquired him from a dumpster. Well, he’s as good of a puppy as a husky can get.”

“And he was only a little rabid. Do you think Blizzard and Avalanche are okay with the children? How about Sunny?”

“They’re fine, Bailey. Our pets and our children will be back soon enough, and I’m sure they miss you. I’m not sure where to start with the rabies outbreak.” Quinn sighed and leaned back against the couch, muttering something under his breath. “Under normal circumstances, I would assign an investigative team to gather the base information, and I’d be available if they needed me. I’ve worked some investigations, but only as time allows—which isn’t as often as I want. So, we’re going to have to make this up as we go, especially since we’re not in New York. If you have any ideas, now is a good time to share them.”

“Tracking the health records for rabies treatments is the first thing to come to mind. There’d likely be a surge of rabies cases, probably in wild animal populations. That would create a surge of rabies treatments in the general area where they were developing the virus, especially if they’re trying to make it more contagious.” I opened my new laptop to discover a password prompt. “What’s the password?”

“Something you wanted for Christmas.”

“Suit model!” I typed the phrase in, and as Quinn liked secure passwords, I exchanged the space for an underscore, substituted letters for numbers, and hit enter. To my delight, the system unlocked. “Not only did I get the suit model for Christmas, I’m getting pictures. And I got the naked model, too. That’s one of my favorite models. But most importantly, there were several photographers around while you were wearing your suit. One of them will surely give me pictures of you just for me. And Perkette has my back. Oh! We should ask Perkette for help with rabies tracking. I bet she already has good data because of her work.” I chuckled, as the laptop was already linked to Quinn’s phone for internet access. “Is the hotel’s internet too slow for you?”

“I’ve seen faster turtles. I’m spoiled, Bailey.”

“Sure, sure.” I tapped in a search phrase for rabies outbreaks, my brows rising at the ridiculous number of results. Adding the year didn’t help. As the general internet refused to be of use, I logged into the backend of the CDC, chuckling I hadn’t lost access to their databases yet, and did a search for rabies treatments. “I should probably be doing work on my work laptop, but this one is mine.”

“For the record, if you want a new computer or phone at any point, all you need to do is ask.”

“I was fine before.”

“Only because you kept stealing mine.”

“That was half the fun, Queeny.” I considered what my father had said about the timing of my husband and his cheating ex-wife. “My father thinks Audrey is more significant than we might appreciate. As such, your job is to look into recorded gorgon matters from when you met her, before she met you, and up until she started being a cheating asshole. That way, I won’t interrogate you again with stupid questions and reminders I made your life a living nightmare until you were able to wisely ditch her. I think my father may be right about one thing he told me, though. She was totally a training program so you could cope with the disaster I tend to be.”

“You’re not a disaster, Bailey. That said, I did learn a lot about tolerance, patience, and keeping my cool while married to her, that is for certain. No, she wasn’t a good wife, but I also wasn’t the ideal husband for her, either. Frankly, after a year or two, I think we had equal disdain for each other. Honestly, even without your help with that, the marriage wouldn’t have lasted much longer. You just made it a lot easier for me to get through the paperwork and take minimal financial losses from my stupidity.”

“You weren’t stupid, Sam.”

“Oh, I was. I was young, tired of being treated like a stud, and she offered a loveless marriage. She did her fair share of treating me like a stud, but since I had agreed to marry her, it seemed fair.”

“All she gave you was a loveless marriage with a side of bad sex.” I frowned, considering my husband. “Well, bad sex for you. I can’t imagine you being capable of not doing your best by your partner. The whole incubus thing.”

“That whole incubus thing is why we ever had sex at all,” he muttered, shaking his head before reaching over me and snagging my work laptop. “I’m borrowing this because I’m too lazy to go get mine, which is buried somewhere under the presents.”

“It’s gone forever. Goodbye, laptop. Rest in pieces.”

“The presents aren’t that heavy. Well, most of them. I’m sure my laptop is fine.”

As trudging through the CDC’s database gave me a headache on a good day, I downloaded every rabies treatment record for the past ten years, dumped them into a spreadsheet, and groaned at the eighty thousand records, amazed the laptop and the program could handle so many results. “Rabies is even more of a problem than I thought. Looks like eight thousand on average a year that have been reported to the CDC in the past decade.”