Page 77 of The Flame Game

“Huh. So her gig was up before she’d even started it, really.”

My husband nodded. “I started tracking her infidelity early, and when I tired of her and her home pregnancy tests, I asked Bailey to gather evidence. She’s been dubbed the Calamity Queen for good reason, as she’s exceptionally good at finding things while disasters happen around her. She doesn’t even cause most of the disasters. She just stumbles her way into them. Bailey acquired the photographs I needed to proceed with my divorce. Audrey and I had a civil divorce, she walked away with a lump sum of my choice, which was lower than the half she would have received had she not been cheating on me.”

“It looks like you got a slow screw, too.”

“Not at all.” As I hadn’t played his game earlier, my husband snagged me around the waist and pulled me close. I did my best to wiggle free, but he opted to use his unfair manly strength to pin me to his side. “Now that we’ve done the customary dance, this is Mrs. Police Chief Quinn, my wife and future mother of my children.”

“Future mother? Oh! Do you mean you’ll be having children? I guess it has been a long time. I’m happy for you, Samuel. I knew you liked children, but I just couldn’t see you having any with Audrey.”

“I couldn’t, either. Hell, I couldn’t even take her home to most of the family. She met my mother and father, and they played stupid. The rest of my family hid.”

“Smart of them, really.”

I strained against Quinn’s hold on me. “Did you put steel bars in your arms this morning?”

“No, I just like you where I have you, and I’m willing to show off to keep you where I have you.”

“I believe he’s attempting to, in a rather odd fashion, show me you have a different relationship with him than he did with Audrey. With Audrey, he could barely tolerating touching her. You’ve made your point, Samuel. Honestly, you were never the type, and I just never understood what you saw in her.”

“I didn’t see anything in her. That’s why I married her. She kept the other sharks at bay.” My husband released me, although he captured my right hand in his. “We’re actually honeymooning, as our first was rudely interrupted. By Audrey.”

“How?”

“She kidnapped Bailey.”

Kendra winced. “I’m sorry, Bailey. By the time she turned me into a statue, she’d become cruel. Had she not, I would have exposed her. She’d caught a gorgon male. I think she wanted better dust—dust that could guarantee someone would become a gorgon. The dust she had hadn’t worked on her other chief.”

My husband sighed. “You mean Morrison.”

“Yeah, him. Watch yourself around that man, Samuel. He’s bad news, and he was using Audrey as much as she was using him. Of that I’m sure. I don’t know why he wanted to rule a gorgon hive with Audrey, but they were up to something—and they were willing to kill to accomplish their goals.”

We’d already learned that lesson, and I worried what else we would learn from those who’d been petrified and left to become mysteries.

Fourteen

You want to eat sea bugs?

I learned two important things about Kendra Thames: she trusted nobody, and she hated Audrey with a passion hotter than my flames.

Upon realizing she attempted to keep everyone at a distance, things went smoother. I could only guess the events leading up to her petrification had left scars, and I could only hope the CDC would help her adapt to having her life put on hold.

Of the petrified victims, one needed to go to the hospital for additional treatments. I added the woman’s failing health to the list of Morrison’s crimes. If I got my hands or hoofs on him, he’d come to a quick end—far quicker of an end than he deserved.

My temper frayed, and to keep myself from doing something I would regret, I took my turn keeping our pets company in the rental until the CDC gave us permission to leave. Sunny and Blizzard opted to nap together in the back while Avalanche slept on my foot. With the pets napping off their hard day, I worked at trying to find more information on the rabies outbreak in the CDC’s records.

My effort proved futile, and I figured our next stop would be the address in Maine that Audrey had visited several times before we headed to Long Lake. After having found so much tragedy at the bed and breakfast, I feared what we would learn at our next destination.

I appreciated Kendra’s willingness to confirm some of our suspicions, but those confirmations would dump us straight into a mess. With a police chief being confirmed to have been involved in mass kidnapping and murder, the entire police station in the Hamptons would come under fire.

Nobody believed for an instant that Morrison had participated in such extensive schemes without at least some of his cops being aware of it—like that stupid cadet I’d squished like a grape. Worse, I wondered if that idiot had been planted to hinder the 120 Wall Street efforts. Janet had done a good job of reining him in.

I suspected her ability to rein in Morrison’s puppet had landed her in trouble as much as her relationship with me.

Rather than Morrison taking over Manhattan, I worried we’d be sent to his former turf to clean his operations up. But with my involvement with Morrison, would we be given jurisdiction? I didn’t even know how to find out. A headache brewed behind my forehead, and I contemplated texting my husband and whining until we were set free.

I wanted to get to our hotel and call my mother. What was she like? Had she enjoyed her brief time with my father? How did they schedule their time? Did they keep a calendar of when the sun rose and set and when the moon happened to be around?

Could they possess people outside of their general times of influence?