Page 58 of No Rules
After about a minute, a woman came on the line. “Barb Harwell, how may I help you?”
Ryan repeated his request. “Can you help me with that?”
She hesitated. “We’re not supposed to give those to outsiders. Not without a warrant.”
“I understand, but for obvious reasons, I can’t procure a warrant, seeing as I’m not law enforcement. What I am, Ms. Harwell, is passionate about the health and well-being of racehorses, and I’m determined to find out everything I can about the circumstances of the horrific death of Sam’s Promise. I’m sure you can find sympathy for that.”
“What happened to that poor horse was awful. Plain awful.” She lowered her voice. “But I’m still not supposed to send out these reports.”
“What if you sent them to Dr. Simmons, the equine pathologist who performed the necropsy? Would that be permissible?”
“I’m sure that’s justifiable. After all, she’s a professional and already involved in the case, right?”
“Exactly. Here’s her email address.” Ryan rattled off the email address from the business card Dr. Simmons had given him, then spent another minute to butter Barb up. Who knew if he’d need another favor from her?
When he hung up, he turned toward Alex with a triumphant smile. “Done. All I need to do now is call Dr. Simmons and ask her to forward them.”
“You know, it’s almost eerie the way you handled that woman.”
“Eerie? Why?”
“Because it’s like you turned into this other man. There’s the grumpy, gruff Ryan we know, and then this Barb person gets this whole new side of you that’s all charming and smiley. Like I said, creepy.”
Ryan snorted. “It’s called being able to play a part to get what you need.”
“Call it what you want. I still maintain it’s creepy as fuck.”
“Whatever. Let me call Dr. Simmons, and then we can dig into these reports.”
Within minutes, the reports appeared in their email, and Ryan brought them up on the big monitor. Alex got up to roll his chair over, but Ryan shook his head. “Too tight. Come sit on my lap.”
“We’re working.”
“And we can’t multitask? Come sit on my lap, baby boy.”
Alex swallowed. “You’ve never mixed work and play.”
“There’s a first for everything.”
How could he explain this strange need to be close to Alex? It wasn’t even about fucking him—though he’d never object to sinking his cock into that slick, tight ass—but he wanted to hold him, feel him, touch him. It had to be because he was his Dom now. Like a proof of ownership or something. Not that he owned him…but damn if that thought didn’t stir up something deep inside him.
He was spared from thinking about what that meant. Alex had decided to follow directions and parked himself on Ryan’s lap. Ah, so much better. He indulged himself for a moment in the sensation of that round butt snugly against his crotch. “Okay, let’s have a look.”
“It’s not a spreadsheet, so we can’t sort,” Alex said.
“That would be too easy. No, we’ll have to do this the old-fashioned way and read them.”
He opened the first report, skimmed through it to see if Marilyn’s name popped up, then moved on to the next one. On the fourth one, they had a hit.
“Louise Steed,” Ryan said.
Alex snorted. “Funny last name for someone in the horse business.”
Ryan chuckled. “I hadn’t even realized that, but you’re right. Anyway, Marilyn filed a report against her for inhumane conditions at her stalls.” His smile disappeared as he read through the report. “Maggots in the stalls and the feed, contaminated water… Jesus, was this woman trying to kill her horses?”
“I don’t understand how people can treat animals like that.”
Ryan’s heart grew strangely soft. “Wait till you discover how humans treat other humans.”