Wolf Untamed

by Paige Tyler

  Mackenzie must have been waiting for them because she met them the moment they stepped off the elevator. Tall and slender with long, dark hair and blue eyes, she tried to look casual as she filled them in on where Hobbs’s desk was.

  “Hobbs was still at his desk a few minutes ago, and I haven’t seen him leave, so let’s hope he didn’t take off.”

  Diego thanked her as she headed off in the opposite direction, reading something on the cell phone in her hand.

  “You and Bree spent the night together?” Hale asked, picking up their earlier conversation where they’d left off.

  Diego sighed in frustration. Out of everything he’d told his pack mates, the part about spending the night was the only thing Hale had picked up on?

  “Sounds like things are going well with the relationship,” Trey remarked, sounding like a talk-show host halfway between Doctor Phil and Jerry Springer. “Dinner and a movie, then a hit-it-and-quit-it booty call, now a stay-over.”

  Diego didn’t know if he’d describe the first time he and Bree made love as a hit-it-and-quit-it booty call, but he didn’t correct his pack mate because he was too busy picking up Hobbs’s scent to see if the man was still there. He was.

  A few people looked their way curiously as he and his teammates headed around the outside of the cubicles, but no one paid much attention since they seemed to know where they were going.

  “Things are going well,” Diego admitted, glancing at Trey. “And for the record, don’t use slang like that in front of me. You sound like my stepfather trying to be cool. It’s creepy.”

  Hale chuckled before peeling off and heading down a center aisle through the maze so he could cut off Hobbs if the reporter tried to make a run for it. Hale’s nose might be crap, but he made up for it with his other senses.

  Trey ignored the jab about sounding like an uncool old man. “Since things are going well, that means you talked to her about The One, right?”

  Damn, the guy was like a broken record.

  “No, we haven’t talked about her being The One for me,” Diego ground out, his nose telling him to take a left and almost running Trey into a cubicle wall.

  “Why not?” Trey asked, waving an apology to the cubicle gopher who popped his head up at the noise. “Is it because you don’t think she’s The One for you?”

  Diego shook his head. “She’s definitely The One, I’m sure of it.”

  Trey frowned, eyeing Diego like he’d grown two heads and a beak. “You’re not making any sense. If she’s The One, talking about it should be easy.”

  “Unfortunately, it isn’t easy because Bree has this thing about free will.”

  Trey looked more baffled. “Okay, now I’m really confused.”

  “Bree married Dave right out of high school,” Diego explained. “Or more precisely, she let him and her family talk her into marrying him. Then she let him talk her into moving away from family and having a kid before she was ready. Other than Brandon—which is the one thing she wouldn’t go back and change—she has a whole laundry list of regrets and has vowed to be the one in charge of her life from this point forward.”

  “Okay. I suppose I understand,” Trey said, though he looked like he was still perplexed as hell. “Actually, no I don’t. What the hell do her previous bad choices about Dave have to do with her being The One for you?”

  Diego let out a heavy sigh as two women poked their heads around the edges of their cubicles with blatant curiosity. It was difficult to keep from growling at them.

  “How do you think Bree will see the soul-mate connection?” he asked Trey, moving farther along the line of cubicles and away from the nosy people. “Will she think it’s this wonderful confirmation of what she already knows or as the hand of fate stepping in and making decisions for her?”

  A light came on in Trey’s eyes as understanding filled them. “Well, crap. That complicates things more than a little. What the hell are you going to do?”

  Diego shrugged, sniffing the air and determining Hobbs’s scent was still stuck in the same place. “I’m going to keep seeing her as if we’re two normal people with no special bond to worry about or discuss. I fall in love with her and she falls in love with me. No big deal.”

  Trey seemed to think about that for a second or two before shaking his head. “I got to tell you, that has to be the dumbest plan I’ve ever heard of. I mean, that’s in the category of jumping off a building with an umbrella because you think Mary Poppins can really fly.”

  Diego ignored him and homed in on the scent of the man they’d come here to find.

  “Seriously, Big D,” Trey continued, trailing behind him. “You have to know this is going to blow up in your face. Someone in the Pack is going to end up mentioning the legend. Hell, all anyone ever seems to talk about is catching bad guys and finding The One. Bree is going to be pissed when she finds out you’ve been keeping this from her. Worse, she might end up thinking you don’t believe she’s your soul mate. That would be bad. As in bad…bad…bad.”

  Diego didn’t want to entertain the possibility of that happening. Neither did his inner wolf, who was nervously pacing back and forth. “Don’t you think I know that? But until I come up with something better, that’s the plan I’m going with.”

  They were close enough to Hobbs’s scent by then to hear him slip out of his cubbyhole. The fact that his head was barely visible over the walls could only mean he was moving around in a crouch. Obviously, he’d heard them coming.

  Trey peeled off to the left while Diego continued to follow Hobbs’s track as he scurried away. It was almost fun following him, even if the chase didn’t last very long.

  The thud as Hobbs bounced off one of his pack mates up ahead was loud enough for Diego to hear, and he rounded a few more cubicles to find Hobbs getting to his feet while he glared up at Hale and Trey.

  “Hobbs.” Diego smiled. “Just the man we’ve been looking for. You have a minute to talk?”

  The reporter turned that glower on him. “Afraid not. I have a story I need to track down.”

  “Funny how that works,” Trey murmured. “We have a story to track down, too. About a Dallas Daily Star reporter actively involved in the delirium attacks and covering up information so he can get a good story.”

  That must have gotten Hobbs’s attention because his entire demeanor changed. He drew himself up, running his hand nervously down the front of his loosened tie and looking around. “Not here. Let’s go to the conference room.”

  Hobbs led the way to a corner room, walking in front of them like he was heading to his own execution. Once inside the room, he immediately shut the door and closed all the blinds, then gestured to the rectangular conference table.

  “How’d you figure it out?” Hobbs asked as he sat down at the head of the table. “And why are you guys here and not cops from the delirium task force?”

  “We went down to Coffield and talked to a few people,” Diego said, willing to answer the first question. “They remember you going down there because you were very interested in Dave Cowell. You spent hours watching security footage and left with some of that footage in your possession. Footage you got from an IT support-staff guy without the warden’s knowledge.”

  Hobbs didn’t say anything, his heart beating fast as he tried to figure out how badly he was screwed. Diego didn’t let him wait long to find out.

  “We’re ready to assume you’re sitting on certain facts hoping to break a big story. The alternative is that you’re working with Cowell, helping him rob banks and jewelry stores and pocketing your share.” Diego shrugged. “You get to decide which way this goes from here.”

  Ernest looked around the table, regarding each of them. “I’m not involved in any of this, but I’m willing to tell you everything I know. In return, I want exclusive rights to this story when everything hits the fan.”

  Diego snorted.
Hobbs was definitely living down to the very low opinion he had of the man. The guy would sell his mother for a story. “If we decide you did nothing worthy of putting you in jail—and we get first edit on your article—we don’t have a problem with letting you write the story. But if you lie to us—”

  “Deal,” Hobbs said, obviously not needing to hear the rest of the threat. “But I have to tell you up front, there’s a part of what I’m about to tell you that might be difficult to believe. It’s a little out there.”

  “Try us,” Hale said. “We do okay with weird.”

  Hobbs sat there a moment looking down at the table, like he was trying to collect his thoughts. “I’d heard around the courthouse that a guy convicted of manslaughter with a shitty prison record had walked out of Coffield a free man halfway into his sentence. My gut told me there was a story there, so I did some digging.”

  “The security video footage was from the laundry area where Dave’s cellmate died,” Diego interrupted, not interested in the long version of this story. “What was on it?”

  “I saw Cowell lead Bremen into an alcove, like he knew the camera wouldn’t be able to get a clear shot of him, then there was a struggle.”

  “If you couldn’t see them, how did you know there was a struggle?” Trey prompted from beside Diego.

  “I could just make out Bremen’s feet peeking out from the alcove. They were bouncing and jerking like someone was beating on him. Thirty seconds later, Cowell walked out. He had blood running down his chin, and he was chewing on something.”

  Diego exchanged looks with his pack mates to see they seemed as confused as he was. He turned back to Hobbs. “What do you think Dave was eating?”

  Hobbs made a face. “Isn’t it obvious? Cowell was eating a chunk of his cellmate.”

  Diego did a double take. From the corner of his eye, he caught Trey and Hale looking at each other in surprise. One of the correctional officers from Coffield had mentioned something about bite marks on Bremen’s body, but seriously?

  “You’re telling us Dave Cowell ate human flesh so he could corner the market on the delirium drug Bremen created?” Diego asked.

  Crap, he couldn’t believe he was saying this out loud.

  Hobbs stared at him, like Diego had caught him off guard. After a moment, he shrugged. “I told you it was bizarre. It gets even stranger.”

  “We’re listening,” Hale said.

  Hobbs sat back in his seat. “Delirium isn’t a drug at all.”

  Diego’s eyes narrowed. Another of his assumptions kicked to the curb. “What is it then?”

  “I don’t know what it is,” Hobbs said. “But after seeing the video, I started following Cowell. I saw him walk up to a guy standing beside his BMW, talking on his phone. Cowell bit his own finger hard enough to make it bleed, then wiped the blood on the guy’s arm. One second, the guy is on his phone, the next he’s handing Cowell his wallet, Rolex, and car keys. He freaking stood there and watched Cowell drive away in his BMW.”

  Hale frowned. “Did he call the cops?”

  Hobbs shook his head. “Nope. He stood there on the curb for an hour, staring into space.”

  Diego would have called BS if his inner werewolf wasn’t so sure Hobbs was telling the absolute truth. Now that he thought about it, this explained why those college kids and the construction workers had acted differently after encountering Dave. It seemed too impossible to be real, but it made some kind of weird sense.

  “I watched Cowell do the same thing multiple times over the next few days. He’d wipe his blood on them, then take control of them.” Hobbs shook his head, as if he couldn’t believe it himself. “But then I was stupid enough to get too close so I could hear what he was saying to one of his victims and he caught me. I thought he was going to murder me on the spot, but instead he said he’d let me go if I came up with a story for the paper so people wouldn’t figure out the truth. That’s when I came up with the delirium drug thing.”

  “All he wanted out of you was a cover story?” Trey asked. “Why didn’t you go to the cops the moment he let you go?”

  “Because he said he’d make me throw myself off the top of the Bank of America Plaza and I believed him,” Hobbs said. “Besides, the story is giving me the best exposure I’ve had in my whole career. He lets me know when some of the robberies are going down so I can make sure to be on the scene before anyone else. Why would I kill the Golden Goose?”

  Diego would have pointed out that people dying was a pretty good reason to tell the cops, but he knew that fact would probably mean little to a man like Hobbs.

  “I’m still getting an exclusive out of this when you guys catch Cowell, right?” Hobbs asked, looking at each of them in turn.

  Diego resisted the urge to bare his fangs in a snarl. “We already said you would.”

  That must have been good enough for Hobbs because he leaned forward, forearms on the table, face eager. “I’m not sure of the details, but Cowell mentioned a huge job he was doing that would set him up for life. We’re talking millions.”

  “Did he say what it was?” Trey asked.

  “No. And I had to be careful about pressing him too much. The guy’s kind of a loose cannon.”

  Tell me about it, Diego thought.

  He was still wondering where the hell a person could steal millions of dollars when Hobbs looked at him, a serious expression on his face.

  “There’s one other thing you should probably know. Cowell is obsessed with getting his wife and kid back. It’s all the whack job ever talks about. Whenever he gets these millions he says he’s going to steal, he plans to leave the country with both of them.”

  * * *

  Bree glanced over her shoulder one more time before carefully pulling the crime-scene tape off the door, then turning her attention to the expensive-looking lock by slipping in a tension wrench and a medium-sized hook pick. As she felt her way through the tumblers, she wondered what Diego would think of this particular skill set she possessed. Something told her he wouldn’t approve, which was why it wasn’t a talent she’d be sharing with him anytime soon.

  It wasn’t like Bree was a master lock-picker, but she wasn’t shabby at it, either, and a few seconds later, the door of Ken Reed’s apartment swung open. She quickly ducked inside so she wasn’t exposed in the hallway any longer than necessary, then repositioned the crime tape and quietly closed the door.

  The first thought that entered her mind when she turned around was that investment advising obviously paid very well. The next was that Ken would probably have gladly given all this up to have his life back.

  Leather, granite, and stainless steel were prevalent throughout the spacious and modern penthouse apartment. But it was also somewhat cold and impersonal, the walls decorated with pieces of art that had almost certainly been picked out by someone paid to accomplish the task. There wasn’t a single family photo that Bree could see from where she stood, and that seemed kind of sad.

  Shaking off those depressing thoughts, she ignored the huge living room and chef’s kitchen, making her way toward the back of the apartment where she assumed Ken’s bedroom was.

  The master bedroom was the first door on the left. It was obvious from the moment she stepped inside that the police had spent a good amount of time searching this room. The California king mattress was slightly askew, the silky comforter bunched up, drawers of the nightstands and dressers left ajar, and clothes hanging haphazardly in the walk-in closet.

  Bree walked over to the closest nightstand and opened the drawer. She expected to find the usual stuff—mainly porn, condoms, and lube—but instead it was filled with notebooks.

  O-kay.

  She skimmed through each notebook and saw that they were filled with potential investment opportunities Ken had interest in. Apparently, he liked to write everything down before going to sleep. Either that or he woke up in the
middle of the night from his dreams of making millions and couldn’t go back to sleep until he wrote them down.

  Despite the fact that she was essentially trespassing on a crime scene, Bree found her mind wandering until it ended up right back in her own bedroom that morning. Waking up beside Diego had been incredible.

  When she was with Diego and wrapped in his arms, it was like everything was perfect in her world. Which was obviously insane because right now, her world was actually a complicated mess complete with unsolved cases, a psychotic ex-husband, and a teenage son who’d recently turned into a werewolf and was hanging out with gangbangers. Still, with Diego at her side, it seemed like none of those obstacles were too much to overcome. They had instinctively presented a united front when grounding Brandon the other night, becoming a team where each of them made the other stronger. She wasn’t sure when or how it had happened, but she felt the connection between them, and she could work with that.

  Brandon and Beth had both been having breakfast by the time she and Diego finally made it out to the kitchen. She’d expected it to be a little awkward since it was the first time Diego had slept over, but her sister had acted like it wasn’t a big deal at all, and Brandon had been thrilled to see him there.

  It was all enough to make Bree start thinking about how great it would be when Diego was in her bed every night and eating every breakfast as a family became a permanent thing. And yeah, thinking about them all as a family made her heart do a cartwheel.

  Still smiling, she searched the other nightstand, dressers, and walk-in closet, but didn’t find anything interesting. She wondered if the police would have noticed any evidence concerning Ken’s involvement in the burglaries even if they’d stumbled across it. She doubted it. The cops had almost certainly been there looking for evidence connecting Ken to the delirium drug. Or at least something that would explain why he’d targeted those officers in the diner, then shot himself. Maybe a suicide note. If they saw something about rich people and high-end valuables, they most likely wouldn’t pay attention to it.