Wolf Untamed (SWAT - Special Wolf Alpha Team #11) - Paige Tyler Page 0,115

down the Federal Reserve was a little too much for him. He’s sleeping it off.”

Something flickered in Hobbs’s eyes, like he’d heard something he’d been waiting for. “Everything I told you at the newspaper this morning was true,” he said, relaxing a bit while still keeping the girl in front of him. “I merely left out the part about the bargain I made with him. Turns out Dave wasn’t very clever or much of a strategic thinker, and he knew it. In exchange for a little blood and some skin, I became his personal advisor, helping him with his scheme to get rich and reclaim his ex-wife. Almost sad how easy it was to manipulate the guy. He didn’t wonder why I was interested in those client files Reed let him borrow. He actually believed me when I said I was interested in getting into the stock market.”

Diego would be the first to admit he’d been a little distracted by the whole blood-and-skin thing, really hating the visual that put in his head, but he hadn’t missed the part about Ken’s client list. Hobbs played everybody. Especially Dave.

“You got Dave fixated on the big targets, the banks and jewelry stores, while you went behind his back and cherry-picked the good stuff from Ken’s client list, knowing it would all lead back to Dave in the end anyway,” Diego said. “That way the cops would spend months trying to figure out where Dave hid the stuff, not thinking to look anywhere else.”

Hobbs didn’t say anything, but the smirk that crossed his face told Diego everything he needed to know. He saw the man’s eyes dart toward the windows, likely watching the cop cars pull up outside.

“But for that part to work, you’d need Dave dead, right?” Diego continued, trying to draw Hobbs’s attention back to him. “Let me guess…the Federal Reserve job. That was your idea, wasn’t it? You pushed him toward a target so big—so impossible—it was bound to backfire and get him killed. You sent the tips to the cops, saying exactly when the job was going down to make sure DPD would be there to clean up this one last loose end.”

“Worked with Reed, didn’t it?” Hobbs said with a smile. “The only thing I didn’t plan for was you. Well, and getting trapped in here.”

“You have to know this is over, Hobbs. There’s no getting out of here unless you give up.”

Diego was afraid the guy would decide to go down in a blaze of glory instead of getting arrested. Which wouldn’t have been a big deal, if it wasn’t for the girl in his arms.

But suddenly Hobbs pushed the girl away and dropped the knife, turning toward the windows of the café instead of toward Diego and Trey.

“I give up. Take me in,” he said, putting his hands behind his back. “But you know that no jury in the world is ever going to believe I made Reed kill himself or that I had anything to do with those bank jobs. There’s no connection between me and any of the people Dave had do those jobs.”

Trey grabbed the girl and used a big towel to wipe Hobbs’s blood off her neck, then quickly wrapped the towel around the man’s bleeding hand while Diego cuffed him.

“But we still caught you with all the stuff from Reed’s client list,” Diego pointed out. “That should get you fifteen to twenty in Coffield. You know where that is, right? I know you’ve been there.”

Hobbs laughed as cops flooded into the place, Hale right up front. “Oh yeah, I know where it is. Though I can’t imagine I’ll be staying there too long once I speak to the right people.”

Diego glanced at the patrol cops who walked over to lead Hobbs outside.

“Consider him a biohazard,” Diego called out to them. “Spit guard over his head and zero contact with his blood.”

The officers nodded their head in understanding, but that didn’t wipe the smile off Hobbs’s face as they led him out.

Diego watched as the officers put Hobbs in the back of a patrol car. “We can’t let that guy into the normal system. He’ll be a ghost within hours.”

“Maybe this is something we need to call the feds about,” Trey said. “STAT seems to have the only people who can handle someone like Hobbs.”

Yeah, this was definitely right up their alley.

“You know, I think that’d be a good idea,” Diego said as they headed outside, pausing to take in the chaos