Wolf Untamed (SWAT - Special Wolf Alpha Team #11) - Paige Tyler Page 0,98

would need to have certain passwords and combinations to get through some of the systems.

Thank God Ken had an obsessive habit of writing everything down. This was as good as a confession. Not that the man would ever end up in jail, but she had no doubt she’d find details on where he’d hidden the fortunes he’d stolen. Because a man like Ken would definitely write it down.

But the words on the next page of the notebook stopped her celebration. The page was almost entirely blank, except for one urgently written sentence he’d underlined.

Someone is setting me up!!!

She stared at the words for a long time before slowly flipping to the next page. It was a list of people who had complete and open access to Ken’s client list, including the private information that would have been protected. The list was relatively short—the three partners within the firm, two people from the firm’s IT department, one from the legal branch that handled documentation to the government, three people from the admin section, and all alone at the bottom of the page, another name Bree was intimately familiar with.

Dave Cowell.

Circled and underlined.

She flipped back to the beginning of the notebook, reading it again with fresh eyes. It hadn’t been apparent the first time through, but now she saw it. It was all in the word choice, the way events had been laid out in factual past tense. Ken hadn’t been writing down the details of the clients he planned to steal from. It was the details of his clients who’d already been robbed. Ken wasn’t confessing. He was investigating. Just like she was. Except he was investigating because he was sure someone was trying to make it look like he’d done the crimes.

And Bree’s instincts were telling her his investigation had ended with him walking into a diner during rush hour and ultimately shooting himself in the head.

She frowned as she read the part where Ken came to the painful conclusion that Dave was behind the thefts. When the firm hired Dave, Ken had shown him his list of clients so Dave could quickly get up to speed on how things worked at Garrett, Wallace, and Banks. Ken had tried to help him, and Dave had used him. Her ex-husband had stolen millions in jewelry, art, and collectibles, knowing the cops would track it back to the person managing those clients.

She flipped the pages faster and faster as Ken outlined how he’d started following Dave every time he’d left the office. Ken listed every place Dave went, including dates and times, with comments on who he talked to and what happened. Ken wrote that he assumed one of these outings would lead him to wherever Dave was hiding the stolen goods, or maybe the buyer he was planning to sell the stuff to. Instead, Ken noted a bizarre meeting with a man who willingly gave Dave his car and another in an alley where a woman gave Dave a backpack full of jewelry. Ken was sure they were the items stolen from Garth and Vera Williamson.

But it was Ken’s description of the nights Dave spent sitting in his car outside her apartment building that made her cringe. Dave had been stalking her for weeks. Thank God she’d gotten the restraining-order paperwork done before coming here.

With a shudder, she read through several more pages of agonizing details relating to what Dave ate for lunch and who he slept with before finding a whole page dedicated to a meeting Ken was sure would be with either a fence or an accomplice. But instead of sitting down to talk with someone who fit the criminal stereotype, Dave had met with someone with a very familiar face—Ernest Hobbs.

Sure she’d read wrong, Bree backed up and started again, only to figure out she’d been right the first time. Dave had met with the reporter from the Dallas Daily Star to talk about stealing stuff. This wasn’t a guess on Ken’s part, either. He’d actually been brave enough to move closer and overheard Hobbs giving advice about which bank Dave should hit next.

Bree’s head was spinning by the time she read the last page of notes, as Ken described following the reporter across town to a self-storage unit near the farmers market before coming home to finish writing up all his notes about what he’d seen. The man’s last line in the book said he’d planned to take everything he’d collected to the police the next morning.