Page 97 of What a Wolf Wants

“No. We arrested Davis and the agents who had been in collusion. They were lucky Kroner hadn’t turned on them, but truthfully, Kroner probably hoped we would catch the others so he would have a better chance to get away.”

“Did Kroner get away?”

Ethan hated to have to tell him he had. “He did, but we’ve got a couple of guards on your room.”

“He hates you with a passion. He wants you dead.”

“That’s why he sent Agent Cohen and others to take me out at the home I had been staying at?” Ethan said.

“Yeah.”

“But not you. And Cohen had no problem taking on the job.” Ethan just couldn’t believe a fellow DEA agent wouldn’t have any trouble killing him.

“He volunteered for the job. Maybe he planned to save you. I don’t know. Or maybe he thought the rest of us being with Kroner and Oakley was riskier, and he took the easy way out. Even Davis, Agent Ryerson, and I wanted on that detail.”

“To kill me.”

Baker sighed. “I hadn’t planned to kill anyone. Not you or the woman. I’m not a gun for hire. I just knew the lot of us would be captured and go to prison. I didn’t expect Kroner to shoot me and leave me for dead, or that my good friend Davis wouldn’t try to come to my aid. I have to thank you for that. If you hadn’t sent me to the hospital, I would have died.”

The doctor came in and said that Baker had to rest from his injuries.

Ethan said to Baker, “We’ll talk more later.”

Baker nodded.

Then Ethan and the others left and headed over to the jailhouse before the other men were transferred to Portland. Ty met them there and showed Ethan and Renault into the interview room where they spoke with Agent Cohen first. Noah and Ty watched the interviews through the two-way mirror.

“So exactly why did you, and more of Kroner’s stoolies, trespass on my property, showing up at my house carrying guns and knives, sneaking around in the dark?” Technically, the house was in Charlene’s name, but she called it their house, and Ethan thought it would have more impact on Cohen if he was told it was Ethan’s, which meant Agent Cohen had been after Ethan, or both him and Charlene.

“I don’t have anything to say to you,” Cohen said.

“We’ll see you at trial.” Ethan just hoped they would get some of the others to testify against Cohen and anyone else who wouldn’t give them the truth. He guessed Cohen hadn’t volunteered to go to the house tosaveEthan and Charlene.

After that, Ethan interviewed Agent Ryerson. “Your buddy, Cohen, and you were working with Kroner and his men on drug deals. You were afraid you were going to get caught and so you wanted to go with Cohen to kill Charlene and me at our house.”

“Who told you that bullshit?” Ryerson asked.

“We’ve got witnesses’ statements. They outline your andCohen’s involvement and also Officers Davis and Baker’s part in all this.” They didn’t. Not yet. But they would get them by playing them against each other.

“Hell, I would never have gotten involved in any of this until Cohen convinced me it was easy money, and no one was suspicious of anything he was involved in. He said it was foolproof,” Ryerson said.

“Committing criminal acts is never foolproof.”

“Yeah, well, I know that now. I’ll…I’ll come forward. What about my family?”

Finally, he asks about his family? “They were taken to a safe house in case Kroner went after them.”

“Thank God.”

“No thanks to you,” Ethan said, angry with Ryerson for not even considering his family when he became involved in all this.

“I’ll testify against Kroner and Oakley.”

“What about Cohen?”

Ryerson ran his hand over his head. “Yeah, because he talked me into all this shit.”

And, Ethan thought, Ryerson would want to do it before Cohen threw him under the bus instead.