Force of Attraction (34 page)

Cole sighed. “That worry is long gone.”

She was still smarting from the public humiliation. She was staying with Scott in D.C. to hide from the media. She avoided all calls except from her sister, Becca, and her parents. Her boss, too, thought it was a good idea for her to lie low. “Until the shit blows through.” How could she have thought U/C would be easy?

“How are we going to explain our being here?”

Scott grinned at her. “I don't have to explain myself. You're the one with a cred problem. You and Hugo can sit this one out.”

“I don't think so.” Cole shifted in the seat to look back at the covered kennels where Hugo and Izzy rode in back of the truck. “If we're right, you'll need backup. That's me.”

He grinned at her. “I like it when you go all badass.”

She shrugged and checked her GPS. “So far, all we've got is speculation.”

“Don't underestimate the intuition of a shrewd and seasoned DEA officer.” He winked at her, enjoying the edge his adrenaline surge in anticipation of a confrontation was giving him. “Jennifer and Lorene make ideal puppy smugglers when you think about it. They have mobility. They attend Agility competitions in different locations each week, which gives them access to lots of breeders and other dog people. No one is surprised to see them with dogs, or not. Jennifer as good as admitted not all their marijuana buys are legal. Maybe they set out to buy a little illegal weed and got sucked into something bigger.”

Cole frowned. “Remember what Lattimore told us about hoofbeats and horses.”

Scott laughed. “Yeah. But you said from the first that the task force's focus was wrong. Lorene and Jennifer just may be the zebras no one is looking for.”

“Turn here.” Cole leaned forward, straining to see through the rain. “The RV section of the park should be up ahead.”

Scott drove past the turnoff to the RV park and then made a Y-turn to bring them back on the opposite side of the road, where he pulled over. “Izzy and I'll walk from here. It'll give us time to snoop around and pick up a scent. If she signs on something I'll move in.”

“How can you be so certain the women will just let you into their RV?”

“Animal magnetism.” Scott's dimples were on full display. “Jennifer's got a thing for good-looking men. She'll let me in.”

“Ego, maybe?”

He leaned and kissed her hard. “Lucky for me, you fill up my whole worldview.”

“And I'm just supposed to sit here while it all goes down?”

Scott thought of about a dozen flippant things he might say in answer to her hurt. But something stopped him. It was the thing that would have stopped him from trying to pretend a shitstorm was an April shower to a male partner. Sometimes it was enough to hunker down and ride it out together. They had done that. Now it was time to act. “I'll call you. Be prepared to move quickly, and bring Batman.”

To his surprise, Cole reached out, latched a hand behind his head and hauled him in for a kiss. It wasn't just a good-luck smooch, but a long, slow, thorough kiss that left them both breathing a little hard. When he looked at her, her gaze was full of him.

“Be careful.” Her voice was so low he felt more than heard the words because she spoke them against his mouth.

He brushed away a strand of hair clinging to her cheek with a finger then pulled the hoodie of her Montgomery County Police slicker up over her hair. “Let's go kick some outlaw grandma butt.”

*   *   *

Jennifer opened the Winnebago door and blinked. “Why, what are you doing here, gorgeous?”

“You invited me to drop by sometime.” Scott tugged on his partner's leash and Izzy came forward, her fur slick with rain. “I brought Izzy for a visit.”

“Well, isn't that nice.” Jennifer's expression wasn't as welcoming as her tone. “I'm sorry, gorgeous, but now's not such a good time.”

Scott put his foot on the step well. “We won't take long. Is Mimi with you?”

“Uh, not this trip.”

As Scott stepped up onto the RV Jennifer automatically backed up but balked. “Say, you're pretty wet.”

“Sorry about that.” Scott was inside with Izzy, who was already straining on the leash. They had done a preliminary walk around the vehicle and Izzy was signing. But he had to know for certain. And then wanted to see their faces when he confronted them.

The sound of yelping puppies was coming from a closed-off area in the back. He ignored that for the moment, pretending to look around. “Wow. This is really nice. I've never been inside one of these with the slide-out space. Must have cost a fortune.”

“We're leasing.” Lorene sat in the lounge chair behind the vehicle's passenger seat.

Scott nodded. “Still, for two ladies on retirement, must set you back a bit.”

“We manage.” Jennifer planted herself in front of him. “Look here. We're busy.”

“So I hear.” Scott nodded toward the rear of the RV. “You whelp a litter since last week?”

“We're just making a delivery for friends.” Jennifer's eyes cut to Lorene. “Well, it's the truth, Lorene. No need to lie about that.”

Scott reached down and unleashed Izzy.

Izzy took off like a rain-slicked bullet. When she reached the closed door, she sniffed and then barked brightly and bounced repeatedly against the frame. Finally, she dropped into a full prone position. Drugs, definitely drugs behind the door.

Scott turned to the women and pushed the edge of his open parka back so that they could see his holstered weapon. Then flashed his ID. “I'm DEA agent Scott Lucca. I need both of you to move over to the sofa and sit side by side while you answer a few questions.”

Jennifer's lips twisted. “We heard about your girlfriend being a cop. You, too, hot buns?”

“All day long. Now sit down.” When he was satisfied he had the situation under control, Scott punched a number into his cell to alert Cole. “They're dirty. Bring it.”

*   *   *

“We wouldn't do anything to hurt dogs. We love them.”

“You have a strange way of showing it.” Cole and Hugo had joined Scott. She stood with her back to the door while Hugo watched the women from his heel position.

Scott came back down the hallway, carrying a frisky bundle that was a three-month-old boxer puppy. His face was grim as he flipped the little fellow over. There was a long sutured incision there.

Jennifer stood up. “That's just a neutering incision. They all have them.”

Scott looked at Jennifer. “Why would you think I might think it was anything else?”

“Well, I—” Jennifer clamped her mouth shut but anger narrowed her eyes.

“Sit down, Mrs. Lutz.” Cole pointed with her finger.

The woman subsided onto the sofa and crossed her arms. “I don't know what you think you're doing here but you have no right to break into our home like this. You're already in trouble, young woman.”

“Not as much as you two are about to be.” Scott gently squeezed the boxer's tummy. “Feels like something's in there. Want to tell me what it is, Lorene?”

Lorene didn't make eye contact. “I don't know what you're talking about. He's a healthy fat puppy.”

“We think it's something else. We think it's drugs. In fact, we know you've got an RV full of puppy drug mules.”

“That's a goddamn lie!” Jennifer jumped to her feet with surprising agility for a woman her age. “Just because we're trying to save some puppies from being destroyed is no reason to call us dirty names. We sure as hell aren't drug smugglers.”

“Izzy says different. She's a trained drug detection dog. She picked out your trailer on scent alone.”

Jennifer eyed the chocolate Lab. “She could be wrong. You're all wrong. Now I want you out of my RV this minute. Lorene, call the real police.”

“If you do that, you're going to lose an opportunity the local police won't have to offer you.” Cole moved from her position by the door and pulled a manila envelope from under her parka. Scott recognized it was the one he'd given her weeks ago. Out came the photos of the dead and mutilated pups.

Cole handed a few of them to each woman. “This is what is happening to those puppies. We're willing to bet there's up to a pound of heroin stuffed into each of the dogs you have back there. No one will be looking out for their welfare, believe me.”

The women gazed in horror at the photos and then at each other.

“I don't know anything about this.” Jennifer dumped them on the floor. “That's disgusting.”

“Utterly,”
Lorene agreed with a shudder as she tossed them aside. “We would never have anything to do with something like that.”

“Want to explain where the puppies came from?”

“We picked them up in Philly.” Lorene sniffed and touched her friend's arm. “Go on, Jennifer. Tell 'em the rest.”

Jennifer shifted her weight, as if trying to get comfortable, and then mopped her face with a tissue she pulled from her pocket. “We don't know anything about that ugly business.” She toed a photo with her jelly sandal. “We're part of a secret animal rescue group. They rescue purebred pups that aren't up to national breed confirmation standards from puppy mills and we get them to safe shelters.”

“Do you know what happens to pups that aren't up to standard?” Lorene's eyes again brimmed with tears. “They're drowned, or their necks are broken. Thousands a year. If that's not animal abuse, I don't know.”

Cole pointed to the floor. “That is.”

Scott followed up with another question. “Who runs this organization?”

“We don't know the leader, if that's what you mean.” Jennifer's gaze slipped sideways toward Lorene, who shook her head. “They said it was safer that way.”

Scott didn't doubt that. If caught, low-level runners like these women couldn't point back to the smugglers who hired them. “Who recruited you?”

“We were at an event in Fort Lauderdale back in the winter. A real friendly woman was admiring our daughter's dogs and said it was a shame all dogs couldn't be taken care of. We told her we would have a hundred dogs if we had the money and place to keep them. That's when she told us about this organization that was saving puppies from destruction and asked if we would like to help.”

Jennifer nodded. “The woman said they stole pups marked for destruction and were looking for people willing to drive the pups to other states where they would be funneled into no-kill shelters.”

“So you two said ‘sign me up'?”

Jennifer's lips knotted at Scott's tone. “You don't have to sound so high-and-mighty. We thought we were doing a charitable thing.”

“For which you were paid how much?” The two women turned in surprise at the sound of Cole's voice. “Besides the Winnebago, what have they paid you?”

Jennifer's gaze fell. “Ten thousand each, per round trip.”

Scott and Cole exchanged glances. “Start at the beginning.”

Their story tumbled out in fits and starts as each woman spoke over the other until the gist of the setup was told.

Jennifer, who had been sniffing on and off, wiped her nose. “We weren't doing anything wrong. Leastways, we didn't know it. Are we under arrest?”

“Not yet.” Cole reached for her phone. “The Frederick County police will have that honor.”

“There is another way.” All three women turned to look at Scott, who waited a beat before he said, “The DEA is trying to shut down this drug-puppy smuggling operation. If you surrender to federal authorities and agree to help us, you might be eligible for federal protection.”

“How can we do that? We don't know anything.”

“You know more than you think.” Scott sketched a smile. “Where are you delivering this shipment of puppies?”

Jennifer glanced at Lorene, who nodded. “If we tell you, can you see to it we don't go to jail?”

Lorene nodded. “We've been watching that
Orange Is the New Black
show and we're too old for that bisexual stuff.”

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

They entered slowly into the gloom of an abandoned building in east Baltimore smelling of summer-baked trash, animal feces, and human piss.

Once past the entry the dark became so consuming that the muzzle of a pistol held two inches from a nose would not have penetrated one's senses. That awareness put all other senses into overdrive. Hairs stood at full attention along arms and the backs of necks. The rancid smothering smell caused the men to suck in careful breaths, as if they might choke on that tarlike blackness if they breathed too deeply.

Yet there were people here. The sound of a boom box blasting annihilation made the building quiver. And the yelping of puppies keened out over the percussive bass. Somewhere, up the next turn in the stairwell, people were living.

Scott felt a hand on his shoulder and flipped his night goggles down. The darkness suddenly jumped into eerie green-vapor focus. They were moving into a hallway with closed doors on either side. There were stumbling blocks ahead. An empty crate on the right. A tin can farther down on the left. A careless kick would send it careening noisily down the corridor, alerting all creatures of the night, harmless and lethal, that their lair was about to be disturbed.

The adrenaline push felt familiar, almost welcome. It had been a while. They had come to bust a dealer's hide.

Scott watched with a twinge of envy as the Baltimore DEA SWAT team fanned out down the hall. Once he would have been in there in the lead. Now he was second tier. But that was fine by him.

He reached down in the dark and petted his partner, Izzy. She shivered with excitement to match that of the men in the hallway. Yet she would not bark until and if given the signal.

There was light coming from under a door on the far end. Their target was here. The taste of success was tempered by the metallic burn of anxiety. No way of telling what lay beyond the door.