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.
The SWAT leader signaled to his men to line up, chest to back. The point man with his weapon at the ready took up a position on one side while the second man moved to force the door. Night goggles no longer necessary, they flipped them up and entered.
It was pretty much chaos after that as the team rushed through, shouting orders and knocking over people and things until it was clear that they had total command of the interior.
A signal sent Scott and Izzy through the door. Izzy’s attention went in turn to each of the two men and one woman lying prone on the floor, hands cuffed behind their backs. Her job was to detect weapons, money, cell phones, and drugs.