Ryan turned his head to meet her gaze, confusion streaking through his eyes. ‘She's going down the pathway to number 33.’
‘You're shitting me.’ Jenna shot upright and twisted around. Unable to believe it, she squinted out of the rear window.
Lena Alexander strode along the path with a determined, jaunty bounce to her stride and four prancing dogs by her side. Her long ponytail swung in a synchronised pendulum with the wagging dog tails.
As the woman approached the house, she dipped her hand into a small dog treat pouch strapped to her hip, took out a key and slotted it in the lock. Before she pushed open the door, she glanced both ways as though she was checking if anybody was watching and Jenna ducked down again.
The quick kick of adrenaline from the cold coffee had her heart thrumming in her chest as her mind whirled with unanswered questions.
Questions that she feared she wasn’t going to like the answers to.
As Lena slipped inside with the four dogs on their leads, Jenna, Mason and Ryan bobbed back up in their seats, with Mason rubbing at his abused knees.
‘What the fuck is she doing?’
Mouth open, Jenna stared at Mason while she shook her head. ‘She's supposed to be walking Domino local to our house, not all the way over here.’ As a thought occurred to her, she stabbed her finger in the direction of the garish blue door Lena had taken the dogs through. ‘We’re paying her for exclusive one-on-one walks, she’s not supposed to be walking him with other dogs. She must be making a bloody fortune out of all of us. Cheeky mare. And now she’s taken Fliss’s dog into a drug pusher’s house. What the hell is going on?’
Mason stared over his shoulder and then turned back to Jenna. ‘Maybe she made a mistake with her schedule, mucked up. Let’s give her the benefit of the doubt and see if she’s picking up another dog or dropping off one of the other three. It could just be coincidence.’
Doubt circled in her mind. ‘No, something isn’t right.’ She tapped her fingers against her lips as she studied the door.
Ryan shuffled forward and pushed his face between the two front seats. ‘What’s her connection with Lamonte Junior? Is she just his dog walker?’
‘I don’t know, but I suspect we’re about to find out. Who knew we’d be investigating the secret life of a dog walker?’
Jenna twisted the rear-view mirror and trained it so she could keep a visual on the house behind her.
Mason snorted as he turned around to face forward, crossed his arms over his wide chest and relaxed back in his seat. ‘Let me know when there’s movement, kiddo.’
Ryan huffed out a breath and flung himself back to look out of the rear window, making the car rock under his bouncing weight.
Jenna patted her pockets and fished out a tissue. She gave her nose a quick blow while she stared at the entrance to the house. Lena had been in there what felt to her an interminable length of time, but was possibly only a matter of minutes.
Mason turned his head to meet her gaze. ‘What do you want to do? Should we go in?’
At the white flash of movement in the mirror, Jenna changed its angle to watch as Chris Bennett pulled the dog handler car alongside the kerb twenty-five metres behind them.
‘No, no, I don’t think so.’ She flicked her gaze back up to the mirror. ‘I’m going to have a word with Chris, see what he has to say.’ She flashed Mason a smile. ‘Back in a moment.’
She slipped from the car and shot down the road to the white unmarked dog van. Her heart raced as she kept a close eye on the front door of the house, willing it not to open, because if Lena came out and spotted her, she was either going to look very stupid, or she was going to have to act fast.
Breathless, she wrenched open the passenger door of the dog van and jumped in.
A quiet whine came from the back of the van and she turned her head to give Blue a quick smile. Not that a smile from her would make any difference.
Chris’s weathered face screwed up, deepening the lines around his mouth as she bounced around to face forward again.
She slipped down in the seat. Covert operation it had now become, and excitement coursed through her veins. This was the very reason she’d become a police officer. The tension and exhilaration. The sheer exuberance of being on a job. Her second that day and she still hadn’t come down from the high of the first.
They were just rolling in.
‘So, what the hell has Domino got himself involved in?’
Jenna snorted out a laugh and wriggled in her seat so she could see the front door of number 33 past the solid form of Chris and through his side window. She shook her head. ‘I don't know what the hell is going on.’
Chris reached over and patted her hand, but the little chugs of laughter rattled his chest. ‘If you ask me, it looks like your dog might be pushing drugs.’
‘What do you mean pushing drugs?’ A zap of confusion hit her. In all the scenarios she’d run through her mind, a drug-pushing Domino had not filtered through.
Chris nodded at the front door. ‘Give her another five minutes. When she comes out, we’ll have a look what’s on those dogs’ collars.’
Ashamed at her naiveté, Jenna gawped at him. ‘They do something to the dog collars?’
‘Yeah. Little baggy rolls that most normal people attach to the dog’s collar, so they carry their poop pouches themselves. Well, this is a different kind of shit. Yeah?’ He nodded and a bitter grin flitted across his face. ‘Fill one of those with a little bit of white stuff. You’ve got yourself a transporter.’
Chris settled back in his seat, so Jenna had a better view of the closed front door. The little flutter of her heart turned to a hammer.
‘Okay, let me think. I wasn’t expecting this. We were supposed to go in, inspect the place, gather bloody evidence. Not run a whole operation.’
She glanced at him and despite his laughter, she knew she could rely on him without question. The same rank as her, he was by far the more experienced officer, but he’d let her take the lead in this case. With the knowledge he was behind her all the way, Jenna’s heart steadied. This was a job, like any other job. It may involve her sister’s dog, but that didn’t detract from the fact that something was going down, and she needed to decide based on the facts she currently had to hand.
She could pull back and hand it over to the Drug Squad. But by the time they were in place, Lena, the dogs and the evidence would most likely have disappeared.
‘Right. Assuming Lena is about to come out of that house with dog drug-couriers, I’m going to leave you and Mason to wait for her to clear the place and then conduct a search of the house for drugs.’
Serious now, Chris nodded his agreement.
‘Ryan and I will follow Lena. We’ll watch where she makes her drops.’
‘Well, don’t be too hasty. Let’s just check first if there’s something on their collars once they come out the door.’
As the time ticked away, Jenna deferred to Chris’s experience and wisdom. It didn’t make her any less fidgety, though. ‘What she's doing in there?’
Relaxed, Chris smiled at her. ‘She could be finding the drugs. Loading them on the collars.’
‘I think she’s cutting them herself.’ Jenna slapped the heel of her hand against her forehead. ‘How the hell did I let this get past me, Chris?’