Aztec Treasure Ch. 11-20

When I pinched her clit, she exploded. "FRANK!" I held on for dear life as she bucked and moved like a bronco trying to toss the rodeo cowboy off. I held on for eight seconds as I continued to lick her through the orgasm before she finally escaped. I kept her at the peak of pleasure until she finally collapsed back onto the bed for me. I caught much of her squirt in my mouth, but the rest coated my face and her thighs. "So good," she said softly.

I got up and walked to the bathroom, wiping off my face and getting a washcloth wet to clean her up before continuing. I walked out, my wolf and I proud of how we'd made our pregnant mate feel. "Come here," she told me.

It was then that life crashed in, as my phone started to ring in my suit pocket. "Chase," I said from the ringtone.

"Take it. I need to recover for a minute," Colletta told me as she took the cloth from my hand.

I grabbed the phone, intent on making this the quickest call in history. "Hey, Chase."

"Hi, Frank. We've got a problem. Call me back on our private line with the secure phone." He hung up, and I went to the suitcase to get the other phone. Chase had used some of the money from the Sons warehouse job to purchase sophisticated scrambled phone technology. They allowed us to communicate securely among the Packs that were family and allies. The phone only rang twice before Chase picked up. "Thanks, Frank."

"What's going on?" I was sitting close enough to Colletta for her to listen in to both ends of the conversation. Over the next few minutes, Chase let us know what Spider Monkey had found out; that two juvenile Jaguars were in the Denver area, and it was a race between the CIA and FBI to see who would get to her first. "If the lawyer even knows where they are," I said.

"I think he does, and hopefully, he cooperates to keep her safe. I was hoping you might be able to do something in Washington to help."

I closed my eyes and pinched my nose as I thought about what a clusterfuck this was. We'd done a lot of work to get werewolves and Packs the status they had now, but not everyone was happy with it. We'd been able to weather the protests, attacks, and bad press because we were mostly law-abiding and upstanding members of the community. The Jaguars that made up the Sons of Tezcatlipoca were the exact opposite. No one would feel bad for them, even if the two were minors. Add in the probable CIA involvement, and it was a bad situation. "I'm not sure how much I'm going to be able to do at this end, Chase. The Government isn't monolithic; hell, I'm not even sure the President isn't behind Julio's disappearance. I don't know who I can trust in this."

"Shit." Chase didn't say anything for a few seconds. "What about the Brotherhood? Can we get them to help?"

I just laughed. "The Brotherhood, specifically you, wiped out the Sons. I don't think Maria or her lawyer will want anything to do with them."

"They can keep an eye on her," Chase said.

"Where is she? Hell, if the lawyer tells Vic where she's hiding, then yeah. Send the Brotherhood in to snatch her up and hide her," I told him.

"Shit. Vic just linked me; the lawyer got the warning but won't even admit he knows where she is hiding. She could be anywhere, going anywhere."

"And if the Feds find her, the CIA can too." I only had one option I could think of, and Colletta agreed. "We need Frank and the Feds to back off and let the Packs take care of Maria and Maritza. It's the only way to keep them safe."

"I'll call Donovan and let him know."

"I don't think that will work; he may not listen to you, but he used to work for me. I'll have to fly to Denver and meet him."

Chase let out a sigh. "Yeah, that would be best. I'll keep working with Spider to figure out where she's hiding. If I get anything, I'll bring Panhead and the Denver chapter in."

"I'll call you when I get to Denver," I said. Hanging up, I tossed the phone back in my suitcase. "This timing fucking sucks."

"No time for fucking or sucking now," Colletta agreed. "Get dressed, and I'll get you a shuttle and tell our pilots to get the jet ready. I can handle the meetings here."

"I'll make it up to you." I kissed her goodbye and promised to be back tomorrow.

An hour later, I was wheels-up for Denver, arrival eight-thirty local time. One of the Brotherhood prospects picked me up from the airfield. "Did you hear the news?"

"Of what?"

"Shootout at the lawyer's office; Portman is dead. Two Federal agents shot, two bad guys dead, one on the loose."

Shit. I called Frank's cellphone, and it went to message. My next call was to the DEA Special-Agent-In-Charge of the Denver Field Division. "This is Frank Grimes with Homeland. What's going on with Donovan," I asked when SAIC Len Grunwald answered.

"Frank is all right; he'll be on administrative leave pending the internal investigation of the shootout. The two FBI agents he was working with are in the hospital, one in critical condition. I'm heading there right now, and Commander Lindstrom is flying up from Los Angeles. What the hell is this about, Frank? No one will tell me anything, and no one told me Donovan was coming into my jurisdiction."

"Not over the phone." He told me which hospital, and I had the Prospect take me there. He dropped me near the front, and I flashed my Homeland Security badge to the cop controlling access. I saw Len's bald head across the lobby and headed his way. "What's the status?"

He led me into a corner where we had a little privacy. "The FBI is talking to Frank now, and it's not my case. Maybe you can explain why Donovan ended up at a lawyer's office on a Friday night."

"The Task Force found out the daughter of the Denver Sons President was hiding in the area, and she was in danger. Portman helped her out, so Frank flew here to see if he could talk them into accepting Federal protection."

"He couldn't just call me?"

"He wanted to handle it quickly and quietly. Now, what do you know about what happened?"

Len updated me on the basics; three armed men came out the back, the firefight resulted in two dead perps and two wounded FBI agents plus a dead lawyer. "Word is that they tortured the lawyer before he died. The office got tossed. We don't know if they found whatever they were looking for."

"What do we know about the dead guys?"

"No identification and fingerprints didn't match anyone. I guess we'll see."

If they were CIA, they wouldn't come up in any Federal database. It sure sounded like them. "Who's in charge? I need to talk to Frank, like NOW."

It took a bit of time, but fifteen minutes later, I was sitting next to a sullen Frank in the surgical waiting room. He told me about Claire and his guilt about sending her around back alone. "I'm out, Frank," he told me. "I need to be here for her."

I'd have to wait for Commander Lindstrom to arrive to discuss the Task Force and their interest in the two jaguars.

Ch. 14

Maria (Meztli) Gonzales' POV
Arapaho National Forest, Highway 40 North

Martiza was NOT happy, and she let it be known.

We'd been driving for ninety minutes, following the winding road through the mountains. The weather was good, partly cloudy and near freezing, but that meant a lot of traffic heading to the ski areas and resorts in these hills. I wasn't willing to stop while it was still light out, and that was another hour of listening to Maritza scream.

I didn't make it that long. Finding a scenic overlook, I pulled in away from the other cars and put my car in park. "Oh, my poor girl," I said as I unbuckled her from the car seat. I grabbed the diaper bag, removing her dirty diaper and bagging it up. After cleaning her, I had a choice to make. I knew she was hungry, but I didn't have time to feed her without exposing myself more than I already had. I growled for her to shift, and she did. I picked her up, setting her on my lap. I gave her a sharp cough, a signal to stay put. "You need to stay out of sight," I told her as I covered her with a baby blanket. She settled down immediately, calmed by the close contact.

I had a cooler of food in the front seat, including some shredded beef and cheese curds. I pulled those bags out, along with a container of orange juice, and set them on the passenger seat. I pulled back out onto the road, my left hand stroking her neck to keep her calm. If you didn't get a close look, you'd think a cat or dog was on my lap, not a baby jaguar.

Once I was back in traffic, I started feeding us both pieces of food while drove north towards Walden. When 40 headed west at Granby, I turned onto 125. My goal was to get well north of Denver without using the interstate or getting closer to the Denver metro area, so I was making a big clockwise sweep on the back roads.

Maritza fell asleep before we reached the flatlands of the valley, and sunset wasn't much later. I kept going, wanting to make the mountains again before stopping. I had to go to the bathroom, and I knew Martiza needed to as well.

We turned onto 127 to take the mountain pass towards Laramie. Once I'd climbed out of the valley, I took a left onto the Pinkham Mountain Trailhead and looked for a place to stop before my bladder burst.

I found a turnoff and pulled out of sight of the road, waiting a few minutes with the car off before getting out. I took a good sniff, not sensing any humans, then I stripped down and grabbed Maritza before shifting. We both did our business in the woods, stretching and sniffing, then I changed back and pulled my clothes on while she sniffed the ground. I made her shift and got her back in her diaper and one-piece jumper while she drank some milk out of her sippy cup. I buckled her in and got back on the road.

You'd think it would be easy to travel when you had cash, but it wasn't. Hotels wanted a credit card, even if you paid in cash, and I didn't want to leave that trail. I couldn't use a national chain where my name would show up on a corporate reservation system, plus they didn't want to rent a room to a seventeen-year-old with a kid. A teenage girl with a baby, traveling alone and paying in cash, was trouble.

Nothing good would come of that.

I kept driving through the mountains on 230, winding through the hairpin turns and elevation changes. It was ten at night before I saw the Laramie River in the distance and a sign that looked promising. "Woods Landing Resort- Cabins- VACANCY- 1 mile." A cabin was perfect as I didn't want a crying baby causing any complaints with the neighbors. Resorts were typically family-run and wouldn't share reservation information with anyone. If I got lucky, it would just be a ledger at the front desk.

I turned onto the road at the sign, following the driveway to the main cabin and office. The light was on, and as I took Maritza's basket out of the car seat mount, the door opened. "Oh, my, come in, come in," the older lady said.

"Thank you," I said. "Do you have a cabin available for tonight? I can't drive much farther," I said as I walked past her into the small office.

"Of course, dear. You look exhausted, so let's get you settled in." I set the carrier at my feet and put my purse on the desk. "It's just the two of us."

"The Aspen North cabin west side is empty tonight. I have a couple on the other side, but there's a locked door in between. You'll never hear them," she said. "I also have three rustic cabins available, but they don't have running water, and you have to keep the fireplace going."

"Aspen will be fine," I said.

"That will be one hundred and forty-nine dollars and twenty-six cents with taxes," she told me.

I pulled out three fifty-dollar bills, laid them on the table, and then signed the ledger with a fake name and a license plate number slightly different from the real one. She grabbed a key off the wall and walked around the desk. "Park the car at the end of this driveway, and I'll meet you at the door." The cabin was clean and comfortable, and Maritza woke up as I carried her in. "Checkout is at eleven."

"Thank you." I brought the cooler of food in along with my overnight bag, then locked the door behind me. I fed Maritza before her bath, and she was down for the night. I took a bath and joined her on the bed.

We woke at nine and got back on the road after our breakfast. I wanted to put some miles behind me today; we were still only two and a half hours from downtown Denver with all the mountain roads. I dropped the key off, then headed northeast to Laramie. I'd thought about using Interstate 80 but dismissed it. If anyone were out looking for me, they'd be watching the Interstates.

It was cloudy and snowing by the time I reached Laramie. I was so distracted by watching for cops and suspicious drivers that I missed the speed limit change, braking hard when I saw my speed on the radar gun by the side of the road. I saw a police officer two blocks later and thanked Tezcatlipoca that I didn't get pulled over. I crossed over the interstate, heading north on 30 and then 34 for another ninety minutes until I got to Wheatland. I paralleled Interstate 25 for a few miles until I picked up Highway 26. This road went southeast for almost four hundred miles, becoming Highway 30 in Ogallala before reaching Grand Island, Nebraska, and never crossed Interstate 80. It took twice as long to get there as the Interstate would have with all the towns and stop signs.

It took all day to drive, stopping when I had to, eating on deserted roads or parking lots I found along the way. I arrived in Grand Island just after six and made my way to the older part of town. I was taking a risk showing up without calling first, but I didn't have many choices. I needed a place to stay outside any government databases.

I stopped in front of the brick rambler, seeing the toys in the yard inside the fence. I got out, grabbing Maritza, and walked up the driveway to the side door. I heard a baby crying inside, then someone coming to the door. She looked through the window, then threw the door open. "MARIA! What are you doing here?"

"Hi, Eva," I said as she waved me in. Eva was twenty, the middle daughter of a Club member, so we'd grown up in the Denver clubhouse together. She married her high school sweetheart, and they moved to Grand Island soon after. She and Carlos had two babies now, and we'd kept in touch on Facebook. Now, I needed her to risk her family to help. "We need to talk."

Eva looked a lot older now. Her father died when the Feds raided the Denver Clubhouse, and her mother died of cancer a year earlier. She brought me into her kitchen, sitting me down while breastfeeding her youngest as her oldest watched cartoons in the living room. "How have you been? I heard about your parents! I couldn't believe it."

"It's been a struggle," I said. "The drone would have killed me if I wasn't getting Maritza into the car seat at the time. We barely made it back from Mexico."

We heard a car pull in, and her husband came in from work. Carlos was thrilled to see me and glad I'd escaped what happened to the Club. I was honest about what I needed and what it might mean for them. "The Sons are gone, and people are after me," I told them. The death of Christian Portman was all over the radio during my drive, so I had no illusions about my safety. "I need to stay out of sight for a few months. I'll help pay for things, help with the babies, anything as long as I don't have to go anywhere in public."

"You know we'll keep you safe, Maria," Eva said. An hour later, we had all my things in her spare room, and my car had a tarp over it in her backyard.

Ch. 15

Frank Donovan's POV
University of Colorado Hospital Trauma Center

I was running on autopilot, and I gratefully accepted the cup of coffee Frank Grimes handed me when he arrived at the waiting room. I'd given my statement to the local FBI and law enforcement already; the Office of Professional Responsibility agent placed me on administrative leave, taking my gun and badge. It was standard procedure for an agent-involved shooting, and this was a doozy.

I'd had a chance to thank Karl Steiner when the staff moved him from Recovery to a room upstairs. He was lucky; the bullet deflected off his humerus bone, cracking it, before exiting out his tricep. He got lucky; two rounds hit the transformer he was resting his gun arm on, saving his life. "I'm sorry, Frank," he told me. "I dropped my pistol, and that's when Claire got hit."

"Claire got hit because I sent her back there alone," I said. "It's my responsibility, and I told them that. Three men opened up on Claire, and she's still alive. We put two in the ground, and they found a blood trail from the third. We'll get that piece of shit. Count on it."

The aura surrounding Frank Grimes, the DEA man who took down the Sons, now a Homeland Security agent and Werewolf, meant that others in the room left us alone to talk. I told him about Claire and my feelings for her. "I can't leave her alone, Frank. I'll be staying here until she can leave the hospital. I'm going to try to talk her into rehabbing with me in Los Angeles. She will need the help." I'd seen the wounds, and it would not be an easy road back for her.

"What about her family? Will she go home?"

"I don't know. Commander Lindstrom called her parents, and her mom is flying out as soon as she can. I don't think that Claire wants to go to North Dakota, and she doesn't have family in the DC area."

Commander Lindstrom arrived an hour later, with Claire in her fourth hour of surgery. "How is she doing," she asked me as she sat on the other side from Frank Grimes.

I let out a breath. "As of fifty-two minutes ago, Agent Bennington was stable, and they were using pins and screws to put the jigsaw puzzle back together that makes up her left pelvis. The bullet wound to her left thigh nicked her femoral artery. They were able to stop the bleeding, and she pulled through despite needing seven units of blood. It was that close," I told her. "I was told it might be several more hours before they close."

"Jesus," Irene said. "And you never even talked to the lawyer?"

"Nope," I said. "We caught the guys as they were leaving, and Portman was already dead."

I hadn't seen Frank since he changed, but I could see having a wolf had changed him. He seemed more powerful and more dominant than before, and his body was practically shaking with anger. "We need to talk, and we need to do it NOW," he told us. "In private."

"I'm not leaving this room until I know Claire is all right," I replied.

"Fine," Frank said as he looked over to Irene. "Clear these people out, and we can talk here and now."

Irene stood up and looked at the twenty or so other agents and police in the room. "Leave us," she said. "Go get coffee or take a walk, but nobody comes back until I clear you to return." There was grumbling, but the room emptied quickly as people headed back to the lobby. When they were gone, Irene turned to Frank. "What do you know, Grimes, and don't bullshit me."

"Your team is fatally compromised," I told her. "The men who did this wanted to find out where Maria and Maritza are, but they got here before Frank and Claire arrived."

"How? Only a half-dozen people in the Task Force even knew about Christian Portman."

Frank just shook his head. "The whole office knew that Maria and Maritza were jaguar shifters, Irene. You want to talk to her to find out what she knows about the Sons, but others for nefarious reasons. The people who did this are the same people who grabbed Julio, and for the same reason. They want to study and turn shifters to their advantage, and for that, they need them in secure facilities to do their experiments."

Irene was shocked. "The CIA is behind this? And you have proof?"

"No proof, but we both know it is the truth. The team that took Julio was professional, well funded, and well supported. I'll bet you a case of your favorite adult beverage that the guys Frank shot last night don't show up in any government database. They'll be ghosts, and that means CIA. No other agency has the black sites and the money to do this."