Aztec Treasure

Spider Monkey’s POV

Arrowhead Pack

Chase, Vic, and Rori in her wolf form arrived a few minutes after Bridgette linked them that we’d found a location on Maria. Rori trotted over to sit next to me on the dog bed while Chase stood behind me. Vic put my lunch on the desk next to me, then picked me up and sat in my chair, putting me back on his lap. “We got a hit on Maria’s car in Laramie,” I told them. “She passed one of those speed readout trailers linked to the DEA’s system at 1132 our time, entering Laramie from the west on Highway 230.” It was about to hit noon central, and Laramie was an hour behind on Mountain time.

“She’s driving her car? That’s surprising,” Chase said as he looked at the map.

“Maybe Christian didn’t warn her about the car. That’s what, three or four hours from where we were focusing on her hideout?”

“Three and a half with normal traffic,” I said. “Maria could have left early in the morning after hearing about Christian’s death. It’s good and bad; we can use this to track her, but the CIA knows her vehicle too.”

“Do we have anyone in that area,” Chase asked.

“Not really,” Vic replied. “The Denver Brotherhood is watching I-70, but we know she didn’t go near Denver because we didn’t capture her license plate. All the people we sent down from Casper are driving through towns in our target areas, with passengers in wolf form sticking their heads out the window. We don’t have anything yet.”

Chase nodded. “How far is the Casper Pack from Laramie?”

“About two hours,” I said.

“Shit. All right, let’s look at this logically. From Laramie, she could pick up Interstate 80 east or west or continue north on 30. If she goes north, is it possible she’s trying to get to Casper Pack territory?”

I looked at the map carefully. “It would make sense. Highway 30 loops to the west and rejoins I-80, so staying on it makes no sense. If she was trying to get to Casper and stay off the interstate, that’s the way to go.”

“What about Interstate 80,” Vic asked.

“Take it far enough west, and you hit the Donner Pack,” I said. A quick check on Google Maps gave me the bad news. “It’s a fourteen-hour drive, though.”

“What about east on 80?”

I looked at the map. “An hour or so to hit Cheyenne, but we already know there’s no reason to go north or south from there. Keep going, and you go through Nebraska into Iowa, on to Chicago.” I leaned back onto Vic’s broad chest. “We’re guessing here. Laramie is the first major crossroads she’s made it to. All we know is she isn’t heading south, and she’s staying clear of Denver. What we need is another hit on where she might be going.”

“Or a place she might be going to,” Vic said.

Chase scratched Rori’s ears, his eyes unfocused from the mental link. “Here’s what we do. Vic, contact the two Alphas and warn them she might be heading their way. I’ll talk to the Denver Brotherhood and call off their search on Interstate 70; maybe I can talk them into sending people up Interstate 76 to the I-80 exchange and set up a watch there since they’ll never reach Cheyenne in time. Spider, you keep mining the data and look for a place she might be heading.”

“What about her hiding place,” I asked. “Should we keep looking for it?”

“Vic, ask Casper to leave one car on the search and bring the others up to Cheyenne to wait for more information. If we get another hit, I want people closer than two hours away.”

It was a compromise based on limited data, but that’s the best we could do. “What about our people,” I asked.

“I’ll set up a rapid-reaction group and ask Sawyer to do the same. Three pairs of wolves, a plane, and pilots on standby in case we find something.” He looked at the map. “I can ask Sawyer to send his people to Salt Lake City, Utah, and I’ll send our people to Lincoln, Nebraska. That way, we’ll have people bracketing Maria if she’s on the interstate.”

“I’ll get back at it,” I said. I ate my Cuban sandwich and fries as I went back to work.

It was almost one when I got an email from my Google contact. “S- here’s the file. Usual fee.” I opened the file to find the Google location history compiled from Maria’s cellphone. Opening a drawer, I pulled out a $500 Amazon gift card and emailed her the number and passcode. Simple and untraceable.

People would freak if they knew how detailed their Google profiles were, especially if you allowed Location History. Google would have a minute-by-minute log of your locations as you go through your life. Naturally, a Biker Club Princess would know better than that, so she would turn off “Location History” and feel safe. She wasn’t. Even with this feature off, Google still records location data, just not in a timeline. The file I opened gave her phone’s GPS coordinates and time stamps every time she used her phone for online shopping, opened Maps, used her camera, checked the weather, or dozens of other reasons. Since her phone burned up when they fled the country, the data stopped before Christmas.

I exported the data into a spreadsheet and started filtering, creating a search box centered in the mountains west of Denver. It didn’t take long for the pattern to emerge; she spent a few days at a time at a location west of the town of Empire along Highway 40. The location data was consistent within fifty meters, centered on a cabin in the woods. “Bridgette, tell Vic and the Alphas that I found her hiding place,” I said.

Vic was in the room a minute later. “What did you find?”

I’d done a property search and figured out why we didn’t see it; the property was still in the name of Maria’s late grandmother. Vic used my untraceable phone to call a number. “Nick, we’ve got a probable location. Break off the search and check it out, then call me back.” He gave him the address. “The guys will let me know. Nice job.”

“Thanks. I’ll see if there’s anything else on here that can help.” I set my search parameters for anything north of the Colorado border and started checking out the hits on the map. Meanwhile, Bridgette was working through social media contacts and phone call records for other ideas.

The next break was another hit on her license plate at 3:13 PM our time, in Scottsbluff, Nebraska. Bridgette had gone to bed by then, and I had Brian and Paula back now. The Alphas arrived as we were trying to figure out what was going on. “She’s staying the hell off the beaten path,” Vic said.

“She’s avoiding the interstates,” I said. “If she was trying to get there from Laramie, her route took her an hour longer.” Scottsbluff was a prairie town of fifteen thousand people in the Nebraska panhandle, just over Wyoming’s state line.

“We’ve got two cars from the Denver Brotherhood at the intersection of Interstates 76 and 80, east of her,” Chase said. “She’s heading back southeast on Highway 26 now. I can send a car west on Interstate 80 to wait in Kimball. If Maria goes south, they’ll see her. There is nothing but prairie to the north, so I’ll send the other car to wait in Oshkosh on 26.”

“I’ll update the Alphas,” Vic said. “Do you want the aircraft to divert? Our people just landed in Lincoln, and Sawyer’s people are still in the air.”

Chase thought about it for a minute and had a mental conversation with Rori before responding. “See if the Donner Pack group can make an airport somewhere ahead of them in Nebraska. We’ll send two groups west from Lincoln by car and leave the third on the plane in case she breaks out.”

“I’m on it.”

It was nerve-wracking. We were waiting for word from our people in the field while checking the databases and continuing our searches. The Casper team arrived at Maria's family cabin, searching it and finding nothing helpful.

“I might know where she’s going,” Paula said a few minutes later. She had a Facebook page up, a young Hispanic woman holding her baby in the profile. “Eva Torres, age twenty, married with two young kids and living in Grand Island. She went to school with Maria, two years ahead of her, but check this out.” She pulled up an obituary. “Her father was Benito Santiago, the Road Captain for the Denver Sons of Tezcatlipoca.”

“The road captain is responsible for Club runs and logistics,” Chase said. “Do you have an address?”

“Of course.”

Chase wrote it down and called our people in Nebraska, dispatching one of the two cars to check it out. “Don’t get too close; just do a drive-by and see if anyone is there,” he told them. “Find a place you can wait within sight of the home if possible, far enough away so she won’t scent you.”

The good news kept coming. My phone rang; it was the Brotherhood team in Oshkosh. “We found her,” Dipstick told me. “Heading southeast on 30.”

“Stay back and don’t spook her,” I said. “I’ll call the other car and have them get ahead of you at Ogalla.” Vic coordinated with the Pack resources, and soon we had a rotation going of trail vehicles, swapping out periodically so she wouldn’t spot the tails. The only group that stayed put was on Eva’s home in Grand Island. Chase updated Frank Grimes on the search using the secured phone, and Frank’s direction surprised him. “Don’t contact her or get close to her, Chase. Track her to Eva’s house, if that’s where she is going,” he told my Alpha. “I’ll fly there myself, and we can make the contact tonight. If everything goes well, we’ll load her on my jet and have her in Two Harbors by sunrise.”

My back hurt, and I needed to move around. I looked up at Vic and pouted. “I’m tired. Can we take a break?”

“Sure, baby. A little pool time?” It sounded great. I loved the Arrowhead pool, even if I couldn’t spend much time in the hot tub now. We walked through the tunnels towards the Pack House and the attached pool, where after a soak, a snack, and a back rub, I felt like a new woman.