Aztec Treasure

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 lights of Laramie 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.