Aztec Treasure

DEA Special-Agent-In-Charge Frank Donovan’s POV

Somewhere over Nevada

As I talked to Claire Bennington from our seats on the Southwest Airlines flight to Denver International, I wondered how I’d never recognized how special a woman she was. I’d seen how intelligent and accomplished she was first hand. Her beauty was understated, hidden like her sense of humor behind her shy exterior. We’d been talking for hours, and I was fascinated. The more time I spent with her, the deeper my feelings became, and I wasn’t alone.

She knew I was twice divorced, with no kids. The life of a DEA agent is tough on families, and my career was brutal. I started as an undercover agent, working the methamphetamine trade in the Midwest. My college sweetheart and wife number one lasted fifteen months. After that, I spent a tour in Mexico, then supervised field offices in Cleveland and Houston. Wife number two did better, three years, and I left her in Texas. I’d been in the Los Angeles office the last four years. I rarely dated; my most recent ones had been blind dates set up by my friend’s wives. I was forty-two years old, jaded, and tired.

Claire’s path was quite different. She’d grown up in North Dakota, where her parents had made millions off mineral rights when the Bakken Oil Fields came into production. Her older brothers were taking over the ranch, so her father sent her to college at the University of Minnesota to study accounting. Claire wanted to get out of the Dakotas and live a more exciting life than doing books for the ranch, though. In her junior year, she fell in love with Todd Coughlin, a student in Law School. He interviewed with the FBI, eventually getting an offer to join them for training as a Special Agent. It sounded so exciting, and the FBI was hiring accountants too. She adjusted her classes to specialize in forensic accounting while her boyfriend finished training. He got assigned to the New York Field Office, expecting to spend at least four years there.

New York was big and exciting and as far from the plains of North Dakota as she could get. Claire spent as much time with Todd as she could, given her classes and his job. She joined the FBI upon graduation and requested New York during training. It was going to be perfect; they could get married and raise a family together. When her assignment to New York came through, Claire flew up Friday night to surprise him with the news. She surprised him, all right; she found him in bed, having loud anal sex with his partner. His partner, Scott. “Jesus, that must have been a shock.”

“It took a while to get over, but eventually, I figured it was for the best. Todd didn’t have a loyal bone in his body. I was glad I walked in on him before I needed a lawyer to get me out of it.” Her relationship gone, Claire begged to go anywhere else but New York. They agreed, and she spent four years at the Minneapolis office instead. Claire had gone after politicians, crooked lawyers, predatory companies, human traffickers, and tax cheats in her career. She found it rewarding, and she was good at it. After successful stints in four offices, she’d earned a promotion to Supervisory Agent of her accounting group in the Washington Field Office five years ago. Now thirty-four, the Task Force assignment was a good step towards Special-Agent-In-Charge status.

“Are you involved with anyone?”

She laughed. “I’m the Ice Queen of the office. I don’t do office romance, I don’t mix business and pleasure, and I don’t listen to my Mom when she tells me to settle down and have kids before it’s too late.”

She was a little spitfire when she got going. She looked out the window as I wished this wasn’t a business trip. I wished we were dressed casually for vacation instead of in our dark FBI suits. I wished we were spending the weekend getting to know each other instead of sharing her with an office of fellow agents on temporary assignments. I closed my eyes, dreaming of her bringing drinks out onto the deck as I waited for her in the hot tub.

“Drink, sir?”

I looked at Claire. “Juice for me, please.”

“Two, please.” The flight attendant handed me two packs of peanuts and started pouring orange juice into glasses. I passed Claire her snack, her fingers lingering just long enough for me to notice. I smiled as I took her juice and set it on her tray table. “You feel it, don’t you? The connection between us?”

She nodded her head just before taking a drink. “We can’t, Frank. I don’t do workplace romances, no matter how much I like the guy. They never end well.”

“My feelings won’t go away when the Task Force goes away, Claire. While we are in the same office, I will keep our relationship strictly professional. When the assignment ends, all bets are off. It won’t be a workplace romance because we aren’t in the same office, department, or city. We’ll be two people dating, that’s all.”

She didn’t say anything in response, and soon we were descending into Denver International Airport. Special Agent Karl Steiner met us outside and updated us on the case. “My partner is in the parking lot and verified Portman’s office lights are still on, and his car is in the lot. Care to tell me what he’s done?”

If he was still in the office at seven-thirty on a Friday night, something was going on. “He’s hiding someone I need to talk to,” I answered evasively. “Let’s go.”

It was nearly eight when we pulled into the near-empty office park lot. Karl stopped next to his partner’s Chevy, which was idling to stay warm in the back of the lot. “Any activity?”

“Nothing.”

“Thanks for the assist, guys. We can take it from here; we’ll make our way to the hotel on our own.”

“My boss said to drive you around, so that’s what I’ll do,” Karl said. He sent his partner home. “I’m going to grab some dinner, and then I’ll wait for you out here.”

“You may as well come up; you’re intimidating enough, and he’s probably going to tell us to get lost.” The three of us walked through the lot, finding the lobby entrance doors locked. There was an intercom panel by the handle; I looked down it until I found “Christian Portman Law Office” and pressed the button.

It took twenty seconds for an answer. “Yeah?”

“This is Agent Donovan, DEA. I need to speak to you about an urgent matter.”

The answer didn’t come right away, and when it did, it wasn’t what I expected. “My office is closed. Call Monday and get an appointment.”

No lawyer would respond like that to a Federal Agent. Even when they told you to fuck off, they’d be professional about it. “Anyone else thinking something is wrong?”

“He didn’t sound like a lawyer,” Karl said.

“Press all the other buttons. Maybe we’ll get lucky, and someone else is home who will open the door for us,” I told Karl.

“I’ll check the doors in back to see if someone left the door open,” Claire said. She headed to the right while I looked for a number for the landlord. I was placing the call when I heard her yell. “FBI! FREEZE!”

Karl and I turned and ran for the back of the building, clearing leather with our Glocks as we turned the corner. Multiple gunshots rang out, one of them fully automatic. Claire came running back around the corner, and the bullets caught her in the thigh and hip. She was spun around and down into the bushes as I got to the corner.

Claire was moving, so I brought my pistol up and fired at the nearest man. My first shot hit center mass, the double-tap hitting his neck. He dropped as Karl took position behind a transformer, opening fire on the second man. Karl grunted in pain, dropping his pistol on the pavement as I got off an aimed shot that hit the man in the head. The third man ran the other way; no matter how much I wanted to pursue, I had two agents down.

“Caught me in the upper arm, I’ll live,” Karl said as he took his phone out. He started calling 911 as I moved over to my partner.

Claire was lying on her back in the mulch, with her small hand gripping her left hip as she cursed up a storm.

I quickly checked the two men who were down, kicking their guns away and making sure they were dead. I ran back to Claire’s side, tearing off my suit coat and wrapping it around the wound in her thigh. “Hang in there, Claire,” I told her as I tied it tightly to slow the bleeding. The shot to her hip was tougher to deal with; I took off my shirt, balling it up and using it to hold pressure. I could hear sirens. “Help is on the way.”

I yelled and waved at the first police cruiser to enter the lot. Ambulances were rolling already, and more police arrived every minute. “Check the building, second floor, Christian Portman’s office. I think these men were up there before we surprised them coming out.”

The ambulance crew was loading Claire onto a gurney when a Denver Police Sergeant came over to me. “Portman’s dead, and they were looking for something in his office,” he said. “What a fucking mess.”

I looked over at the two men behind the building covered with sheets. I handed the man my card. “I’ll be with her at the hospital. When you identify those two or catch the third guy, I want a call. I don’t care what time it is.”

“You got it,” he said. Karl was already gone since he was able to walk to the back of the second ambulance.

Claire was in a lot of pain as they wheeled her into the back of the ambulance. I held her hand the whole way to the hospital; it was pale and cold, just like her face. She’d lost a lot of blood.