Abandoned Treasure

Spider Monkey’s POV

Lake Arrowhead Home

Tuesday, April 2, 2019

Vic had been working all the time lately, but the big “business meeting” started today. I was frustrated from being left alone all the time. A few nights recently, Vic didn’t even come home before I was asleep. At this rate, I’d need to get a puppy to have some cuddle time.

At least my morning sickness was easing up. My obstetrician told me I was hitting all my marks, but I couldn’t help but worry. I was this tiny little thing. Vic? He was so big in every way. My stretch marks would get stretch marks before this baby arrived.

I tidied up the guest room while waiting for Vic to return. Every spare room at Arrowhead was being used for the meeting, and not by the Brotherhood. Coral and Chase’s brothers and their wives were here, but I didn’t know when they’d have time to get together. Vic was working, and I didn’t get invited to the parties. The good news was that Frank and Colletta were coming to stay with us.

I heard the garage door open and got there just as Vic parked his truck. I was on him as soon as the door was open. “Hi, baby,” I said, jumping into his arms to kiss him. When I touched ground again, Frank was helping Colletta down. I let go of Vic and let Colletta pull me into a hug. “Vic said you needed to crash here with all the people at Arrowhead,” she said. “We’re happy to host you.”

They were tired from the trip, so after a short tour, I took them to the guest room. I got them settled and told them to poke their head into my office if they needed anything. The look she gave him told me what was on their agenda before a nap! Hearing them screwing for hours was the LAST thing I needed with my man at work.

It was another reason to be jealous of them. They were both retired now. They spent their time traveling between homes to spend time with their grandchildren! No schedules, no time pressure, and no home to maintain. The only thing they screwed up was not having at least one of their kids living in a warm-weather state. Coral and Keith had just moved to Canada, for crying out loud! How do you live in this sub-Artic freezer and think THAT is a good idea?

Maybe I needed to book us one of those over-water bungalows. I imagined a week with just me, Vic, and some bikinis. I could imagine the hot sun on my face; it felt better than the cold wind outside. We still had a month or two until ice-out, and summer was far away. I’d given Vic some latitude about work while I moved our stuff, but I didn’t plan to spend my winters in THIS climate. It was time to look for a winter home. Maybe near a Brotherhood chapter down south, like Orlando or Fort Lauderdale? We could build a big house on a lake or by the ocean, and our friends could visit us instead. Vic could prospect into the Brotherhood, and we could spend our winters riding and fucking.

After all, the Steel Ladies had child-care centers in all the clubhouses now!

I had a mission. I headed into the office, put music on my headphones, and started my routine checks before looking for a vacation. Running diagnostics and a system check is a daily habit. Network administrators are hiring ‘white-hat’ hackers for more than designing firewalls to keep me out. They combined defensive strategies with their own attacks. One company even diverted me to a second server filled with false data and then attempted to infect my computer with malware. I was able to stop them, but the danger remains.

The diagnostics warned me of a new computer accessing the home server. The program recorded the address, username, and password they used to connect to a website. Based on the data usage, they were streaming videos. “Those kinky old people are watching PORN,” was my first thought. Curious about their tastes, I mirrored the feed to one of my screens.

The room looked like the dining hall at Arrowhead. I was about to close it when the cameras focused on a grim Chase and Rori walking in with Sawyer at their side. They moved to one of the tables in front and sat down. “What the fuck,” I said to myself. “What kind of business meeting is this?”

I sent the video to a big wall monitor and the sound to my headphones. Turning in my chair, I saw Ron’s wife, Tina, in the front row next to Keith Sexson.

The camera changed to another door that Vic opened, and a line of people walked in. I recognized Carson, Ashley, and Coral. The camera switched to a view from the back as the audience sat. An imposing older man at the front table banged a gavel. “Be seated,” he said. “The trial of Alphas Rori King and Chase Nygaard is called to order. The defendants previously pled GUILTY to charges of revealing our werewolf nature to humans in violation of Pack law, failing to kill the human immediately to protect our secret, and intentionally violating a Werewolf Council order. The Alphas on the jury have deliberated and determined the punishment. Defendants, please rise.” My mind was going a million miles a minute as I tried to process what I’d just heard. I watched the proceedings live as my mind struggled to take it all in.

All those people I knew at Arrowhead? My friends? They were ALL werewolves.

Vic was there. He was a werewolf too! My hand moved down to my belly, feeling for the barely-there bump. I was married to a werewolf, so was I having a baby or a puppy? What the fuck had my life turned into?

I didn’t know what to do. Could I tell Vic that I knew? Or tell no one? Or should I throw my shit into my SUV and drive away RIGHT NOW?

I needed to know more before I could decide.

The internet page automatically brought me back to a home page for video recordings. On the page was a link for “Werewolf Council Proceedings.” Clicking on that brought up a page with recordings of earlier broadcasts, including several from the trial of Rori and Chase. That wasn’t all that caught my eye.

Chase Nygaard was on there as well. The video was titled “Asylum for Heather Rhodes.”

I put my headphones back on and clicked on a link. I might be here all day.

As it turned out, it was only a few hours before Frank came knocking on the door. I shut off the screens and opened the door. “Carson’s flying home tonight. He asked us to go with him, and we agreed,” he said.

He wasn’t telling me that they were heading west because Carson ‘won’ a reprieve with Heather’s asylum, and they were worried someone would try to kill one or both of them. He didn’t say that his wife was more than two centuries old and turned into a dangerous predator. He didn’t say my husband had been working security on a worldwide meeting of the werewolf elite. Nope, just an airport run.

“I understand completely. Is Vic coming, or do you need me to drive you?”

“He’ll be here in a few minutes.”

I threw on a jacket and walked out to the garage as Vic pulled in. “Can I go with you, baby? I’ve barely seen Carson and Coral this trip.” I had to look at them all through new eyes.

“Sure, if you sit by me in front,” Vic replied. I squeezed into the center between Vic and Carson. Frank, Colletta, and Coral sat behind us.

Carson hadn’t seen me since they arrived. “What are you working on now, Spider?”

“I’m still cleaning up the mess from the Sons of Tezcatlipoca. I’ve been taking over their overseas accounts. I’m tracing money transfers and liberating what monies I can before the Feds do. It’s slow but worth it. I’ve re-appropriated almost eight hundred thousand this year.”

“Damn,” he said. “How do you get there before the Feds do?”

“I’m better than the Feds.” I talked about my work and pregnancy, then listened to their guarded conversations with a new awareness. The periods of silence weren’t silent; apparently, werewolves could use telepathy to talk to each other. It explained some times where Vic knew things without someone telling him or spaced out for no reason. He was talking to the others.

We dropped them off at their jet, then drove to Betty’s Pies for dinner and dessert. “Is your work slowing down now? I miss having my man around,” I said.

“It will in a few more days,” Vic said. “I have a lot to catch up on after the conference.”

“I’d like to go riding before I get all fat and uncomfortable. Maybe we could head down south?”

He promised to ask for time off but needed a few days to catch up on work. Two could play at that game.I’d penetrated the Council server, and now I had to figure out what they were hiding. They were threatening my friends, after all. I was already facing the death penalty if they found out.

Vic got time off a few days later and told me to pack for a road trip. We’d put Vic’s motorcycle in the trailer, drive to Vegas to pick up Heather’s motorcycle and stuff from her time in hiding, and deliver them to her in Washington. Rori’s children, parents, and bodyguard were returning home. “The Sons are no longer a threat to us, thanks to you. We owe you, even though we can’t discuss most of it.”

“You and your security stuff,” I said. “Speaking of stuff we can’t speak about, I gave Rori the last data packet on the Sons of Tezcatlipoca operations. I’m at a dead end with them; the Feds can pick at the carcasses now that I’ve stripped the meat off.”

“Profitable?”

“I’m not going to dip into my retirement savings just yet,” I said with a grin. “Stealing from a criminal organization is the best. The Feds don’t care, not after the deal Colletta made with them, and not after I’ve moved it through so many accounts they’ll never trace it.”

“You’re a genius, and I love you,” he said. Dinner was delayed by a quickie in the kitchen, followed by cleanup. He had to return to ‘work’ for a few hours while I went to my office.

I already had their files, but I put a few more programs in place to keep up with the latest happenings. Every file that changed in a day would come to me, including their phone calls. I also put a worm in their system to destroy their servers if they discovered my hack. I still had to break the encryption on their files, but I had a program working on that.

Two days later, I had my laptop and hacking gear in the back seat of his truck. I wasn’t going to drive that monster with the trailer, but we had days on the road I could use to go through the Council’s files. The encryption program broke the code before we got to Vegas. There was a ton of data to search, so I was starting with anything referencing Chase or Rori. The files didn’t have much, so I started listening to the Chairman’s phone calls.

I took a two-day break from hacking as we rode the Pacific Coast Highway from Los Angeles to San Jose, where we met the prospect who drove the truck and trailer direct. He flew back to Texas while we continued north.

I stayed in the back seat while Vic drove, keeping my computer equipment going.

Rori and Chase called, wanting Vic to return to Arrowhead in a few days before they went to New York for Charles’ funeral. It was an imposition, but Ron and Teri were helping with a computer security breach, and Vic said he was next in line. I knew the worms activated in the Council servers, so I figured Teri was helping Banff Pack. I was confident she couldn’t trace the breach back to me.

To be safe, I activated a program on my home’s hacking server that bricked the hard drive. It erased files and overwrote them multiple times, making recovery impossible. I had all the data on removable hard drives connected to my laptop, so I lost nothing. Even if they raided my house, there would be no evidence for them.

We kept driving north on Interstate 5 while I listened to audio files of Werewolf Council members. The phone call from my alarm company, first with the break-in, then with the fire alarms, told me I’d been wrong about getting caught.

Fuck.

Vic called Arrowhead to hear our home was on fire. “Who would do this?”

“Who wouldn’t if they knew who you are and what you’ve done? The Sons, the Cartels, the Feds? Any of them could be behind it.”

Or the Council traced the hack to me. “Bastards.”

I spent the next hour on the phone with the County Sheriff and my insurance company. The cameras didn’t catch much, but we gave what we could to the investigators. Chase suggested that I stay with Carson while Vic returned to Arrowhead. “If the Sons or Cartel tracked you to our home, I don’t want you anywhere close to it.”

I trusted Carson to keep me safe. “I suppose I could hang out with Heather for a few days,” I said.

“I’ll make the call.”

With nothing else to do, I kept listening to the files. Councilman Oscar Millner was on the phone with another male. I was about to skip to the next recording when I heard her name, and my heart stopped.

They needed to know, but there was no way to warn them without revealing the hack that made it possible. It might destroy my marriage, and it could cost me my life, but could I let this happen?

No. I couldn’t let the Council kill Heather.

“Vic, I need you to call Carson Nygaard RIGHT NOW and put it on speaker,” I said.

Vic called Chase, who turned it into a 3-way call with Carson’s Pack. It took a few moments to get Beta Carl Striker on the line since Carson was out of the office. “Alpha Chase, how may I help you?”

“Go ahead, Spider Monkey,” Chase said.

“There’s a threat against Heather Rhodes and your Alpha.Councilman Millner hired men to come to your land and wait for Heather to leave the safety of the Pack House. He told them he has an asset in your Pack who would tell them when and where they would be.”

“SHIT.” I heard yelling, and it was thirty seconds before he returned to the phone. “I know where he’s at, and we’re passing a warning along now. I have to go; my mate is out there with them.” He hung up.

Chase listened to the recording. It was apparent I’d obtained it by hacking the Council servers. “The Council sent men to your house and burned it to the ground,” he concluded. “They wanted to kill you.”

I’d put both of us in danger because he was married to me now.

“Fuck me sideways,” Vic groaned. “Spider Monkey didn’t just step in a pile of shit. No, that would be easy. She set it on fire, stomped on it, kicked it off the drapes, then tracked it over the white carpet.” He couldn’t even look at me as he muttered under his breath. I’d never seen him this upset. I knew he’d be mad, but now I didn’t know if we could survive this. I’d gone behind his back and endangered us both.

“Yeah. Get off the road and hide now,” Chase continued. “DO NOT go to Cascade Pack; if they have people watching it, and if the Council has a mole there, they will know. The Council knows Spider is a human who’s learned all their secrets. You are her accomplice, with a grudge against the Council because you’re in love with a human they need dead. The Council may have issued the kill orders already.”

We talked about what to do next, but one thing was clear. Vic couldn’t stay as a member of Arrowhead. He made it easy for Chase. “Spider Monkey was my charge. What she has done is on me, not you. I renounce you as my Alphas and declare myself no longer a part of the Arrowhead Pack.”

“You can’t join another Pack; none would dare take you in. You’ll be a rogue wolf, hiding from us all,” Chase warned.

“I’ll be alive with my wife and our child. You do not know where I am or what I am doing, and you will not hear from us again. May the blessings of Luna be upon you and the Arrowhead Pack,” he said.

“Vic, I just wish someone would do to the Council and those evil Alphas what we did to the Sons,” Chase replied. I had to take the wheel as the pain of the Pack bond breaking hit my man. “May her blessings rest upon you and your family, Vic. Goodbye.”

And just like that, we were on the run.

“I’m sorry, baby.” I’d been crying ever since Vic hung up the phone. I’d ruined everything; my home was a smoldering mess, my friends couldn’t talk to me, and Vic had to give up his Pack and his daughter.

I could see Vic was struggling with events.“Why?”

I blew my nose, then leaned back against the seat. I explained how I piggybacked the trial feed and hacked the website to protect my friends.

“And you got caught.”

“Yes. The updates from the Council servers stopped four days ago. My program was supposed to wipe out all traces of my hack, but it must not have worked.”

He didn’t say anything as we drove north. “I’m not sorry I hacked the data. If I hadn’t, we wouldn’t have found out about the plot against Carson and Heather.”

“We don’t even know if the warning helped,” he said. “I need to think.”

His silence hurt more than anything else. Since he wouldn’t talk, I went back to work. I had to see what else I could dig up from the archives.

Rori contacted me about the house, and we agreed to sign over our home and the insurance money for a million dollars. If they bought one more home, they could expand the Pack lands around the corner of the lake. Vic agreed selling was best as we’d never be able to move back to Arrowhead now. “What about the cash?” We’d left a quarter of a million in cash in a fireproof safe under the basement.

“We’ll work that out.” I sent a text to Rori, accepting the offer. The bag of cash she’d send to Carson. “He’s all right?”

“For now.Carson and his Beta Angelina will recover, but Heather got bit and took a fall. I have to go. Bye.”

I looked at the message in disbelief. “Vic? Rori said someone attacked Carson and Heather today.”

“Are they alive?”

“She said Carson and Angelina should recover, but Heather got bit and fell.”

Vic’s jaw clenched, and his knuckles tightened on the steering wheel. “SON OF A BITCH!” His hand slapped the dash.

“They are alive.Maybe our warning stopped Heather from being killed? Rori said Carson wouldn’t mind if we contacted them.”

“We didn’t save her, baby.A werewolf bite is always fatal to a human.She’ll be dead by tomorrow.”

“NO!”Tears started to fall; we were too late.Vic regained control of the truck while I thought about what was next.

“They could change her,” he finally said.“She could live if they changed her.”He explained what happened after Frank’s injury.Werewolf blood and the mate’s bite allowed him to heal and complete the shift.

“So, it’s possible!I can be like you!I can grow old WITH you instead of ON you since you live so long.Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“You saw the trial.Frank finding out about werewolves during the attack on Rori’s home nearly resulted in her removal and imprisonment.We are working to change the laws, but until then, I was not allowed to tell you our secret.”

“But I found out your secret.”

“Yes, and the Council knows that you know. That’s another reason Rori had to disavow us. The Alphas wouldn’t survive a second trial, not after what you’ve done.”

Shit. “Were you going to change me?”

“I was going to give you the option,” he said. “Look, it’s only worked once, and Frank damn near died. For him, there was no other choice. You have one, and I didn’t know if you would want to take the risk. Hell, I didn’t know how you would react to me! In any case, we can’t do it now.”

“Why not?”

“No access to a doctor or a werewolf blood bank, for one. The second reason is that you’re pregnant. Pregnancies don’t survive a shift to our wolf form; one of the reasons we are so protective of our pregnant females is that they can’t shift to protect themselves. Rori, Teri, Coral, Margaret, Colletta, all of them are vulnerable during their pregnancies.”

“No wonder their mates don’t like them out of reach. It is a bit over the top, but it makes sense now,” I said. I thought back to how attentive and possessive Chase and Ron behaved with their wives, er, mates. Come to think of it, Vic was the same way. “Why don’t the babies survive?”

“Technically, babies are not part of the mother. They don’t share the same blood, as the placenta separates them from the mother’s bloodstream while still providing the exchange of oxygen, nutrients, and waste products needed for them to grow. When the change takes the mother’s body, it changes her form in a second. Her internal organs move and reshape. The placenta and baby don’t change forms because they can’t; werewolf babies don’t shift until their mid-teens. As a result, the shift causes the placenta to detach. The mother may heal from blood loss, but the baby miscarries.” He looked back at me in the mirror. “There was no reason to tell you about anything until you had our child.”

I tried calling Heather’s phone and Carson’s direct line, but no one answered. Vic wasn’t comfortable talking to anyone else when they had a mole in the Pack, so we’d have to wait. I called up Thor, President of the Portland Steel Brotherhood chapter. “It’s Spider Monkey.I’m in trouble and need your help, Thor. I’m hot but not radioactive.” He needed to know people were after me, but it wouldn’t hurt the Club.

“Where are you?”

“A few hours out. You’ll probably want to call everyone to church to hear about this.”

“Anyone on your ass I have to deal with?”

“No pursuit yet. I went a hack too far and got burned. I’ll see you soon, and I’m bringing my old man with me.”

“Our Chapter is here for you, Spider. See you soon.” We were about ninety minutes away from them.

“I need to get set up where I can work, and I need your help going through the phone calls and data. Who knows what other surprises are still in there.”

“What will we do when we find it?”

“We use it to fucking bury them,” I said.“Chase told us that she wished someone would do to the Council and the evil Alphas what we did to the Sons of Tezcatlipoca.” We’d used my hacks to take their money and ruin them. Vic knew wolves, and I knew computers. “Two people can take them out if we do it right. How far are you willing to go, Vic?”

“As far as it takes. Our only chance of getting our lives back is to help Rori eliminate the people against us. Rori wants this, too. I may have renounced her Pack to protect her, but I’m still loyal to her and Chase. She’s under the Council’s authority. We can do things she can’t.” He looked at me. “There will be a division of labor here. You point, I shoot. You and our baby need to survive.”

“You’re not dying on me, Vic. I won’t let you.” I took his hand as we drove north to Portland. “When we get to the Portland Chapter, I take the lead. A Steel Lady has status within the Club, and they are friends.”

We arrived at the Portland chapter without incident. I joined their Church while Vic waited at the bar with the Ladies and the prospects. Thor gaveled the meeting to order. “Spider Monkey has requested the protection of our Chapter and this Church session. I’ll turn it over to her.”

I gave them a short version of what was going on. “This has nothing to do with the Sons of Tezcatlipoca anymore,” I started, which caused them to relax. “That is over, and the Feds have everything I could uncover on them.”

“That’s why you resigned? To work for the Feds?” The Brotherhood was a law-abiding Club, but law enforcement didn’t always see them that way.

“I hacked their computers and stole their money. Frame used what I found to keep the Feds off our asses after Orlando and take down the Sons. We both resigned to keep the Brotherhood clean. The Sons crumpled under the combined pressure.”

“Good riddance,” Thor said. “Who is the problem then?”

“My husband Vic worked for Rori and Chase up at Arrowhead Lake. About a year ago, her Grandfather, Charles Smith, disappeared in his private jet over Lake Michigan.” I gave them a story about Coffey being in organized crime and furious about my hacking. “They burned my house and want me dead,” I ended with.

“What do you need from us,” Thor asked.

“Rori’s place is being watched. Nobody outside Canvas’s family knows I’m with Vic or working with her on this. We should keep it that way to draw attention away from Arrowhead. I have the information I need, but I’ve got days of phone conversations and other files to review. I need a safe place to hide out for a few weeks.”

“That’s easy. Anything else?”

“Part of our trip was bringing some things from Vegas up to Frame’s brother, Carson. He’s in the mountains east of Mount Ranier. Vic can do it, but I don’t want him going alone.”

“Easily done,” Thor said. “Should I worry about blowback on the Club?”

“Coffey won’t take on the Brotherhood,” I said. “They don’t have the juice for that, and they don’t want the attention after seeing what happened to the Sons. They may poke around the Chapters, knowing I’m a Steel Lady. There is no reason I’d pick this Chapter over any other, so secrecy helps. Let the Club leadership know I’m hiding here and keep your eyes out for strangers.”

The Club would keep me safe, but they had a condition. They brought Vic in, swearing him in as a Prospect. He swore the oath as I watched. “Put on the fucking cut, Prospect, and go unload your shit,” Thor said. He banged the gavel to end the meeting, and the men all stood up and applauded.

Everyone adjourned to the bar, but Vic had to prove himself in the ring tonight. I cleaned up on the side bets after Vic beat the Club’s best fighters. “Drinks are on me,” I said after I jumped into Vic’s arms. I handed Thor a wad of cash. “Get them started; we’ll be down in an hour or so.”

Vic stepped over the ropes as I clung to him, and everyone knew he’d be banging me stupid in about a minute. I was horny as hell, and he could smell it. He took the stairs two at a time and let me down as we reached the door. Unlocking it, I pulled him inside and fucked his brains out.

I froze in bed as we recovered when there was a knock on the door. It was Sif, Thor’s warrior queen. “Hey Spider, if you’re done playing around, we need more beer money, and the Prospect needs to get his tight ass behind the bar.”

I loved our Club!

Vic was escorted to the Cascade Pack entrance the next day to drop off the truck and trailer. I was thrilled to find out Heather survived the shift and her twins were still alive. “She has to stay in wolf form until she delivers, but she’s happy,” Vic said. “She and Carson mated before the change.”

Then he showed me the blood before putting it in the fridge. “Just in case,” he said. “I’d bite you in a second if I knew you and the baby would make it, but we can’t take the risk now.”

He was right. We needed to take out the Council trash before we could do this.