Abandoned Treasure

Nathan Storm’s POV

Arrowhead Pack Lands

Tuesday, July 28th, 2020

I followed Sawyer out of the courtroom and to a small office he’d been given. I didn’t say anything until he closed the door. “That seemed like it went well.”

“I can’t believe he gave me homework,” Sawyer complained as he sat behind the desk. “I think we have a good argument, but we aren’t dealing with human courts with appeal rights. In a case like this with few precedents, the Council sometimes does what the Council wants. I wouldn’t doubt if they throw this to the Alphas to determine.”

“Then I’ll have to convince them to let me live.”

He looked in my eyes. “You have to convince Rori of that first, no matter what the outcome,” he said evenly. “Many Alphas will defer to her wishes. The others? They will want you to face the same punishment as the Pack leaders.”

“Death?”

He nodded. “Hopefully they won’t ask Rori if she has a sledgehammer around.”

I winced at that. “What next?”

“I’m going to prepare my brief, and you’re going to leave me alone,” he replied. “Spend time with your family, and try not to get in trouble.”

Left unsaid was the ‘while you still can.’ “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. I’ll see you at dinner.”

I walked outside and down to the lakeshore, ignoring the Enforcer assigned to watch me. Breaking Alpha command would be a death sentence, so I wasn’t going anywhere. I took out my phone and called Tammy. “I watched the hearing,” she told me. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah,” I replied. “Mykayla doesn’t know, right?”

“We agreed we wouldn’t say anything until this thing is settled. We’ve told her you went back to spend time with the rest of your family at Arrowhead and will be back in a week or so.”

“Tell her I love her and I miss her?”

“Of course. And thanks for keeping the room, it’s pretty nice.” I hung up and kept walking along the rocky shore towards the beach. I paid attention to the reactions to my presence. Some looked away, others watched me like I was about to steal something, and the rest looked sorry for me. I walked under the hot sun until I reached my RV, where the air conditioning was going full blast as the kids watched a Disney movie. “Daddy!”

I gathered my girls in my arms and kissed them. “How are they this morning?”

“Tired,” Isra replied. “They spent all morning in the pool.”

Khoi looked up at me. “Are you going fishing with us tonight, Daddy?”

“Maria and I reserved the pontoon boat tonight,” Isra added. “Frank and Colletta’s family are coming to visit with their twin girls, so there will be a lot of fishing lines in the water.”

“I’ll have to check if I can,” I replied. The lake wasn’t Pack grounds, so I’d need Rori’s permission. I stayed with them as we watched the movie before heading out for lunch. “Is Alpha Rori around,” I asked Beta Vic.

“You just missed her. She has a meeting in town and should be back in a few hours.” We got our food and visited with a few friendly Pack members. The sun and heat were brutal, so most people stayed in the shade. The girls went back to the RV for their nap just before Vic grabbed me. “The Alphas need to talk to us,” he said.

I hitched a ride on his golf cart as we sped back to change and head up there. The Alpha’s conference room was filling up as we arrived, and she didn’t look happy. Chase and Rori sat at the head of the table, with Frank and Colletta next to them. All of the Alphas at Arrowhead were present; Sawyer from Donner, Keith and Coral from Blue River, Michael and Margaret from Oxbow Lake, and Martin and Rebecca from Adirondack. Lana and Vic represented the Pack Betas, with James now in the Pack clinic recovering from his gunshot wounds. Lana would be linking him everything.Chief Enforcer Mark Trestman was here, along with Senior Enforcer Victor Ciatta. The video link was live, with the other Alphas on the screens at each end of the room.

Colletta verified the room had been swept for surveillance devices, then she laid out what she’d learned from the government about the threat from the Tijuana cartel.

A threat to our children had everyone on edge. “We should have expected this,” Alpha Michael said. “Children are easier to kidnap because they can’t shift.”

“And valuable enough that we’d consider sacrificing Spider Monkey to get them back,” Vic continued.

“No one is getting sacrificed to those bastards,” Rori said. “I’m curious what they know that we don’t.”

“I’m bringing in more help to look at the information they turned over,” Colletta replied. “I need investigators, computer, and administrative help.”

“Arrowhead will host the group,” Rori added. “We’ve done this before. Contact me with your volunteers, and I’ll make arrangements for them.”

“And once again, Arrowhead’s involvement with humans becomes a problem for the Council,” Alpha Steven March of the Casper Pack complained. “I fail to see why this is a Council problem. Spider Monkey is the wife of the Arrowhead Beta, and Arrowhead was attacked.”

“It affects our position with the Federal Government, and the Cartels are not beyond pressuring other Packs to get what they want,” Frank responded. “We’ve all shared in the largesse that Spider Monkey brought in from the last war. A threat to her is a threat to us all.”

Luna Rebecca looked across to Beta Vic. “Is your mate safe for now?”

“She’s gone into hiding. Even I do not know where she is, and she will not be in contact until it is safe to return.”

Mark Trestman looked over Frank Grimes. “Frank, you should communicate that to your DEA contacts. That information should make its way back to the Tijuana Cartel. If we can’t contact her, a kidnapping accomplishes nothing.”

“Not necessarily,” he replied. “Any kidnapping is bound to get a lot of media coverage. They could be banking on that forcing her out of hiding.”

“Priorities,” Colletta said. “The reason I called this meeting is so you understand the threat. Take the appropriate measures to protect your Packs, and pass any information along to the Task Force that Alpha Rori is assembling. Anything else?”

Alpha Carson asked to speak. “Rori, are you going ahead with the Steel Brotherhood rally?”

She nodded. “Having them around helps with security, and they can do things for me outside of the scrutiny the government has on us.”

I saw the news coverage in the past, and they were a formidable national organization. Unfortunately, they didn’t have contacts in Southern California. Neither did the Packs, who were closest in Donner, a good eleven hour drive north without traffic. I was thinking about the free shifter resources we had in the area; the Oracle would be more help than the Council.

I looked up when Rori ended the meeting. She waited until Martin, Rebecca, and Victor had left before closing the door again. Mark looked at the closed door. “Any reason you’re excluding Martin from this?”

“I don’t trust him when it comes to Nathan’s safety,” Rori replied. “Nathan brought five cats here, three of whom are selective shifters. They are targets even without Jade’s efforts.” Sawyer raised an eyebrow. “Jade is protecting Spider Monkey, so we have to protect her family. That doesn’t leave this room,” she warned.

“We should cancel the fishing trip tonight,” Frank said. “That many children makes for an attractive target.”

There was quick agreement with this, although Colletta expressed disappointment that her human grandchildren wouldn’t get the chance to fish.

I had an idea. “No.We’re looking at this wrong,” I said. “We should send them out fishing. In fact, we should make it obvious that we are going.”

“What do you mean,” Frank asked.

“We lose playing defense,” I replied. “Too many people, multiple targets, never knowing when they will strike. Would you rather an attack that you anticipate and plan for, or one that comes unexpectedly?”

“We set a trap,” Sawyer replied as he caught on.

“Exactly. We let the kids fish. Make it so it’s a ‘girls only’ thing; Colletta, Maria, Andrea, and a couple female warriors are on the pontoon boat.”

Mark looked skeptical. “You want to use them as bait?”

“They ARE bait, sir. I’m more interested in having the trap catch them.”

Rori sat back, studying me. “How would you do it?”

I laid it out. “Let them out on the lake, but not too far out. Have armed Pack wolves on jetskis, in speedboats, and in fishing boats that are nearby, but not so close they raise suspicions. If anyone moves in, you respond with overwhelming force.”

“There are Brotherhood members who brought boats up here,” Chase said. “We could add them to the mix and use radios to coordinate. We just have to keep the firearms out of sight. We can also have people watching the boat ramp for suspicious activity.”

“There’s only one public ramp, right?” He nodded. “Good.”

“I can station our best shooters on top of the Pack House and our homes past the beach. As long as they stay within a half-mile or so, we can provide overwatch,” Lana said. “We can also fly drones overhead to give us more warning.”

“That would be enough,” Frank replied. “I doubt if we are going to face more than one or two boats with bad guys. We’re already planning on using Rori’s boat and jetskis to protect Colletta. We’d expand on that. Rori, could we borrow other boats from Pack members?”

“I’m sure we can, even if they are just set up as pickets,” Rori agreed. “How are we going to keep the kids safe if shooting breaks out?”

“We have some bulletproof shields around we use for temporary sniper positions,” Lana said. “We fasten them to the inside of the pontoon boat’s rails. If fighting breaks out, we shelter behind them until the cavalry arrives.”

We kicked around ideas for a few more minutes before we agreed on the plan. I didn’t like having my family out there, but they had advantages over the other children. Each of them could shift into cats and swim away if the boat sank.

I ended up on Roadkill’s bass-fishing boat with two warriors from Oxbow Lake. The fishing rod holders did a fine job of hiding the rifles we needed, and we kept pistols handy next to our seats. The 20-foot fiberglass hull with a 150-hp motor could go almost seventy miles an hour, so we could respond from the east side of the lake in moments. Others were in place well before the pontoon boat left the dock, including jet skis running back and forth off the beach.

The adults on the boat knew the score, and did their best to keep the children from knowing how worried we were. There was a submerged island about nine hundred yards from the beach, and Colletta had them anchor to it. For an hour, I heard their excited cries as they caught panfish. We anchored while fishing as well, with a knife ready to cut us loose in a moment.

I even caught a decent walleye.

“Heads up, speedboat with four men approaching from the north at high speed,” Lana said over the link. “Dispatching drone.”

“They are wearing slacks and zipped-up jackets with life vests over them in this heat,” one of the Omegas reported from her picket boat a few seconds later. “It looks like they are wearing pistols in shoulder holsters under their jackets.”

That didn’t sound like an innocent run around the lake.

Colletta didn’t wait for more. She was already having the kids reel in their lines and raising anchor, telling them they were going to try another place. I had our guys start pulling up our anchor at the same time.

“Frank’s boat is heading to intercept,” Lana updated on the Pack link.

Meanwhile, the pontoon boat was underway and moving closer to the cover of our snipers. Rori’s fishing boat was flying towards the speedboat, and rifles were coming out. Instead of turning away, the unknown men pulled out pistols.

“RED ALERT, hostiles on speedboat have pistols out.”

“HANG ON,” I yelled as I turned the key. The big engine roared to life. Seconds later we were up on plane and racing to protect the children. We weren’t law enforcement, and we weren’t on Pack lands. Our rules of engagement required us to act only in defense of life; they would have to at least aim at the children before we could take them out.

I wasn’t going to take any chances. “When I tell you, bail out,” I told the two men with me. “I’m running them down.” I aimed our boat right at the threat. I’d cut it in half before I let anyone hurt my babies.

The good news was that the speedboat heaved to and came to a stop near where Frank’s boat intercepted them. I slowed down, taking a spot where I could set up a crossfire and give us the advantage in this Mexican standoff.

Two men were pointing guns at Frank, two at us, while eight of our weapons covered the unknown men. “DROP YOUR WEAPONS OR WE WILL FIRE ON YOU,” Frank ordered over a megaphone.

“YOU LOWER YOUR FUCKING WEAPONS RIGHT NOW,” the driver of the speedboat responded. “WE’RE FEDERAL AGENTS!”

Fuck. The man unzipped his life preserver and let it drop. The jacket had FBI logo on the back, and he held up his identification. Frank had his men lower their weapons and approached close enough to verify their badges. “It’s confirmed, they are FBI,” he sent over the link. “Stow your arms and return to base.”

My adrenaline was still going, so I was shaking a bit as I put my AR-15 back into the rod holder. “What the hell are they doing out here?”

“Protecting us from a threat,” Frank responded.

Not any more. If anyone was watching the bait, they’d be long gone by now.