Aztec Treasure
Air Force One

President Laura Kettering’s POV

Air Force One

I let out a sigh of relief when I saw Andrew was free. I’d never liked the idea of paying a ransom, but I didn’t want my husband dying at the hands of a monster. We may not love each other as we did decades ago, but I couldn’t bear to see him suffer.

It hit me like a truck when I found out Julio had bitten him and what it meant. Colletta was brutally honest with me as we sat in my conference room together; the bite was fatal, and it wouldn’t be an easy death. Fever, delirium, pain beyond measure, then the heart finally giving out from the strain. I demanded they do something, ANYTHING, to save him. In the conference call that had just ended, they had an idea. It was the Powerball lottery of long shots, but as Lloyd Christmas once said in Dumb and Dumber, “So you’re telling me there’s a chance.”

My physician at Bethesda was smart enough to realize he didn’t know a thing about the bite or how to treat it, so he deferred to the Pack Doctors. Their plan was bold and unlikely to succeed. Chase explained that the doctors would replace most of Andrew’s blood with werewolf blood to fight the panther bite. Once the change began, they would replace a mate to guide him to his wolf. Had it been tried before? Not this way. Three times the Pack Doctors had seen humans through a successful change, but in two of those, the human already met their wolf mate.

If it worked, Andrew would become a werewolf before I did, and he would be the one divorcing ME to be with his mate. Finding his mate was not a sure thing, as Colletta warned. There were fewer than a hundred unmated females of age in the werewolf world, and some of them would never arrive in time. While we waited, Andrew suffered. “How can I get through this?”

Colletta put her hand on mine. “We are doing everything we can, Madam President. I’ve asked every Pack to send their females to the Two Harbors or Minneapolis-St. Paul, since the Secret Service will shut down Duluth International Airport to air traffic. Chase will have all the eligible females from Oxbow Lake and Arrowhead Packs checked in the next hour. The others will start arriving shortly after that.”

Valerie Grunwald looked up from her phone, where she had been texting the members of the Secret Service ad-hoc advance team that flew out with Chase or the Air Force plane. “It’s standard procedure to shut down the airport while Air Force One is there. We are breaking enough protocols already just by making this trip. If not for the Acting President, it wouldn’t happen.” She had protested strongly to Cartwright, but he’d given a direct order. He did allow us to use Air Force One, and he called up the National Guard in Duluth and the 148th Fighter Wing of the Air Force Reserve to assist. “How are we going to run security checks on a hundred women, some foreigners, all trying to get into the room with the President?”

“You won’t need to,” Colletta replied. “Andrew took a shower shortly after arriving at the Clinic. Our nurse bagged his clothing. Chase is going to send articles to each of the airports and the two Packs in plastic bags. If his mate is out there, she will recognize his scent from the clothing.”

Good. The last thing I needed to see was a parade of underwear models coming in to smell my husband. It just wasn’t fair; if you got to live that long, couldn’t you be plain-looking? “That sounds like a good solution, but what about the people coming all this way? Are they going to sniff and get back on a plane?”

Colletta laughed. “Not quite. The ones who fly into Two Harbors will stay with Oxbow Lake. The ones landing in Minneapolis? We’ll give them spending money, and a hotel room near the Mall of America. Once the excitement is over, Chase will invite them to visit the two Packs if they wish.”

“I’ve heard about his pool, so I expect they will want to come,” I replied. I’d seen the reports from the FBI agents and couldn’t imagine visiting there. I knew the werewolves were casual about nudity, but the pool was practically a nudist resort. Maybe getting a wolf would make it easier for me to handle things? “What are the chances of any of them being his mate?”

Colletta looked uncomfortable as she answered. “We have no idea. Our people believe that the Moon Goddess grants each werewolf one mate destined to be theirs. Some people wait over a century to replace theirs, while others never replace the one. Some people like me even get another mate after their first one dies. How and why matings happen is not for us to know. We pray the Goddess will bring us together quickly, but everything is in her time. Until now, the idea of a human mate was thought impossible. After all, humans don’t have a wolf and couldn’t get one. We know better now.”

“You said there are fewer than a hundred unmated females in the world.”

“Yes, and that is down quite a bit. Recent events have brought together the unmated in ways we’d never done before, and many found their destined ones. Even if you assume the remaining one hundred are all waiting to meet human mates, there are a hundred million males of age in this country and billions worldwide. The Moon Goddess will have to make this happen, and I have no idea if that is her plan.”

“Was there any other option that Chase didn’t mention?”

“Frank only thought of one, but it’s not going to happen.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Why didn’t Frank mention it?”

“Because even though Julio has O-positive blood and his jaguar blood would give a better chance of making the change, we don’t have him in custody. Even if you did, you’d have to drain him of four or five pints to get enough. You can’t kill Julio to save your husband, Madam President.”

I tapped my fingers on the table. Julio was the key to this; we wouldn’t be safe until he was dead. Frank had made it clear that Andrew was just the latest act in a revenge play that would end with me. “Maybe not yet, but I can do something else.”

“What? Every law enforcement agent in the country is looking for Julio.”

“Time to up the ante.” I looked over to Valerie. “Have your agents escort the reporters and one film crew here for a statement.” Valerie turned away and gave the command. “If you don’t mind, Colletta, I’d like to have you here for this in case there are questions I cannot answer.”

“Of course, Madam President,” she replied.

Ten minutes later, the camera was rolling. “Earlier today, you saw as I had a ten-million-dollar cash ransom delivered to the White House. The money didn’t bring my husband back because Julio Salazar decided to kill him instead. Julio bit Andrew Kettering, which we understand is fatal to humans in about twenty-four hours. I am on my way to the Arrowhead Pack, where doctors at his clinic are working hard to give him even a slight chance at survival.”

I paused and looked in the camera. “That money can now be yours. I am offering that ten million in cash for information leading to the arrest of Julio Salazar. You do not need to catch him, and I don’t want you to risk it; dial 911 or contact the FBI’s tip line and let the professionals handle it. Julio is armed and dangerous, and we need him in custody as soon as possible. Julio’s last known location was west of Two Harbors in northern Minnesota. I’ll now take questions.”

“Madam President, isn’t there a better facility for your husband than a Pack Clinic?”

“No. No other doctors in the country have the experience in treating bites like the doctors at Arrowhead, and moving Andrew elsewhere would not be helpful. The best chance to save his life is there.”

“Madam President, do you blame the Weres in this country for what is happening to your husband?”

“Of course not,” I said. “Chairman Grimes and her people have been staunch allies in the fight against criminal elements such as the Sons of Tezcatlipoca. I count her and Alpha Chase as personal friends. I don’t blame him for the actions of one escaped felon, and neither should any of you.”

The press conference went on for fifteen more minutes before I called it. We were crossing over northern Wisconsin and would be landing in ten minutes.

The fasten seatbelts sign came on, and we buckled into our seats for the landing. I watched the lights below as we descended towards Duluth International Airport, an F-16 fighter jet escorting us off each wing. The pilot lowered the landing gear and flaps, and we entered our final approach to the airport just north of the city at the southern tip of Lake Superior.

We were only a few hundred feet off the ground when the plane turned violently to the right. The engines screamed as the pilots took them to maximum thrust. I heard one explosion, then a second and bigger one as the plane shuddered and turned the back to the left. The lights went off, and I said a prayer as I watched the ground rising to meet us.