Russell Blake - The Goddess Legacy

“He didn’t say who he was working for?” Reynolds asked quietly when she was done.

Spencer shook his head. “He turned down ten million bucks to walk away, so whoever it is, he was pretty confident that they’d find him if he double-crossed them, no matter where he hid. That should give you pause. How many would decline that kind of money?”

“Not many,” Reynolds said, his expression dark.

The clerk checked them in without asking questions, and minutes later they were ensconced in their rooms, which were only slightly better than the jail cell in which Spencer had spent his day with the Indian police. After showering off the road dust, they met outside Allie’s room and crossed the street to a small restaurant that appeared reasonably clean. After ordering, Allie looked to Spencer with a troubled expression.

“Reynolds seems like he’s puzzled by everything, doesn’t he?”

“Yes. And that worries me more than anything else. If our secret agent friend has no idea what’s going on, where does that leave us?” Spencer said.

“Nowhere good,” Drake muttered. “And he doesn’t have the guns.”

“If we don’t get them tomorrow, we’re not going. Simple as that. No way do we walk into an unknown situation without weapons,” Spencer said.

“You have any theories as to what’s really going on?” Allie asked.

Spencer shook his head. “Not a clue.”

The group sat quietly, fatigue radiating off them as the server brought bowls of chicken curry and cans of soda. They picked at their meals, their appetites dampened by the prospect of the ordeal to come and their thoughts on the confluence of events that had led them into the Indian wilds, pursued by forces they didn’t understand.

“I don’t think he’s leveling with us,” Drake said. “He knows more than he’s letting on. Just like always, we’re pawns that they’re pushing around their game board. And if we wind up taking a bullet, they’re still fine. I hate this crap. Really hate it.”

“He’s got us between a rock and a hard place,” Spencer pointed out. “Although, not Allie.”

Drake eyed her. “Maybe you should get out while you can.”

“I’ve come this far. I kind of want to see what’s at the end of the rainbow. We’re almost there — it would be weak to quit now.”

“What if we’re walking into a trap?” Drake asked.

Allie frowned. “What do you mean?”

“All along I’ve been wondering whether Reynolds actually already understands everything and is just keeping tabs on us to learn what we actually know. Think about it — he can’t be sure what Carson knew, so then we show up on the radar and he buddies up with us, figuring that we won’t tell him straight out what we’re really doing. So he needs to pretend to be on our side to discover how much info we have.”

“Pretty evil if that’s the case,” Spencer said. “Although I wouldn’t put anything past the DOD — assuming he’s really DOD at all.”

“Who else would he be?” Allie asked quietly.

“CIA. They’re always up to something shady. Maybe they’re running an op, and they know we won’t willingly help after the last nightmare, so this time they’re pretending to be the Defense Department,” Spencer said. “It’s always a possibility.”

Drake nodded slowly. “How do we verify that Reynolds is DOD?”

“If he’s military intelligence, there isn’t going to be any publicly accessible info on him. It will all be tightly classified,” Spencer said. “So it’s a catch-22.”

“Then there’s no way of knowing who he actually is or works for?” Allie said.

“Correct.”

“Where does that leave us?” Allie asked.

Spencer considered the question for a long time. “Go through all the gear he gave you with a magnifying glass, and make sure there are no micro-transmitters in any of it. Give me the GPS and I’ll dismantle it to see if there’s anything besides the factory chips inside. We can just keep it off and they’ll be unable to track it — we’re looking for something small that would have its own miniature power source, that’s constantly emitting a signal.”

“You really think this is a con?” Drake asked.

Spencer held up a spoonful of curry and blew on it to cool it. “At this point, we should assume everyone’s the enemy until proven otherwise. Including those who are most insistent they’re our friends.”

Allie’s expression slowly registered alarm. “Do you… do you think it’s possible that the DOD killed Carson, and we’re just loose threads they’re tying up?”

Drake looked to Spencer, who was chewing his curry methodically with a spectacular lack of enjoyment. “Anything’s possible. But why do it in such a spectacular manner? Generally, when someone’s taken out, it’s made to look like an accident — car crash or skiing or a drowning.” He shook his head. “No, Carson’s murder wasn’t anything the DOD would want to draw attention to if they had him under surveillance. Which means there’s another player in the mix besides Helms, because he wouldn’t have had the physical strength. Carson would have snapped his neck like a twig.”

They sat in silence, considering Spencer’s input, the food suddenly tasting like tar. When they returned to the hotel, Allie gave Drake a chaste peck and retired without a word, and it was hours before Drake finally drifted off into restless sleep — a slumber that featured headless bodies coming for him through a swirling fog that whispered his name.

Nayan Mehta felt for his cell phone in the pocket of his hand-tailored pajamas, the little device’s warble shattering the silence of his bedroom, where he was reading a report on his construction company’s profit and losses for the quarter as light bedtime fare. He was in no mood to take a call, but his annoyance receded when he saw the caller ID.

“My brother, it has been too long,” Mehta answered.

“How is the lifestyle of the rich and famous treating you?”

“No complaints. Although you’re more famous than I,” Mehta teased.

“But nowhere near as rich,” Swami Baba Raja fired back.

“The universe works in mysterious ways. What’s going on?”

“I had a troubling incident at the ashram last night, and I wanted to see if you knew anything about it.”

Mehta sat up straighter. “What? What happened?”

“Someone broke in and tried to steal the statue of Kali you gave me.”

“The hell you say.”

“It is true. First the sword, and now the idol…”

“I’m working on retrieving the sword, but it has proven more elusive than I’d hoped.”

Swami Baba Raja didn’t say anything for a long moment. When he did, his voice was soft. “Does the… cult know I have the statue?”

“Of course not. Are you mad?” Mehta had obtained the relic when a team of his miners had inadvertently broken through a cave wall, violating the sanctity of its resting place. He’d left the rest of the artifacts in the cave, but had been taken by the beauty of the dancing Kali and had secretly removed the idol before sealing the cavern back up and shutting down exploration in that area. But he knew that if those who held the relic to be sacred ever discovered his duplicity, they would exact a terrible revenge.

“It is a possible explanation,” Baba Raja reasoned, his tone glum.

“You say someone tried to steal it. Which means they were unsuccessful?”

“Correct. They were interrupted mid-process. The bastards were in my bedroom while I was sleeping. I naturally thought…”

“The cult has no idea. That you are still alive should be all the proof you require. If it had been them, you’d have never heard or seen anything.”