Russell Blake: The Goddess Legacy

“Good point.” Spencer groaned out loud.

Drake frowned. “The hotel has my passport. So I’m kind of screwed too.”

The only sound in the room was the muffled booming of the bass from the disco below.

“I’ve only got a couple thousand bucks,” Spencer said.

“With my four, that makes six. And I’m sure Allie will have some. But that’s not enough to buy our way out of the country, is it?”

“Wouldn’t work, I don’t think, even if we could get across a border. They’d extradite me,” Spencer fumed. “Maybe I shouldn’t have bolted.”

“If you hadn’t, you’d be in an Indian jail right now, playing prison bride with your new special friends. I guess you did the right thing. I’d have done the same. But that won’t get you out of the predicament. At best it only buys some time.” Drake didn’t have to say that it made him look guilty, too. “Look, you stay here. They aren’t looking for me. I’ll get Allie and we’ll put our heads together. There’s got to be a way out of this. We just aren’t seeing it.”

Spencer’s expression was glum as Drake did a quick wipe-down of his shirt and pants with a moist towel to get the dried mud off and then moved to the door. “I’m sorry about your friend, Spencer.”

“Yeah. He was a good guy.”

There wasn’t much more to say. Drake pulled the door closed, descended to the ground level, and hurried through the lobby in the hopes of finding a cab. He didn’t pause at the reception desk or he would have seen the clerk watching the news on the flickering TV screen, which at that moment featured Spencer’s passport photo and a stern warning that a gruesome murderer was on the loose and to report any sighting immediately.

Drake watched the city crawl by as the taxi made its way to the airport, his impression largely negative in spite of any effort on his part to see it through unbiased eyes. For every towering skyscraper there were thousands of bleak structures in various stages of disrepair and, even at the late hour, an unending stream of the destitute roaming the streets. The car rolled to a stop at a stoplight and a swarm of female beggars blocked the intersection, holding up obviously drugged babies, some of them deliberately blinded to elicit pity or with gruesome afflictions that made him squirm. The driver seemed unaffected by the parade of misery, and Drake wondered what it had to be like to be so used to the unthinkable that it simply didn’t register.

He periodically turned to look through the rear window, paranoid after Spencer’s account of being railroaded by the police, and even more so when he considered the decapitation. If it was connected to the treasure, then Spencer — and by extension, Drake — might well be at risk as well. From unknown adversaries who cut heads off in the middle of a major city. Who also might be following them, although how they might have tracked them to the hostel eluded him.

Drake swallowed hard at the thought and considered Spencer’s problem as dispassionately as he could. A murder suspect who’d bolted when the cops had come for him. Drake knew Spencer and understood he was innocent, but it couldn’t have looked worse to an outside if he’d bathed in the victim’s blood and taken a selfie. By running, he’d eliminated any doubt that he was the killer, certainly to the police; and if he was recaptured or turned himself in, it would be a minor miracle if he got a trial that didn’t hammer home his deliberate escape — the desperate act of a guilty man.

How could they get out of the trap? That was the question. With no travel documents and presumably an APB out on Spencer, how could he realistically leave India to argue his innocence from a safe distance? And what of his observation that he’d simply be extradited? Spencer was probably right, Drake realized. No country would harbor a brutal murderer if there was a treaty in place. He’d be on the first plane back to India once he surfaced — assuming he could enter any other country even if he did manage to slip across a border.

Drake forced himself to think calmly, struggling for lucidity in spite of the circumstances. Spencer hadn’t killed Carson, so there had to be evidence that someone else had. Maybe the police would eventually discover that evidence, and he would be cleared? His flight was a reasonable, if exaggerated, response to impending imprisonment for a crime he hadn’t committed — at any rate, that would be the argument. There was no blood, no forensic evidence that Spencer was guilty. Depending on the burden of proof the state would bear, that wouldn’t have been a convictable crime in the U.S. At least, Drake didn’t think so. Being in the same restaurant and leaving around the same time didn’t constitute proof, merely coincidence. If there was no eyewitness, no DNA, no murder weapon or unarguable forensic evidence, then what could the police possibly have other than a desire to declare a difficult case solved?

The taxi rolled onto the NH-8 highway toward the airport, and Drake sat forward.

“Doesn’t the AC go any colder?” he asked, wiping his brow with the back of his arm.

“Oh, no, sir. I’m sorry. That’s the best it does.”

The airport was brightly lit and buzzing with activity when Drake entered the arrival terminal, eyeing his watch with concern. He looked up at the monitor and saw that Allie’s flight had arrived twenty minutes earlier, which meant that she could be through immigration shortly unless she’d checked a bag. He glanced around the hall, searching for anyone suspicious, the back of his neck tingling as though he was being watched. Three police stood by the security exit that arriving passengers would pass through, and one of them seemed to be studying Drake. Several soldiers roamed the area near the doors, their machine guns anything but reassuring. Clumps of drivers with signs waited at a section of the floor with red paint outlining where they were allowed.

Drake ambled along, surveying the others awaiting arrivals to emerge from customs. His attention was caught by a dark-complexioned man in a beige tropical-weight suit who looked away as Drake’s eyes locked on him. The man made a show of pulling a packet of cigarettes from his breast pocket and moving toward the double glass doors, and Drake watched him go, the unease in his gut squirming like a startled snake. Could the police have figured out that Allie was arriving now, based on Spencer’s booking a room for her? He didn’t think so, but he didn’t know with any certitude. Maybe they had.

And maybe they had sent someone to intercept her.

Or to see who met her.

If the authorities had done their research on Spencer, they would have surely come across photographs on the web of the three of them after the Paititi find. So it was conceivable they would know what Allie looked like, as well as Drake.

The thought further unsettled him.

And what about the murderer? If his death was linked to Carson’s search for the treasure, if the killers knew Spencer was helping, wouldn’t they have access to the same information? Perhaps his biggest problem wasn’t the cops…

Drake started when something bumped him from behind, and he spun, nearly falling. Two children continued running, boys no older than six or seven, and he reflexively felt for his wallet, remembering Spencer’s warning about pickpockets.

Still there.

He slowed his breathing and tried to talk himself down. Sleep deprivation and adrenaline from their narrow escape were taking their toll on him, wearing at his imagination, causing him to see threats where none existed. That was the plausible explanation for his discomfiture, although rationalizing the anxiety he felt did little to mitigate it.

Something was off. He just couldn’t tell what it was. There were too many possibilities in the big terminal, too many…