The Goddess Legacy

Chapter 3

Spencer stood motionless on the balcony, head cocked at an angle as he listened intently. Drake nearly ran into him as his eyes adjusted to the darkness. Spencer held out a warning hand as a muffled pounding sounded from next door. He held a finger to his lips and then leaned into Drake, perspiration streaming from his hairline down his neck.

“We can make it to the ground floor from the balcony. I’ll go first,” he murmured.

“What? Who’s after you?” Drake whispered.

Spencer edged to the railing as though Drake hadn’t spoken and vaulted over in one smooth move. Drake could see his fingers gripping the metal lip, and then they disappeared, and he heard Spencer land on the veranda below with a thump. A crash echoed from the adjacent room — someone had kicked down the door.

The noise spurred Drake into action and he sped to the railing. Spencer was staring up at the balcony, motionless. Drake swung himself over the railing and hung suspended for a split second before dropping the remaining six feet and landing in an unsteady crouch. Spencer whispered to him as he scanned the manicured grounds.

“You okay?”

“I… yeah.”

Spencer pointed at an arch over a walkway that led along one wing of the hotel. “If we’re lucky, we can give them the slip.”

Drake had a thousand questions, but one glance at Spencer’s drawn expression convinced him to save them for later. Spencer led the way to the path and then stopped at the sight of police emergency lights strobing at the far end, by the hotel entrance. He looked around and met Drake’s eyes with an angry glare.

“Looks like we’re going to have to do this the hard way.”

They returned to the arch and Spencer gestured at a dark grove of trees. “Over there,” he said, and with a final glance at the balcony, took off at a run, covering the twenty yards from the main building to the grove in seconds. Drake mimicked his sprint and paused beside him, panting, eyeing the hotel silhouetted against the stars. Three men in brown uniforms appeared on the balcony next to Drake’s and peered over at the grounds below, backlit by the room’s light. Spencer grunted and turned away, eyes roaming along the service walkway that skirted a tall perimeter wall.

“Now what?” Drake asked, and then ducked down as a flashlight blinked to life on the balcony and swept the nearby grass. Spencer did the same and grimaced as he studied the wall.

“We need to get off the grounds.”

“How? Why?”

“Later. See that?” Spencer asked, pointing into the shadows to their right.

“No. What?”

“I think it’s a ladder.”

“We’re going over the wall?”

“If they don’t shoot us first.”

“Shoot us? What’s going on, Spencer?” Drake demanded, but Spencer was already moving as the flashlight beam played across the base of the trees. Drake swore under his breath and trailed Spencer. Thankfully the lush vegetation hid their progress as they trotted along a hedge that ringed the perimeter.

Spencer stopped and waited for Drake to catch up, and then leaned over and lifted one end of a rickety wooden ladder. “Grab the other end,” he whispered.

Drake did so and they hurried along, ignoring the flashlight beam behind them. A whistle shrieked from the balcony, and another light pierced the gloom, roaming along the hedge, and then another. If Spencer heard the whistle, he gave no sign and continued without hesitation. Shouts followed them, and then running footsteps from the ground floor echoed off the hotel’s rear terrace as additional police arrived, accompanied by the hotel’s security staff.

More whistles shattered the night air, but it was obvious to Drake and Spencer from the directionless yells that they hadn’t been spotted. They stayed low as they jogged, the ladder growing heavier with each yard, Spencer intent on some destination ahead of them only he could see.

They reached a gentle curve in the wall and paused at a gap in the cover. Spencer eyed the dark forms behind them and then looked at Drake over his shoulder. “Now or never. Ready?”

Drake nodded. They took off at a fast run and covered the open ground without drawing any attention, and darted behind another long strip of plants. Once they were out of sight of the rooms, Spencer hefted his end of the ladder and leaned it against the wall, where it rested three-quarters of the way to the top. He squinted up at the tangerine moon and shifted his focus to the ladder.

“That should be good enough.”

“Is that broken glass along the edge?” Drake asked.

“I’ll let you know in a second.”

Spencer climbed the rungs with ease. He hesitated at the top and then pulled himself up and over the wall without a word. Another whistle sounded from nearby, and a light beam tracked along the hedge toward Drake’s position. Drake forced himself up the ladder as a cry of alarm went up from the hotel, and a voice yelled from the nearby trees.

“Stop or I’ll shoot!”

He momentarily froze in the beam and then continued up the rungs. The officer blew his whistle and called to the others, and Drake hauled himself over the rim, ignoring the scraping from glass shards worn smooth from decades of exposure to the elements. The very real threat of a bullet provided ample motivation to coax more speed from his tired limbs. A pistol barked from the trees and a slug ricocheted off the mortar, missing him by several yards, and then he was on the far side of the wall, lowering himself before losing his grip and falling the remainder of the way to the moist ground.

Drake landed on his side with a pained grunt. Spencer leaned over him and offered his hand. “You hurt?”

Drake shook his head and probed his ribs. “Don’t think anything’s broken.”

Spencer pulled Drake to his feet and motioned to where a group of street urchins were watching them with curious stares. “Let’s go. We can lose them in the alleys.”

“Spencer…”

“Save it until we’re in the clear,” Spencer snapped, and then bolted across the road without waiting for a reply, dodging a retired school bus painted every color of the rainbow that was stuffed to capacity with passengers. Drake watched him fade into the shadows and blinked away sweat. What is going on? An hour ago he’d been ensconced in his first-class pod, pampered in climate-controlled comfort, and now he was running from the police, who were shooting at him?

Drake drove himself forward, ignoring the pain in his chest as he followed his friend. He managed to avoid an auto-rickshaw that appeared out of nowhere, its headlight extinguished or broken, and made it across the road to where Spencer had fled into a scattering of shanties. The jeers of children blended with sirens from the front of the hotel as the police mobilized, the shot fired signaling that there would be no holds barred in chasing them down.

Drake found Spencer by a run-down market. Its interior was illuminated by a single overhead bulb, and a score of faces stared out at them from inside: two muddy Caucasian males were an uncommon sight in the slum. Several tough-looking youths eyed them from a doorway across the narrow way, and Spencer motioned Drake nearer.

“We need to put some distance between us and the hotel. They’ll have a manhunt going soon enough,” Spencer said, never looking away from the thugs.

Their discussion was interrupted by the whoop of a siren from behind them, and Spencer pulled Drake down an alley that paralleled the road, electric wiring spanning overhead like black spaghetti. They hurried along, pushing past locals loitering on their rear stoops, all the while ignoring the occasional pull on their clothes from children pleading for handouts.

“Whose bright idea was it to come to New Delhi again?” Drake asked.

“Trust me, if I could turn back the clock…” Spencer went silent for a moment. “You got any money?”

“Some.”

“How much?”

“About four grand.”

“Cash?”

“I cleaned out my safe. Got a few credit cards, too.”

Spencer shook his head. “Too risky. They’ll figure out we’re together sooner or later.”

“Are you going to tell me what this is all about?”

Another siren wailed from the far end of the alley, and Spencer’s tone hardened. He indicated another pathway between the buildings, too narrow for anything but pedestrian traffic. “Down this way. Hear the music?”

“No. My ears are still ringing from gunshots and sirens.”

Spencer took off at a fast trot and Drake struggled to keep up. He had no idea where all the people had come from, but when they turned into an intersecting tributary, he found himself in a swarm of locals all jostling to get to where he could now make out the dissonant strains of a melody. Spencer was taller than the majority of the throng, so Drake had no problem keeping him in sight. When they finally emerged onto a wider dirt street, Spencer waited for him to catch up before pressing on.

The aroma of exotic spices greeted them as they neared a junction, where tarps were strung in a procession along one of the roads. Thousands of people wandered along the open-air market, lighting provided by illegal taps of the streetlamps by entrepreneurial merchants selling every imaginable sort of merchandise.

“We’re not out of the woods yet,” Spencer grumbled, and shouldered through a group of women haggling with an elaborately bearded man demonstrating a battery-operated herb grinder, his turban bobbing as he enthusiastically assured them the device was foolproof and would last forever.

The howl of a motorcycle approached through the shoppers, and Spencer ducked into a stall selling bags and hats. He selected a black baseball cap and tossed a few notes at the merchant, who wordlessly pocketed it before returning to his newspaper. Spencer pulled on the cap and stepped out of the far side of the stall, and then led Drake further into the labyrinth of vendors. They passed a stall with car stereo speakers blaring what sounded like monkeys banging on pots, and Spencer angled his head toward Drake. “We should be able to lose them in this maze.”

“Why are the police after you, Spence?”

“It’s a long story.”

“What did you do?”

“Nothing.”

“They were shooting at me, Spencer.”

“Yeah, well, sorry about that. Look at the bright side — at least they missed.” He stopped and looked around. “We need to find somewhere to lie low. Someplace off the radar.” He began walking and Drake accompanied him. “You got your phone?” Spencer asked.

“No. It’s back in the room.”

“You can’t go back to the hotel.”

“Why not? I haven’t done anything.”

“I booked your reservation. They’ll be waiting for you to get to me.”

“But…”

“Just as well you left your phone there. They can track it.”

“Spencer, why would the police want to track my phone?”

Spencer grimaced. “To find me, of course.”

They emerged onto a boulevard teeming with vehicles, and Spencer waved down a green and yellow auto-rickshaw. After a halfhearted negotiation, he and Drake climbed into the back just as a drizzle began pelting the fiberglass enclosure. They sat in silence as the driver battled through the impossible traffic, the chaotic current of vehicles apparently random.

“Where are we going?” Drake ventured.

Spencer eyed the driver and lowered his voice. “More toward Old Delhi. It’s sketchier up there, but also less likely to be plugged in. Our odds of finding someplace discreet are way better.”

“So we’re going to an area that’s worse than what we just left?” Drake whispered, looking around at the squalid buildings and crumbling cinder-block dwellings.

“Oh, that was nothing.”

Drake sighed in exasperation. “You need to tell me what’s going on, Spencer.”

“I will,” Spencer promised, inclining his head at the driver with a raised eyebrow. “Later.”

Drake got the message: he was to stay quiet until Spencer felt it was safe to talk. The rickshaw continued on its stuttering way, and the men fell silent, the events of the last hour obviously weighing heavily on them as they motored through the New Delhi night.