He tossed the remainder of his champagne back and ordered a final drink, the prepaid card patrons bought upon entry almost depleted. The bartender, a young man with a rakish haircut and gym-toned muscles, brought him another glass, and Singh sipped the intoxicating elixir, savoring the effervescent tang. The price of each glass was enough to buy lunch for a week in his run-down neighborhood.
But that was then. Before he’d made his big score. Before he’d become a winner.
Before he’d had to run for his life.
A wave of sadness washed over him as he remembered his brother’s final words to him — a warning he hadn’t heeded. Now his brother was gone forever, leaving Singh the last in the family to carry on its legacy. He would move to more hospitable climes, find himself a young beauty to bear his children, and grow fat doing nothing, living an untroubled existence, perhaps operating a bar for tourists in an out-of-the-way spot. Anything was possible now.
Now that he had the money to fulfill his dreams.
He lingered over his champagne and glanced back at the beauty who’d caught his eye, but she was now texting someone with singular focus, uninterested in Singh any longer, as though she’d evaluated him and found him wanting. Anger surged through him at the thought of being judged by a smug princess whose biggest problems were laughable. Her parents no doubt were wealthy, rendering Singh’s low-class origins as obvious to her as if he’d had his shortcomings tattooed on his forehead.
He was used to that reaction and didn’t care. She couldn’t ruin his night. Nothing could. His first night of many where he was finally free of mundane concerns. There would be women aplenty, he reckoned, women who wanted him for who he was, who didn’t judge him with the disdain of the New Delhi royalty he despised.
Singh considered saying something to her but bit his tongue, realizing that he was probably a little drunk. The last thing he wanted was the disgrace of being thrown out of the club, which would surely be the end result of starting a fight with one of the elites. Better to bow out gracefully, return to his hotel, and sleep off his seething resentment.
He turned to go and almost collided with a middle-aged man who looked out of place in the young, cosmopolitan scene. Singh’s breath caught in his throat at the man’s icy stare, and he mumbled an apology as he staggered past, finishing his champagne on the way to the exit. The man was probably Indian mob, which ran much of Delhi, just as similar criminal syndicates operated in most major metropolises the world over. He had that vibe, the ability to radiate danger with a glance. Singh shook his head to clear it — that wasn’t his concern. None of it was. He was on his way, and the city could rot for all he cared.
Singh walked through the lobby and out the exit, where two bouncers were keeping a long line of hopefuls in orderly check. He enjoyed the envious looks from those relegated to the queue as he made his way down the block, and barely registered two figures on the other side of the street keeping pace as he reached the intersection.
His pulse quickened as he turned the corner instead of crossing, hurrying in the opposite direction from the one where he’d parked his bike, unsure whether the pair were simply muggers working the area or something more ominous. He cursed his hubris in going out — he should have stayed locked safely in his room until he’d raced for his plane. But his ego had gotten the better of him, and now he was on a dark street with unknown prospects, a rabbit with wolves in hot pursuit.
He heard footsteps and dashed away, refusing to be an easy target. Up ahead was another street packed with vehicles, their lights and horns calling to him; his pursuers would be unlikely to continue the chase in a crowded thoroughfare. He was nearly to the corner when a blow to his back knocked the wind from him and drove him forward, off balance. His feet tripped over each other as he stumbled and then went down, hard.
Singh hit the pavement with a thud, but rolled in an effort to regain his footing. He was struggling to stand when a knife-wielding figure stepped in front of him, grinning like a demon. Singh managed a cry before it was cut off by a blow to his skull, and the street receded into blackness as he lost consciousness, his last impression the impossibly sharp teeth of his attacker and the hideous deformity that was the apparition’s mouth.
Chapter 41
Silence had descended over the approach to the temple as Spencer walked along the road by the hazy light of a waning moon, only a few vehicles underway once darkness had fallen on the stretch outside of town. He checked the safety on the pistol for the third time, a round in the chamber his insurance policy should anything go wrong, the camera safely tucked in the pocket of a dark button-up short-sleeve shirt he’d bought while killing time.
His plan was to sneak in, take photographs, and melt into the night without being seen, but that would only be viable if the guards were wandering the grounds instead of manning the entry. If necessary, he would pick the lock; he’d bought a pair of cheap metal knives and a file and fashioned a set of picks as the afternoon had faded. Depending on the type of lock, he was also adept at using an aluminum can to force the mechanism, and he’d drunk a soda and used the file to create strips of easily moldable metal for just that purpose.
The temple rose above him as he neared, and he slowed and scanned the perimeter for signs of life.
Nothing.
Spencer approached the building with cautious steps, his eyes combing the area for guards. He hoped that night duty at an obscure temple would be relegated to the lowest of the low on the police force, or even better, that the building wasn’t considered to be sufficiently at risk to justify round-the-clock surveillance. He stopped thirty yards from the hulking mass and listened for any giveaways — coughing, smoking, laughter, conversation.
Five minutes of remaining still yielded no evidence of security, so he continued to the entry, where a barred metal gate was padlocked in place. A glance at the lock told him that he’d have to use the picks, and after a final perusal of the grounds, he knelt by the lock and went to work. The flat, honed blade of one knife slid into the key slot and he wedged the other alongside it, its tip filed at a right angle to create a pick, and slowly worked the tip against the tumblers while exerting steady turning pressure on the flat blade. He felt a tumbler click into place, and another, and continued brushing the pick with focused concentration. By the time the lock snapped open with an audible snick, his forehead was running with sweat, which he wiped away before tossing the lock into the shadows at the side of the temple and slipping the picks into his back pocket. He gave the area a final once-over and, confident he was alone, swung the gate open on groaning hinges.
The interior was shrouded in darkness, and Spencer worked his way carefully around piles of debris before removing his cell phone from his back pocket and using its flash as a light. He edged along the wall of the main space and, finding no mosaic, paused to study what he could make out of the layout. He spied an adjacent chamber that appeared to be some sort of shrine room and, after killing the light so as not to attract unwanted attention, worked his way toward it.
Once in the smaller room he walked to a tarp-covered area of the wall and poked his head under it. After several seconds he pulled the tarp free, and it tumbled to the floor in a pile behind him. He stepped back, gazing up at the image crafted from hundreds of tiles.
It was the mosaic from the photograph.
Somewhat dusty, but undoubtedly the same one.
“Gotcha,” he whispered, and stepped back while he freed the camera from his pocket. In the near total blackness he couldn’t make out much more than rough shapes, but even so, it was hardly spectacular enough to justify all the fuss. Perhaps eight feet square, each tile about a square inch in size, only a few glinting with gold flake that was probably simulated.