Chase Baker and the God Boy: (A Chase Baker Thriller Series Book No. 3) Read Free Page B

least.
    “Elizabeth,” I say, the name
slipping off my tongue like warm water. It’s a name I have not uttered out loud
since the day I left her on a train platform in the Varanasi station, but a
name I have no doubt spoken countless times in my mind and in my sleep. It’s
also a name I heard again, just last month, in a disturbing letter that I
received at my Florence address. But now, this…
    “I can lead you to her probable
whereabouts.”
    “But that’s impossible, Singh. She’s
dead.”
    “No one dies, Mr. Baker. Not
really. Perhaps we should talk more.”
    The cobbles beneath my feet feel
like they’re turning to liquid. This conversation is creepier and creepier with
each vowel uttered.
    Don’t do it, Chase. Don’t take
the bait…Don’t…You…Do…It!
    “Follow me,” I say, my mouth
suddenly gone dry. So much for resolve. Chase the weak and the whipped.
    As Dr. Singh approaches me, I turn
away so that he doesn’t see the tears welling up in my eyes.

 
4
     

     
    It’s a three-minute walk to my second-floor apartment on Via
Guelfa. But in that time, I relive an all-too-short lifetime of memories with
Elizabeth. Our meeting in Paris. Me just coming off a particularly difficult
dig in Turkey, having assisted in uncovering an underground city in the
Nevsehir Province and trying to make an overdue novel deadline. Her trying to
work up cash for her one and only project: The precise location of the
legendary Golden Kali Statue.
    The statue was said to be important
not only as a priceless piece of man-sized gold statuary but also for the map
it supposedly contained on its upper back. Legend has it that the map
illustrates the exact whereabouts of the infamous India blue diamond deposit. Folklore
to be sure. Hell, maybe even fantasy. But a fascinating prospect all the same.
    There was more to the puzzle. A
kind of key that accessed the interior of the statue. And Elizabeth was in
possession of it. But what secrets the interior of the Kali Statue held, nobody
knew. Without the statue, the key was nothing more than a useless piece of
ancient jewelry. It wasn’t a key in the traditional sense, but instead a four-inch
long by one-inch wide piece of bronze with dozens of diamond chips embedded
inside it. Elizabeth had discovered it, of all places, in a family-run antique
shop in Rome, Italy. She purchased it for two-hundred Euros, the owner having
no idea of its real worth. But if it were the authentic key to the true Kali
statue, then its value was potentially priceless.
    But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Way ahead.
    As I approach my apartment, I spot
several young couples seated at a little round table at an outdoor bar,
drinking wine, smoking cigarettes, engaged in passionate conversation with
smiles on their faces. Smiles that tell me their future is unwritten and, from
the vantage point of their tables, entirely rosy. As it once seemed for
Elizabeth and I, when we first met.
    She already occupies a stool inside
the sparsely populated Paris Ritz Bar Hemingway when I come in for a late afternoon
’76er, one of my favorite summertime cocktails. She’s chatting it up with Colin—the
bar’s tall, semi-bald, white jacket-attired proprietor—while I ask her if the
seat beside her is taken.
    “By all means,” she says in an
American accent, brushing back shoulder-length strawberry blonde hair.
    My old friend, Colin, who’s
emigrated from a Welsh farm to devote his life to mixing cocktails and even
writing about them in magazines like Travel and Leisure , shoots me a
smile and starts mixing my drink without asking for my order.
    “And how is the writing progressing
today, Chase?” he asks while carefully placing cubes of ice into a tall glass
with silver tongs. “Or are we still recovering from sandhogging in those nasty,
arid foothills?”
    Looking up, I see the many
photos of Papa Hemingway that adorn the cherry wood paneled walls. Papa battling