by E. E. Knight
Lara held up the shattered crystal on its ivory handle. “Ajay did the world a great service after all. She must have smashed it when she tried to stab me.”
She looked up at the stars, bright and close enough to touch—which reminded her that she’d have to ask someone at the Royal Observatory to keep an eye on the vicinity of Rigel.
EPILOGUE
Heather Rourke checked her Bulova watch for the umpteenth time.
Outside it rained, a typical dreary English winter day. She’d been battling a head cold all week. She’d even considered canceling, but in the end she hadn’t. She knew that she needed closure.
She’d spent a half hour examining the pub from beams to bogs, nursing a whiskey and soda. Croft was late. Somehow, that didn’t surprise her.
“Set me up again, please,” she told the bartender. The barkeep left off his talk with a beer drinker at the other end of the bar.
A motorcycle rumbled outside, and she heard tires screech.
Lara Croft had arrived.
She entered, smelling of leather, auto exhaust, burnt rubber, and just a hint of Armani.
“Hot lemonade, please,” she told the bartender.
“Hot lemonade?”
“Hot water. Lemons. A little sugar.” She revealed her brilliant teeth.
“Yes, but we don’t—”
“Tea then. Black and strong. You’ve got that, don’t you?”
“Strong enough to stand a spoon up in it, miss.”
Lara Croft slid onto the stool next to Heather. A sheltie trotted up and gave her motorcycle boots a sniff. She reached down to pat its head.
“Thanks for finding time to meet with me,” Heather offered as a greeting.
Lara laughed. “If I’d given you an hour a month ago, the whole affaire d’Méne might have turned out better … for you, anyway. Or maybe not. You must have gotten a terrific story out of it.”
Heather shrugged. “I wrote it up. Everything that happened to me. Everything you told me. And you know what? It was terrific. Best thing I ever wrote.”
“I’m glad. When is it going to be published? And where?”
Now it was Heather’s turn to laugh. “Are you kidding? SNN won’t touch it without video. Gave it to an editor I know at the Atlantic, and she advised me to try a publication called Weird Tales. When I showed it to National Geographic, they did everything but have security show me out. Wish I had that magic lens. It would make my conversations with editors so much easier.”
“Better that you don’t.”
Heather downed a gulp of her new drink. “Agreed.”
“Hope it doesn’t hurt your rep in the journo world.”
“Seems the theory being whispered in Washington is that I got dehydrated in the jungle and went a bit delirious. You can have the article if you want it. For your archives.”
“Thank you. I look forward to reading it.”
The bartender put down a tray holding a pot of tea, sugar, and an empty cup. She poured her tea and took a sip. Then slid a five-pound note across the bar and told the bartender to keep the change.
“Any news from Borg?” Heather asked.
“He’s got his cable show back, I understand,” Lara said. “One of these days, I’ll have to watch it. But somehow I never seem to have the time to curl up in front of the telly.”
“He took it hard, losing Ajay like that. A terrible way to die.”
“She was lost to him a long time before that, Heather.”
Heather thought back to the journalistic wolf packs up and down the East Coast, in Washington, D.C., New York, the Cape, and the Hamptons. She had run with those packs. But the whiff of fresh blood she’d scented at a Georgetown soiree a year ago struck her as pale and pointless now. Would she ever have the same rush, sitting at a polished table opposite some egotistical president or prime minister, after seeing the face of a Deep God?
She thought not. In a way, she understood Ajay. “Legend hunting might be addictive. I’d like to try it again. Any chance of you teaching me to be a Tomb Raider? I don’t quit easily.” She was only half joking.
Lara Croft’s eyes went moist, but no tears fell.
Heather realized belatedly what she’d said, whom she’d reminded Lara of. She looked away, offered her friend silence as an apology.
The trill of Lara’s cell phone broke the quiet.
“Excuse me, please,” Lara said, standing and striding toward the door.
Heather finished her second whiskey and paid the bartender for both drinks. She put on her camel hair coat and walked outside.
The Tomb Raider she’d seen in action in Peru and on the Capricorn Atoll stood next to her cycle, the earpiece of her cell phone held in by her finger, microphone hanging in front of her mouth.
“When’s the next flight out of Heathrow? Good. Tell him I’ll be on it. I just have to run home and pick up my bag. No, Winston, you’ll do no such thing. Jamaica is paradise this time of year, and you’re going to spend a fortnight there if I have to put a chlorpromazine dart into you and have you shipped as cargo.” She clicked the phone closed.
“Going somewhere special?” Heather asked.
Lara grinned as she replaced her phone and earpiece. “Smelling another story, Heather? Sorry, dear, no room for tagalongs on this trip.”
“I learned my lesson; don’t worry. But you will promise to at least tell me about it when you get back, won’t you? Off the record, of course.”
The Tomb Raider put on her helmet, zipped up her jacket against the drizzle. Heather could still make out the dazzlingly beautiful brown eyes, shining with excitement behind the smoked plastic. The lioness had caught the scent of game. “It’s a deal, provided you write it up for my archives.”
Lara Croft didn’t wait for a reply, but flicked on the twin headlamps and gunned her Triumph motorcycle, sending pebbles flying. Heather watched her drive out of sight, trying to imagine herself on that motorcycle, a Tomb Raider in the tradition of Lara Croft, speeding into the cold rain down the public highway toward an unknown destiny. Then she laughed, shook her head, and walked over to where she had parked her car. One Tomb Raider in the world was plenty.
As long as that Tomb Raider’s name was Lara Croft.