Chaos reigned in the converted farmhouse during the last morning of Dr. Stephen Frys's life. Dresser drawers hung open in his bedroom—dark, thanks to the still-closed curtains, except for a guttering candle. Dropped towels lay all over the bath, but no water speckled the tub; he'd washed in a basin so he could hear any suspicious sounds coming from outside the house. The bed stood as tidy as on any normal morning, but only because the professor hadn't slept in it.

Dr. Frys even skipped his beloved morning tea, taken with lemon, sugar, toast, and the incomparable view of the Scottish Highlands, a tradition that dated back to the first morning he and his late wife had spent in Whistlecrack House thirty-one years ago.

Blood—thanks to a trembling hand during his shave—spotted his chin and the mole on his left cheek as he lumbered down the narrow stairs. He listened to the silent, darkened house and heard only the wind outside.

He dropped his dusty suitcase to the kitchen floor with a thud, then removed his thick, black-framed eyeglasses and rubbed them clean with his handkerchief, a gesture any of his senior students knew meant a pause in the lecture while the professor turned something over in his mind. As he put the handkerchief back, he patted his pocket, reassuring himself that his cell phone was still there.

Any visitor to Whistlecrack House stopped and looked at the fireplace first when they arrived in the kitchen. Almost big enough to climb in if one crouched, it filled one wall, a great arch of brick with iron-mongered doors, a spit, hooks, and shelves for baking, roasting, or frying foods.

Last night the fireplace had been roaring. Paper after age-yellowed paper, notebook after notebook, reams of photocopied research, even old-fashioned carbon copies had flamed yellow-orange, curled, blackened, and then turned to fine gray ash almost as quickly as he could feed the fire.

Dr. Frys checked the blackened mass. A substantial part of his life lay in the still-smoldering heap. He prodded the pile with a poker, and the fire burst into new life as he exposed the last few unburned reams of typescript. He stirred the mass to make sure of the destruction.

Life does save its best jokes for last. The ashes were all that remained of research that had once made him a bit of a joke in his profession… until he gave up trying to pry open closed and comfortable minds. But now that same research had turned out to be of unexpected interest to hard-eyed, ruthless men. He'd always been half afraid of the secrets he'd discovered, but after three decades in which not even a graduate student had asked about his Méne work, he'd half forgotten about it as well. He and Von Croy should have abandoned their research without publishing any of it, left the frightful revelations where no one would ever find them.

But the cat was out of the bag now—and she'd had rabid kittens.

He checked the clock, pulled out his cell phone, and tapped in a number. It wasn't even eight yet, but there was no harm in checking.

Just the answering service again, and he'd already left a message.

Dr. Frys stepped lightly past a cream-colored wall covered with family photos—an empty hook and an oval a slightly lighter shade than the rest of the wall marked the place where a photo had hung—and went to the front sitting room. Without parting the curtains, he looked through the narrow gap between glass and fabric, wincing as the morning sun hit his eye. He repeated the process at the other side of the window.

No sign of them.

The note for the police—or them—to find sat on the mantel. An identical copy rested folded inside a little plastic 35 mm film canister he'd put down the kitchen drain, blocking the plumbing. Even if the police didn't find it, the new owners would.

He picked up his suitcase and walked to the garage, the final change to the house that his beloved wife, Emme, had lived to see. He opened the connecting door with a swift motion. His eyes swept across the dim garage, checking the condition of its sole window before he entered.

The powerful old Merkur beeped an acknowledgment as he deactivated its alarm. He placed his suitcase in the boot and pushed it shut with a soft click. He popped the bonnet and picked up his attaché case from where it lay atop the fluid reservoirs, hidden there since last night. Grit smeared the weathered leather.

He climbed into the car, pulled the door closed as softly as he had the boot, and took a deep breath as he slid the key into the ignition.

Then came the temptation. Again.

Wouldn't it be easier to just chuck the contents of his attaché into the fire and wait, engine running, in the closed garage until he escaped into the sleep he so desperately needed? Oblivion. No more strange eyes watching him as he bought his groceries, no more funny looks from the police as he spoke of burglars who took nothing, no more fearful listening at each creak and crack in the old house. A younger heart might be able to summon the courage to fight them, but his old pump with its bad valve…

Almost too much effort to run. He resettled his glasses on his nose. No. It wasn't just his life and sanity they threatened. When he'd seen that accursed monocle, realized how near the rot had spread…

Reaching into his coat pocket, he pulled out his cell phone and placed it in its dashboard cradle, checked the battery indicator, and started the car. With luck, and he couldn't have expended all his share in sixty-eight years of living, he'd meet her in London before his flight. Von Croy had always spoken highly of her. Personally, Frys had always considered her to be a bit of a loose cannon, to say the least. There was no question of her talent, her knowledge, her bravery. But her methods were so… unorthodox. Those pistols she wore—and, according to the magazines, was not shy of using—he did not consider them to be the proper tools of a serious archaeologist. But now the very qualities that had caused him to view Lara Croft with suspicion had made him seek her out for help.

The electric garage door answered to the sun-visor button.

He didn't wait for it to open all the way but backed out as soon as he thought he had clearance. But he thought wrong. He tore away the plastic weather strip at the bottom of the garage door, heard splintered wood scrape across the roof of his car as he backed out and turned around in the gravel driveway.

The glitter of sun on a windscreen down the road panicked him. A sedan was coming from the north. He forgot about shutting the garage door again as he backed around and shifted into drive, then stomped on the accelerator. Gravel flew as his tires spun. He fishtailed at the end of the driveway and knocked over the white-painted rural delivery postbox with "Whistlecrack House" painted in green, friendly script on each side.

A silver roadster appeared in the road south of his driveway, pulling out from cover as it moved to block the narrow mountain road. The driver stared straight at him from under a cloth cap, daring him to smash into the side of the little sports car. Frys swerved into the leafless bushes the little car had been concealed behind and barreled straight through, then swerved back onto the road that snaked along the side of the fells.

The sedan and the silver roadster were right behind him. With a burst of speed, the roadster shot ahead, coming around his right side too quickly for Frys to do anything but swerve into the gravel it kicked up from the slender verge. Then it was past him. Its brake lights flared, and he stomped on his own brakes as the sedan pulled next to him, the sound of its tires like the yowling of an alley cat. He dragged the Merkur against the mountainside, caught a flash of the sedan driver's pox-scarred cheek in the second before his air bag deployed, smacking him in the face and flipping his glasses off the back of his head.

Fighting dizziness, Frys clawed the white mass of the air bag down, saw blurred images of men getting out of the sedan and roadster. One coming around his side of the car carried a tire iron… or perhaps a gun. It was impossible to tell without his specs.

There was still a way out.

He shifted the car into reverse, ignored the horrible squealing from the left front tire, and floored it. Bang! He jumped, unsure if the noise had been a gunshot or a tire exploding. But the car was still moving, and he was still alive… He held the steering wheel purposefully straight, directing the Merkur across the road and off the steep mountainside.

Life does save its best jokes for last, Professor Stephen Frys (emeritus) thought again as the car began to slide down the hill to the discordant tune of the suspension tearing itself to bits. Then it tipped and rolled over backwards and began to tumble. It occurred to him that he hadn't gripped his attaché case to his chest, and he groped for it blindly. But then a hard whump, like a cricket bat striking the back of his head, brought the oblivion he'd rejected only moments before, back in the garage