Chapter 15

It was the middle of the night, and Lara slept soundly. Her dreams were hopeful, fantasies of a possible future. She, with graying hair, but looking much the same, was dedicating a wing of the Royal Museum of...

There was someone banging during her speech.

In a moment, Lara was noiselessly awake and a moment later was completely aware of her surroundings. The banging was on her bedroom door and was not part of her dream. She reached for the shotgun that waited patiently next to her bed and rose, wearing only an oversized T-shirt..

The knocking was getting more and more frantic. Lara opted not to put a round through the door, as she had a guest and intruders rarely knocked.

Opening the door a bit revealed Max wearing nothing but his boxers and carrying a motorsports magazine.

"Please, let me in," he pleaded.

Lara opened the door, training the shotgun on whatever creature was pursuing Max. There was none.

Max was already heading across the room towards Lara's balcony and...

...bathroom.

"Sorry," Max said quickly, "but even my first apartment had more than one can. Could you excuse me?"

Lara shouldered the shotgun and left the room.

This was a situation that she had not planned for.

Lara stood at the railing for several minutes, until she heard Max yell.

"Woo-hoo! I'm using a Hoe-Dee-Doh...and I'm lovin' it!"

Less than a minute later, Max opened the door,

"Sorry about that..."

"All part of being the good host."

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Yes."

"Where the hell does your butler take care of business? That dude sounds like he needs to go like twenty times a day."

"I really don't know," she replied through a yawn.

"Okay, I can take a hint..."

Max started back towards the music room and Lara returned to her bed, but a completely grotesque scent blocked her way.

"Max!"

"What? Oh...yeah. You know, you really shouldn't have fed me beans..."

* * *

Unable to sleep because of jet lag, Max went over to his editing suite and started everything up. He quickly checked through and new E-mail, only responding to the messages from his wife and daughters.

With that complete, Max withdrew a digital video cassette from a hidden compartment in one of his cases. He inserted it into one of the decks and, after looking around to see if he was being watched, played the tape.

The image was somewhat fuzzy, that fact and the high, unmoving angle gave the footage a look similar to that of a surveillance camera. Nothing happened for a for moments, then Max shuttled the tape forward until a figure entered the frame.

It was Lara Croft, and the room was the bathroom of Max's hotel room. Lara quickly undressed in front of the camera that surreptitiously taped her. She then stared into the mirror for a moment, her finger tracing what appeared to be a tan line, then got into the shower. Even though she had closed the door, her blurry silhouette could be plainly seen as she washed herself.

As Max had this tape playing, he seemed more lost in thought than interested in looking at Lara's nude form. Going back to his Powerbook, Max opened his financially software as large numbers of red that stared him in the face.

* * *

The following morning, Max and Lara stood at the start of her assault course. She wore her normal outfit of Shorts and leotard, and Max wore his camera vest and pads over his khakis and Hawaiian shirt.

Max was still a little winded from their 10K run - but he was never going to let Lara know about it. She had insisted that he train with her so that they could learn each others' limits and anticipate each others' actions.

Lara waited a moment before starting the course. Truth was, she was a little winded from the run as well - but she was never going to let Max know about it. She looked about slowly, for any diversion that would allow her heart to slow down twenty beats a minute - then she saw it.

"So, Max, what all of your little toys there?"

Max lowered the camera, and regarded her with a little bit of annoyance. He had been pointing that thing at her all day long, but Lara could plainly see that the red RECORD light never came on - he was just holding the thing and pointing it at her.

He must be hoping that she would scratch her bum.

"Well, the camera here is digital, fitted with a 10-100x optical zoom infrared lens. I can go up to 1000x with digital zoom, but the quality goes to hell if I do. There are on-board batteries for the camera, good for most of the day - depending on what I'm doing and the temperature and all that. There are extras here in the vest that about double the time from the onboard.

"Here on my wrist is my Newton. It's got an on-board GPS receiver combined with topos of most of the world and street maps of the major cities - I also use the thing to take notes and such on shoots - I can shoot a lot of footage over a short period of time - most of that is crap, so I log when the good stuff happens so that I don't have to go hunting all over for it later.

"In my vest I keep the batteries I mentioned earlier, extra tapes, my smokes, extra clips for the Glocks, and whatever else I think I might need - I'm a firm believer in the 'ounce of prevention' cliché."

Max withdrew his sidearm from its holster. He wore his weapons because he saw Lara strapping on her own - when in Rome...

"Ten millimeter Glock 20. Little more punch that your Brownings, but a little harder to use. I have a infrared sight mounted within the spring mechanism - I used to use those clamp-on jobbies, but they just look to tacky and get knocked out of alignment if you breath on 'em wrong.

"When the fit really hits the shan, I have a hold-out Glock 29 - also ten millimeter, and the magazines for both are interchangeable."

His hand disappeared behind his back and out with the little brother to his standard piece.

"Ten you're lucky number?"

"Naw, I had a Bureau friend of mine that swore by the caliber, and my Baretta was getting more than a little long in the tooth."

Lara effortlessly drew her own sidearms.

"These have always worked fine for myself."

"Yeah, I meant to ask you about that..."

"I'm not replacing my guns for you. Have you already got sponsors lined up for this movie?"

"Nothing like that - but I'm surprised that you don't get a check from Browning every month. You did for that gun what the Postal Carriers did for the AK-47."

"Another good weapon."

"Kolishnikov's finest. I'm terrible with a rifle - bad eye dominancy thing, and this camera rig only make it worse."

"You could just use it on your right and train your eye..."

"Yeah, one of those things I've been meaning to get around to. Anyway, I don't have much use for rifles in this business, give me a shotgun with a laser, then there's no screwing around."

"I've used my share, but the slow reloads tend to get in the way."

"Not with my scatter-gun, sister. Anyway, I was a little curious about your left-hand gun - who did the work?"

Lara held aloft her weapon that ejected spent casings to the left as opposed to the right.

"A little shop downtown did it for me."

"Cool. See, when I'm both shooting and shooting at the same time, the shells from the Glock smack against side of the camera - I was just wondering what you did to get them to eject the other way."

"I'll get you the number."

"Thanks," he replied, noticing that Lara's eyes were still upon him, "Oh, I see."

"What?"

"You don't care about the junk I wear, you just wanted to check out the merchandise."

"Pardon?"

Max started a slow circle, waggling his rear end the whole way around - all for Lara's benefit.

"You can lookie, but no touchie!"

Lara fought the smile that came to her lips, barely winning out against Max's gyrating behind.

"You know you want it..."

"I haven't any notes to stick in you trousers."

"Sure, treat me like a piece of meat - you women are all alike."

"Excuse me?"

"Ah, you're right. At home, it's nothing but women - what with the wife and the two daughters. Hell, even the dogs are bitches.

"Would that be Danger and...Stinky?"

"You got it. I have to wade hip-deep through the estrogen there - no worries here."

"I'm a girl too..."

"Aw, save that crapola Lara. I bet your ying-yang is bigger than mine..."

Lara was speechless, she wanted to give this man a vulgar retort, but there were no words coming, and the more she fought to say something amusing, the farther away the words went.

Then a single word came to her, one that would give her an escape, however brief.

"Go!"

She caught Max off guard and leapt to the first row of crates before he had even moved. Lara's jumped deftly from one obstacle to another, quickly outdistancing her companion. Upon reaching the set of wooden columns, she paused just long enough to look over her shoulder.

Max was no longer behind her.

This was the moment that Lara was dreading - the decision.

Even though it was merely her practice course, Lara's mental list of top ten course times was something that she took great pride in - but Max may have fallen and injured himself. What should she do.

Lara then decided that she would make a lesson out of the experience for Max. If he was to travel with her (and remain out of the way - as he had promised) then he might want to reconsider the trip if he was not able to make it through her relatively simple obstacle course.

She pressed on through the course.

The doubt that her decision had brought out from within her was smoothed out as she navigated the rest of the course, muscles working over obstacles that were commonplace in the field diminishing the feelings...

Lara crawled on all fours through the final portion of the course before the targets were to spring to life, but there was something else out there before her.

A pair of boots.

Completing the portion of the course, Lara stood and saw Max, who was taping her every move. Not wanting to speak to him at that current moment, she drew her pistols and and started in on the closest target, half a dozen rounds knocking it to the ground. She proceeded through the remainder of the range, and sprinted for the flags that marked the end of the course.

As she was catching her wind, she noticed that Max was approaching with camera glued to her. Lara's mood was quite evident on her face and tone of voice.

"The whole point of this is to see if you can keep up with me, not to see of you can walk faster than I can climb..."

"I was just taping you, thought I would get a better angle from down here - what's up."

"Why don't we try again - but this time you make it through proper."

"What's the problem?"

"I want to be sure that you can make it through the course."

"Where you go, I go. C'mon, I've done this before..."

"Now I want you to do it for me."

"I could take that on a few different levels..."

"I'm not joking."

"Lara, I don't know how to tell you this, but there are things in the world that your Jungle Gym here doesn't exactly cover. I mean, how many zip lines have you actually come across in the field?"

"You might be surprised."

"I'll be able to keep up with you out there, I've been doing that kind of thing for a few years now..."

"Then you'll have no problem negotiating my 'Jungle Gym.'"

"All right..."

Max headed back towards the start of Lara's training aid.

She followed him there, and he took his place on the first crate.

Lara produced a stopwatch and a small video camera. She powered on the tiny device, pointed the lens at Max and instructed, "whenever you're ready..."

"I thought I was following you."

"No. I'll return the favor and tape from down here - tit for tat."

Max turned to her, trying to discover of she was joking...she was not.

Lara, in turn, was enjoying the moment. On the one hand, she felt a sense of poetic justice rise in her - Max was not going to have things his way (for once). However, she was feeling something else, something deeper than her amusement. There were few people in the world who could have completed her assault course on the first try - there were just too many things that had to be dealt with, too many disciplines that needed to be mastered.

She was relieved that Max would fail her test.

It all stemmed from the softness that had been dredged up by Max's arrival in her life. Lara did enjoy the time that they had spent together - in a masochistic sort of way - but she had an absolute revulsion to going back into the field with him. This softness that she had been feeling was merely an annoyance as she researched material and tended to her local business - in the field it could easily cost her life. If he was not able to keep up with her over her chosen route, then he should not be allowed to join her, and neither should the feeling.

"Waiting for a special invitation?" Lara asked as she began recording.

"No."

Reluctantly, Max clipped his camera rig to his back and surveyed the first leg of the course. Satisfied that he had as much information as he was going to get, Max took a step back and vaulted himself into the air.

Lara was initially impressed. She had to get a running start to clear the first gap in her course, but Max leapt with the grace of a dancer.

And landed with the balance of a two-year-old. He had almost overshot the far edge of the crate, then backpedaled his arms for balance. After recovering, he shot Lara a look that could have toasted bread, then continued.

Lara actually saw the moment when Max stopped thinking and worrying and gave himself over, as Lara had done so many times. His next jumps and climbs were much more controlled - especially the landings.

Lara was beginning to get worried.

That worry stopped when Max reached the series of tall columns, designed to teach ultimate control of leaps - something that Max did not possess. He arrived atop the first spire too fast, and plummeted off of the far edge.

The sand that surrounded much of the assault course was, in fact, over a foot thick, a fact that Max was pleased about as he impacted - though the fall had knocked the breath from him,.

He looked to his right, and Lara was there, lens looking to him and then to the stopwatch. For a breathless moment, he thought of all of the people who would pay for the footage of him stumbling and falling through this course. Max had deliberately made sure that he was rarely photographed for just that reason. Trying desperately to relax, Max inhaled the tiniest bit of air - but was soon breathing again and rose to his feet.

Lara panned the camera back to him as a drill sergeant regards a recruit. Do you want to quit yet? the look on her face implied. Max ran down to the end of the columns and pulled himself up onto the low crate, his shirt tail rising a little too much, and his waistband hanging a little too low for Lara's taste - she quickly turned the camera away from Max's bum.

And Max pressed on.

* * *

It was roughly seven minutes later when Max rose from the bunker-like area he had to crawl through. Three rows of targets suddenly sprang to life before him.

Despite the blood flowing from his temple and the ribs he was sure were cracked (or at least bruised) Max drew his Glock and fired a single round at the nearest of the targets. The slug hit its mark and the target returned to the ground.

Lara was impressed, not necessarily with Max's accuracy, but with the stopping power of his weapons. It typically took Lara half a dozen rounds from her Brownings to knock over her targets - a single millimeter made all the difference.

Max finished off the first row, then dropped to one knee and braced himself for the second. For the third row, he brought his camera into the actions, using it as a reference for the final shots fired.

When the last target was downed, Max holstered his sidearm and ran as fast as he was able - Lara kept up with a light jog - to the finish flags and promptly collapsed on the platform.

"How...did I do?" Max managed to ask between wheezes.

"I seriously doubt my personal record is in any jeopardy."

"I mean...do I pass?"

"For the moment, yes."

"Cool," Max gestured to one of Lara's Brownings and then to his own temple. "Now, would you mind putting me out of my misery?"