Read Tomb Raider: The Ten Thousand Immortals for Free Online Page A

couple of dozen passengers waiting on the platform: several business types, all traveling singly, some younger people who might have been students, and several small groups of mostly women traveling in twos and threes.
    Lara had stood well back on the platform until the train was ready to leave, so that she could check out the other passengers. No one seemed out of the ordinary.
    Lara always took the aisle seat of a pair rather than sit at the window and leave a seat free for a stranger to sit next to her, even if the train was not busy. She never chose to sit alone where four or six seats faced each other.
    A couple of women were sitting opposite each other in a four-seat with their luggage occupying the other two seats, and a man in a suit and raincoat was sitting in a window seat further up the carriage.
    Five minutes after they left the station, the door between Lara’s carriage and the one in front opened, and a man walked through it. Lara looked up, expecting to see the guard. It wasn’t someone in the First Great Western livery. The man, in jeans and a blazer, caught Lara’s eye and looked quickly away, ducking into an aisle seat opposite her, half a dozen rows forward of her position towards the rear of the carriage.
    She didn’t like it.
    Only a few days before, Lara had encountered Magazine Man on the Tube, and now this. Why would someone switch carriages five minutes into a train journey? Why would anyone switch carriages on a virtually empty train? It was obvious he wasn’t looking for the loo.
    Lara thought about switching to the carriage behind hers, but decided against it. She was safe enough where she was. There were other people in the carriage. The guard would have to check tickets at some point.
    It’s paranoia. It’s the anxiety. Get a grip, Lara, she told herself. She checked her watch. It was less than ten minutes to Slough. She could switch carriages there. Nothing was going to happen in broad daylight on a train in front of total strangers. Except things have already happened, Lara, she reminded herself. Things happened on Yamatai, and Magazine Man followed me to the hotel. Just switch carriages.
    Lara didn’t telegraph her movements. She kept her eyes open and listened for the announcement and the slowing down of the train. There were people on the platform, and she was close to the exit behind her. She wouldn’t even have to pass the guy.
    Leaving it to the last moment, Lara ducked off the train as the doors opened for passengers to embark. She ran along the platform so that she didn’t have to pass the guy who’d joined her carriage, and got back on the train in the carriage behind the one she had stepped into at Paddington Station. She only just made it.
    That was risky, she thought, and probably stupid.
    She took a moment, messing about with her rucksack, to check the passengers. Two or three had got on at Slough. She’d followed them into the carriage. The other half-a-dozen were the kids she’d seen standing on the platform at Paddington. A tiny, mousey girl with shoulder-length hair and an upturned nose was sitting with five boys. They were a mixed bag: a jock, a nerd, a very tall boy who looked like a swimmer without the shoulders, and two boy-next-door types. They were sitting together in the six-section a few rows in front of where she was standing. No one was sitting in the four-section on the other side of the aisle from them.
    “Safety in numbers,” she said under her breath. She walked up the aisle towards them.
    “Hi,” she said. “We are going to Oxford, right?”
    “That’s right,” said the only girl in the group. “You’re on the right train. Didn’t you hear the announcement?”
    “I was in a world of my own,” said Lara. “Stupid of me. I’m sure that voice must have read out the stations more than once, but somehow I managed to tune it out, and then… I don’t know.” She shrugged and smiled. She began to turn.
    “Join us,” said the girl,