A New Beginning

How did the stranger know about Newkirk spying on her? She had figured as much when Zip found all the signals and chips hidden on her. She had noticed something suspicious was going on but did it really involve this guy?

"What the hell is going on around here?" she hissed and entered her standard combat stance. She was ready to take him out in a fist fight and kick his gun on the floor out of reach if he was going to go for it.

"You want to tell her what's going on here?" John then asked the professor and he just moved himself towards Lara.
"Please! He's insane! He broke into my hotel room and set up all this stuff! I just came back! I didn't know!"
John froze for a while since that was actually a really valid answer to make him seem like a bad guy more and more. He then looked over at the surveillance tapes and got an idea. If he really recordered it, there could be evidence to show her that it's been him all along.
"May I?" he pointed over at the laptops and Newkirk slightly flinched as if he knew what his plans were.

It was a bizarre sight; the doctor thrashing around on the bed like a dying fish and a seemingly homeless man surrounded by tons of technological equipment. She didn't buy any of it.

"Quit your games, Marcus. Why are you spying on me?" Lara asked while her eyes were carefully following the other man's movements who apparently tried to access the surveillance cameras and tapes.

He accessed the various tapes the professor recorded, and indeed, it showed him access the hotel. Various different hours were shown till very early in the morning. Slowly looking back towards it he let the woman interrogate the professor on her own terms. Beginning from the hours he began recording.
It didn't last long before he saw the same woman also access the hotel when ten minutes later the professor followed. he fast forwarded the tape again and a few hours later the woman excited the hotel in the afternoon. The professor also went out but almost two hours later, John paused the tape for now the professor was walking alongside another man, who he didn't recognize.
Newkirk seemed he didn't operate on this madness on his own.

"Lara," the man stuttered. "Please. This is all a big misunderstanding."

"Oh please," she chuckled sarcastically. "You wouldn't believe how often I've heard these words. Stop taking me for a fool. Tell me what this is." She walked up to the set of monitors and spying equipment the stranger seemed to be dealing with. She saw surveillance camera footage of her leaving the hotel earlier.

The doctor was shaking, his face was pale and beads of sweat were forming on his forehead. "Y-y-you need to believe me, please. Just hear me out."

She crossed her arms, her foot tapping on the carpet. "I am."

"Please, get this off of me!" He anxiously turned his head to the man behind him, then back to Lara. "This isn't needed. I'm not going to harm anyone!"

She raised her eyebrows and looked at the stranger. Then she shrugged and walked up to him before kneeling down to pick up the knife she had thrown in that direction earlier. She cut him loose and took a step back. "Be a good boy, Marcus."

The historian got up from the bed in a hurry, massaging his wrists that were clearly hurt from being tied up so tightly. He sat at the edge of the bed, his eyes aimlessly wandering across the hotel room. His lower lip was shaking rapidly as if he was about to start crying.

"You better start talking," Lara encouraged him.

She could see his hands shaking, a single drop of sweat was making its way down the tip of his nose.

Before she knew it, the old man jumped up, knocking her over in the process. The adventurer didn't completely fall to the ground as she was able to brace herself. The second she got back on her feet she saw Newkirk grabbing the stranger's handgun that had slid under the bed when Lara knocked it out of his hands.

Before either of them could do anything, the historian raised the pistol and shoved it into his mouth without hesitation. The sweat on his face had mixed with tears and as Lara reached out for him he pulled the trigger, the sound of the gunshot echoing through the room.

The gunshot still rang in his ears as he saw the professor's body fall down on the floor revealing the wall behind him covered in blood and a small black hole. It was as if everything went ten times slower, now they will never find their answers. At least not through him. Now ignoring the scene as if it was his every day routine, John zoomed in onto the man's face next to Newkirk's when they entered the building, now also breaking the silence.

"You know this guy?" and he looked over towards the female.
Deep inside he felt rushed, for a gunshot that went off in a luxurious hotel as this one, they probably already called the cops and as someone who is declared dead by the State, that could rouse some problems should they be captured.

Lara leaned her back against the closed hotel room door. She closed her eyes and let out a shaky sigh. She was so sick of witnessing murders, whether they were self-inflicted or not.

"Not well," she responded. "How are you involved in all this? Who are you?"

She couldn't stand looking at Marcus's corpse on the bed. She usually didn't mind but something about the mystery surrounding him made her upset. What had he - and possibly Eddington - been hiding from her? What could have been so grave for an important historian like Newkirk to kill himself over?

He saw her looking away slightly disturbed from the body of the Professor. John took a moment for her to let it sink in and yet, the question repeated in his ears.
The man just followed a hunch and now he got himself in a complete mess. The bright side is that no one thinks he's alive. The downside is however should they get caught it'll raise a lot of questions.
So, leaving out his name, he began to explain. How he overheard the two professors talking about some artifact, how she was the one walking away from them and was curious what it was all about.
Following her because she seemed the main person to know it all. How he conveniently broke into Newkirk's hotel room and saw all the equipment and noticed he was spying on her.
"Must've made a very bad decision." he concluded, it didn't make much sense to him, but his old job made him curious for these kind of slight hints.

"Yes, you did."

She sat down on a sofa next to the door. It would have been only a matter of minutes until the authorities arrived. She had been through this before but this time they just had to be able to prove it was a suicide.

"Bad news," Zip chimed in.

"Oh please, worse than this?"

"Possibly. The chip you found on your clothes? It wasn't Newkirk's."

She rolled her eyes. How could all this have happened without her noticing the smallest thing? "Was it Eddington's?"

"No. Though I could temporarily track it back to his office."

"Are you saying there is a third party involved?"

John sighed as he tried to salvage what he could should they take their leave and in the meantime he heard the woman having a conversation with someone via her headset.
A third party? That should make things more interesting. he thought after only hearing what she says on her end.

He still was a little bit on edge, if somehow the organization he worked for knew he alive, that would raise a lot of questions. He was not in the mood for that at all.
Why didn't she bother to get away as soon as possible? The man looked over towards her as she still sat in the sofa talking to whomever. Then in the distance he heard sirens approaching.
"Great..." he then mumbled to himself while shaking his head.

It has been two days, the case was as good as closed. When the police had arrived at the hotel room, Lara explained what had happened. She told them she knew Dr. Newkirk from a meeting at the university and that he seemed unstable. When she visited him in his hotel room, they talked about his work and he broke down in tears before he grabbed a gun and shot himself.

John had already left, he took the camera equipment with him, two of the laptops, all the devices Zip told him would seem suspicious to have. From what Lara knew about him, he did not exist. His identity and his name were nowhere to be found so it was a walk in the park for him to dissapear. In fact, he dissapeared by walking straight to the park next door to the hotel.

Lara was still staying in New York, another hotel in Brooklyn. She wanted to wait it out; stay off the radar until things calmed down and the coast was clear for her to investigate what was going on.

It's been two days.
Two days she and everyone in her line of work who had been in direct contact to her and the Lara Croft business had lain low.
The plan of calling Miss Croft the next day was cancelled immediately by Isabela herself after she had overheard Zip having mentioned another tracking clip and a third party being involved.
The ones who had been involved, in fact, had changed to a completely different project altogether for the time being.
Isabela had decided to take the next step all by herself instead. It would seem much less suspicious that way. It was still a risk, for she knew how extremely intelligent Miss Croft was, but she was in too deep to step out now. Well .. that was not entirely true. Of course she could have just stopped right then and there, but what fun would that have been?!

As for the homeless guy, she still had no clue who he really was. Isabela had been surprised to see Lara let him take off with the spy equipment. It was an interesting decision to make ... she found herself admiring the Tomb Raider more and more and was intrigued not only by what she was after, but the woman herself.

Thus she had come to the decision to call her up herself.
She had a pretty decent backstory about where she had gotten the infamous woman's number from and also, it was not unheard of, of course, of important people calling Miss Croft after all.
Nevertheless Isabela found her hands to be wet from sweat and her heart hammering in her chest as she sat in her apartment, with a new bought phone in hand, waiting for Miss croft to pick up. With every unanswered beep her nervousness and determination rose. This was going to be one wild ride, no matter how it would turn out.

The last two days had been very eventful. After he left the apart, he made sure he wasn't seen on the streets for at least a day. Not that anybody would've recognized him anyway with his new shaved and washed look. It felt terribly great to have had such care again, yet he sighed when he woke up in the apartment he broke in to that very day he got away from that incident.
It was a modest little apartment, which was not the most luxury one, but it would do for the work he was doing.
John walked over to the area where he set up a few of the equipment he salvaged and once again went through a few tapes here and there about what this Newkirk had recorded.

And who was that third party Lara was talking about when she was having contact with her acquaintance. He wondered if Newkirk had something on that as well, but the search was in vain. Going through the last of the recording footage again, he heard this was some sort of phone call Newkirk himself had.

"Croft has received the papers from Eddington, sir." Newkirk's voice sounded nervously through the area John was in. "Although she sounded like she already knew what it was all about."

"Keep an eye on her, we want every detail she discovers from the information." A lower voice continued, Reese hadn't heard before. "The woman must be held in sight, can I trust you on that?"

"No problem with that, sir. I already have her tracked, and recorded."

"Don't screw it up. Meet me in two days, then give me all the info you have. We must not fail."

"Will do, sir."

A beep was heard concluding that the conversation was over.
"Now who are you..." John mumbled as he reversed the tape and played it from the beginning. The conversation was repeated and still the voice of the other man didn't ring a bell.

Opening up one of the laptops, he went on looking through a few of the files he was almost done reading with. They were still mumbo jumbo to him, as he looked through copies of the letters Lara received, reservations for the hotel he stayed in.
Suddenly it occurred to him the man mentioned Newkirk meeting him in two days.
"That would be- today..." he once again mumbled to himself as he opened up the agenda on the laptop. Looking at today's date, he indeed found an appointment that was scheduled for today. A certain 'Muller'. Yet no address was given.

How stupid of Newkirk to record his own phone calls, the man smirked, stood up, grabbed the jacket he stole from Newkirk's hotel room that day and packed the equipment. It was time to find Lara Croft once again, and listen to the tape along with her. She would be interested in hearing this.

"What about the officer, did he bother you again? Did you talk to Eddington?"

"No, and no."

Lara had lain low for the past two days and now received a call from Zip after not speaking to him since the incident. He had just finished arguing with her about how he thought it was foolish to get involved in yet another murder case just years after her last one. She tried reassuring him and told him that everything was fine but she did not blame him for acting overly protective; after all he had been by her side ever since the Cabal incident and she was still more than thankful for that.

"So," Zip responded. "When are you gonna see him?"

It was still relatively early in the morning but she had in fact just arranged a meeting with her friend Eddington at the university after not leaving her new hotel room for two days.

"Later today, we talked earlier but he wasn't exactly... approachable. Not entirely sure if he is playing games with me. Perhaps Newkirk had fooled him years ago to establish a trustworthy relationship to him and his associates at the academy--"

"Hold on, I'm getting a call from an unknown number," Zip interrupted.

"D'you think it's our homeless friend?"

"No, I have his number. Hold on, I'm tracking it."

"And?" Lara nagged impatiently. She was not keen on having to deal with any more legal business and unless this was one of Eddington's associates which was completely unlikely, it had to be someone who was involved with whatever Newkirk had been pulling before he decided to blow his brains out rather inelegantly.

"Uhm, signal's coming from right around the corner, actually."

"My corner -- or yours?" she sighed.

"Yours. Uh, let's see... Jefferson Ave?"

"Redirect them to me."

She heard the ringing sound in her ear before she tapped the button on her headset to accept the call.

"You're speaking to Lara Croft."

Every unanswered beep was more unnerving than the previous one, but her heart skipped an entire beat when her call got answered.

"You're speaking to Lara Croft."

"Miss Croft," Isabela began, taking a quiet breath. "A pleasure. My name is Isabela Rivaine, we haven't met but I do believe we're looking for the same ... things and I believe I can be of help, as you could be to me for I find myself at a dead end at this point. I believe you're in the same boat? If I am correct, and you know I am for your consciousness will tell you so, then I believe meeting up somewhere private would be recommendable for both of us. I did not hide my number nor name to show my sincerity and that I am not hiding anything or making this up."

There was a moment's hesitation, obviously unconvinced as of just yet.

"I have a friend of Newkirk here who would be willing to put a bit more light on things," she added, turning her head as the mentioned person knocked on her door.

"There's a lovely restaurant nearby, very secluded, private. The waiters and waitresses are known for their courtesy and understanding for privacy. I would send you its location but I am sure your assistant Zip is already on top of things," Isabela grinned to herself. This ought to let Miss Croft know she was not completely out of her league, but Isabela also never forgot, from everything she has heard, read and seen, that no one was ever in Lara Croft's league.

Lara did not expect any kind of call like this and she had enough to worry about as it was so she was not keen on letting yet another stranger in on the job -- that being said, she was very desperate and she would accept any help at this point because if there was one thing that could spoil her endeavors it was when incompetent fools intervened.

The woman's voice sounded soft and polite and not too wheedling to put her off. She was involved in too much of a sausage fest for her liking anyway so a female associate was just what she needed.

She couldn't help but smile to herself when the mysterious lady revealed she was well aware of the fact Zip was handling all of her telecommunication.

"Very well," she replied respectfully after listening carefully. "I hope you're not wasting my time, Isabela."

Isabela smiled to herself.

"I wouldn't dare. I'll be there in about an hour," and with that she hung up and went to open the door.

"I-i-is this the right place? Are you Isabela R-Rivaine?" a tall man, with arms that seemed a little too long and out of proportion, with short, shaggy, brown hair and a pair of small glasses on his slim nose stood before Isabela. She noticed he was immensely nervous and would be of little use to her in that state. She put on her kindest smile and nodded, her brown eyes sparkling with reassurance.

"It is! You are right on time, very nice! I appreciate that you found the time to stop by, also I applaud your courage for doing the right thing. I know it's scary," she nodded sympathetically, as one would to sooth someone. He slowly seemed to relax some, making his lanky body look even more stretched out.

"Oh well ... I just couldn't.. c-c-couldn't live with that and not do anything about it. I can't do anything," he stuttered yet again. "B-b-but the least I can do is contact someone who can deal with this; who can do something. The police wouldn't listen. They would just p-put me in a nut house." He paused and swallowed hard, his eyes widening as a fear formed in his mind. But before he could say it out loud Isabela chuckled softly, shaking her head, her curly brown hair cascading around her shoulders.

"No, I will not put you in a nut house. I understand. You've come to the right place and the right people Karl."

He gave a shy smile back and Isabela bade him inside.
Before she was to dash off and meet with Miss Croft, she wanted to make sure herself if his information was legit.
Once he had given her the brief version, verifying what her assistant, who had found Karl in the first place had told her earlier, she got up and got ready, grabbing her purse, which had a concealed, bulletproof plate inside of it and smiled at Karl, gesturing towards the door.
She had made sure that she had been as warm and pleasant as can be during the entire conversation to relax the poor guy as best as she could. She had informed him that they were to meet someone else, someone sort of like Isabela herself, who could help as well. She hid the fact that it was Lara Croft personally. She was infamous, certainly, but not everybody knew her just yet. And Isabela was sure the Tomb Raider knew how to deal with situations like that and would leave it up to Miss Croft herself whether she felt it safe to give away her identity or not.

As he left the building he stayed in, he got out one of the small burner phones he found on Newkirk's desk and dialed the number he got from Zip to call if he needed any assistance to Lara's whereabouts. A few seconds later, he answered.
"Yo, Zip here, what'cha need?"

"I've got some info for miss Croft to look at, care to give me the hotel she stays in?"

"Sure, no prob. But you might wanna know she has an appointment with the professor this afternoon. She was almost on her way when I intercepted another call to her, just before you called."

"Any idea who the caller was?" John replied slightly concerned it might be a third party trying to win over Lara's charm and eventually use her to get to whatever they might find out.

"No idea, I tracked the call from Jefferson ave. If you're curious, you might wanna check out that place, before headin' to the university yourself." Zip replied trying to figure out a path as to where to send him to. "For all we know Lara's headin' that way."

"It's better than nothing, let me know if anything changes."

John hung up and sighed, why Lara didn't want to mention her hotel to stay off the streets for a few days made him confused. They could've avoided all these if they just communicated. However, he now had a location to go to and he hoped to find Lara there, and maybe even the caller.
But what if they set up a meeting in another place?
Reese began to wish he had someone knowing all the new updates within the minute. It certainly would've been much more easier like that.