Alex Rider // Stormbreaker//

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When the doorbell rings at three in the morning, it's never good news.

Alex Rider was woken by the first chime. His eyes flickered open but for a moment he stayed completely still in his bed, lying on his back with his head resting on the pillow. He heard a bedroom door open and a creak of wood as somebody went downstairs. The bell rang a second time and he looked at his alarm clock glowing beside him. 3.02am. There was a rattle as someone slid the security chain off the front door.

He rolled out of bed and walked over to the open window, his bare feet pressing into the soft carpet. The moonlight spilled on to his chest and shoulders. For a moment he stood silently, half-hidden in the shadow, looking out. There was a police car parked outside. From his second floor window, Alex could see the black ID number on the roof and caps of the two men who were standing on the front steps. The porch light switched on and, at the same time, the door opened.

"Mrs. Rider?"

"No. I'm the housekeeper. What's wrong? What's happened?"

"This is the home of Ian Rider?"

"Yes."

"I wonder if we could come in..."

And Alex already knew. He knew from the way the police stood there, awkward and unhappy. But he also knew from the tone of their voices. Funeral voices ... that was how he would describe them. The sort of voices people used when they come to tell you that someone close to you has died. He had heard them when the police arrived at the Brennans, bearing the news of Lorraine's death.

He went to his door and opened it. He could hear the two policemen talking down in the hall, but only some of the words reached him.

"... a car accident ... called the ambulance ... intensive care ... nothing anyone could do ... so sorry."

Alex stayed upstairs, not wanting to face Jack and her well meant sympathies. The police stayed for a while, sitting in the kitchen with two cups of tea between their hands.

It was now, about an hour after he had heard the news, that Alex tried to make sense of it. His uncle - Ian Rider- was dead. Driving home, his car had been hit by a lorry at Old Street roundabout and he had been killed almost instantly. He hadn't been wearing a seat-belt, the police said. Otherwise, he may have had a chance.

Moments later, Alex heard the scraping of bicycle brakes on the gravel outside the house. He peered out the window from behind the half-drawn curtains. His eyes fell upon SJ, who was wearing what seemed to be one of Harry's sweatshirts and pyjama bottoms. He watched as she took in the scene in his front garden, the colour slipping away from her face. The bike fell from her hands, and they trembled as she ran one of them along the door of the police car.

Her eyes darted up to Alex's room, where he was concealed behind the curtains. Her breathing became heavy and desperate. She sprinted faster than Alex had ever seen her do so before. She burst through the front door, and hurtled past a questioning Jack, taking the stairs three at a time.

Alex anticipated the flinging open of his door. He was correct. The door swung open, revealing a breathless and worried SJ. The pair paused for a moment, just looking at  each other. Alex watched as relief flooded through her blue eyes, and a partial return of colour graced her face. It was now that SJ had calculated the situation and came to the painful conclusion that she would never see Ian Rider or hear him scold her playfully again.

She let out a shaky sigh and threw herself around Alex. He was motionless for a brief moment, surprised by the hug, but he was drawn back to reality by SJ's unsteady breathing. He wrapped her arms around her, holding on to her as if someone would snatch her away from him at any given moment. He felt his heart shatter into even more tiny pieces when he heard a crack in SJ's barely audible whisper.

"I'm so sorry, Alex."

After the embrace, Alex and SJ sat on his bed for a while in complete silence, both unsure of what to say.

It was Jack who broke the silence.

"Are you two alright?" she asked softly.

SJ turned her head to the window and did not reply. Alex wondered if she was crying, but then shook the thought away. SJ never cried.

He nodded. "What do you think will happen?" he asked.

"What do you mean?"

"To the house. To me. To you."

"I don't know." She shrugged. "I guess Ian will have made a will. He'll have left instructions."

"Maybe we should look in his office."

"Yes. But not today, Alex. One step at a time."

Ian's office was a room running the full length of the house, high up at the top. It was the only room that was always locked - Alex had only been in there three of four times, never on his own. When he was younger, he had fantasized that there might be something strange up their; a time machine or a UFO. But it was only an office with a desk, a couple of filing cabinets, shelves full of papers and books. Bank stuff - that's what Ian said. Even so, Alex wanted to go up there now. Because it had never been allowed.

SJ reentered the conversation, finally inviting the topic that had been sitting in the corner of Alex's mind into the room.

"The police said he wasn't wearing a seat-belt." She turned to look at Alex. Jack nodded. "Yes. That's what they said."

"Doesn't that seem strange to you? You know how careful he was. He always wore a seat-belt. He wouldn't even drive SJ and I around the corner without us wearing them," Alex continued.

Jack paused for a moment, contemplating the statement. "Yeah, it's strange," she said. "But that must have been the way it was. Why would the police have lied?"